"[W]hen you have a level of honesty, you’re in it for the right reasons, you need to kinda tough it out on this weird road of loneliness that goes against the grain. Because the grain will always be Lady Gaga. What will catch your eye the quickest and cause you to spend money the quickest? That includes indie rock, as well. I’ll hear about some band that’s supposed to be groundbreaking and left of center, and that’s just another cog in the machine, to me. [That scene] is just as keyed as to why the Jonas Brothers are big. You start to realize that there are a lot of bands who are real and have been doing it for a while and kids like them because they’re genuine. And it’s comforting to be surrounded by that knowledge." — Max Bemis, Alternative Press #267
"Thanks to our dedicated, nutty, crazy fans, we’ve increased slowly in size and popularity without having to start flat-ironing our butt-hair to do so." — Max Bemis (via jessr)
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I’ve never heard the full story of what happened to lead you to the mental hospital in Texas where you spent more than six weeks. So why don’t you tell it to me.
Okay. The meds I was taking weren’t very affective so I wasn’t getting enough sleep. So I was already turning into a manic state before I even stopped taking my meds. So therefore I stopped taking my meds. Me being in a manic state or a semi-manic state from not being medicated good enough made me think that if I stopped taking my meds that I would get better as a person and that I would stopped being paranoid — or that, perhaps, my paranoias were truths that I need to indulge in order to see things clearly. In reality I was being completely accusatory to everyone around me and I was being an asshole and scary.
It manifested itself into me leaving and walking through the streets with no money and no phone. I ended up in some part of Brooklyn. I got into a little physical altercation with someone and I don’t even know why. I still don’t remember. I was just like, “This sucks, I might get myself killed.” I remember that was the moment when I was like, “I need to get to the hospital.” I asked someone to call my girlfriend on the phone and then she helped me get to the hospital.
And I ended up in the hospital there. I was in a serious manic state for a while, probably like four or five days not including the two or three days before I went in where I was already starting to be completely manic.
"No situation is cut and dry and both sides of any conflict have a right to how they feel. Between band members, countries, and religions, but to counter this, there is such a thing as truth and virtue. At least I believe there are. They are simply buried under a heap of crap that consists of, again, LYING, fixating on money, sex and power, or feeling “cool” or smarter than your socially prescribed “enemy”. This is all bull and will get people nowhere…All that matters is that you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and whether, after the inner conflict that ensues, you can say “I have done the right thing.” Can you claim that? CAN YOU? All I can answer is “Most of the time." — Max Bemis, in his letter to Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory
“The record’s called ‘In Defense of the Genre’, because, um, it’s about standing up for what you believe in.”
“If you have no fuckin’ soul then what does it even matter?”
"There is that small chance I’ll get what I want; to be someone to relate to for anyone who is as alienated, awkward, spastic, and passionate as me." — Max Bemis
you can call me bemis
Members: Kelsey | Kenna
