Behind the album art with cult enigmas The Armed

Enig­mas don’t come along very often in hard­core punk. Most bands are all about namecheck­ing their home­town in lyrics or speak­ing earnest­ly about the scene in inter­views – authen­tic­i­ty and real­ness are seen as impor­tant cre­den­tials in punk and all the sub­gen­res there­in. That’s why The Armed, a band of anony­mous trick­sters who send actors to do their inter­views and have built an eso­teric lore around them­selves, are a rare beast.

Formed in 2009, The Armed’s music is unique and evolv­ing – exper­i­men­tal and fre­net­ic hard­core with unex­pect­ed moments of pop melody, indie rock and even elec­tro. In their slick videos and art­work, they dance between absur­di­ty, beau­ty, com­e­dy and con­cep­tu­al­i­ty. They’ve fea­tured Tom­my Wiseau from The Room in their music videos and claim that they’re mas­ter­mind­ed by an elu­sive char­ac­ter called ​‘Dan Greene.’ They stole Frank Turner’s unre­leased demos and worked them into their song ​‘Ft. Frank Turn­er,’ which fea­tured a pho­to of Frank Carter on the sin­gle cov­er. In fact, it’s hard to tell if they’re an inside joke, a per­for­mance art troupe or a mix­ture of both.

Fol­low­ing their crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Ultra­pop album in 2021, they released a kalei­do­scop­ic fifth album, Per­fect Sav­iors, last month and dropped their tight­ly guard­ed anonymi­ty. After sup­port­ing Queens of the Stone Age in the US, The Armed revealed their iden­ti­ties: six punks from Detroit. In their first inter­views, they’ve begun speak­ing hon­est­ly about the band, their moti­va­tions and the lat­est album. Per­fect Sav­iors is just as demand­ing as the pre­vi­ous but is their most acces­si­ble music to date: an alt-rock album with moments of pure noise, tech­ni­cal prowess and dreamy transcendence.

As we have come to expect from The Armed, the art­work of Per­fect Sav­iors is a sight to behold. An arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-gen­er­at­ed image of a mutant trio might not be to everybody’s taste but from what I can gath­er, that was the inten­tion. Huck sat down with front­man Tony Wol­s­ki, a cre­ative direc­tor in his day job, to talk about art, com­e­dy and the weird world of The Armed. 

I’m sure we could talk about music all day but today I want to talk to you about art. In The Armed, are you inspired by art or spe­cif­ic art move­ments, as well as music?

Yeah, big time. We’ve always con­sid­ered the project as a whole to be one big mul­ti­me­dia exper­i­ment, so, for us, there’s real­ly no line. The music is para­mount, but so is the asso­ci­at­ed video rep­re­sen­ta­tion and so is the art­work that comes out with it, you know? Years ago some peo­ple thought we didn’t take the music seri­ous­ly enough because of the time we would put into all the oth­er stuff. But we take the music incred­i­bly seri­ous­ly. We call it a band because it’s easy, but to us, the phys­i­cal album itself, the pre­sen­ta­tion of it, the whole lore and the asso­ci­at­ed web­sites and the music videos, all of that is one thing. We’re craft­ing an expe­ri­ence, you know what I mean?

In a tra­di­tion­al sense, our over­all expe­ri­en­tial con­cept pulls from Bowie or some­thing like that. Every aspect of the pre­sen­ta­tion was impor­tant to him. He’s anoth­er very col­lab­o­ra­tive artist who worked with new peo­ple con­stant­ly. Then, if we’re talk­ing about the actu­al art itself, Sher­rie Levine is a huge, huge influ­ence. You know, that fem­i­nist appro­pri­a­tion art. I know aes­thet­i­cal­ly there are maybe not a lot of touch-points in the art that we’re doing now, but I think con­cep­tu­al­ly there’s a lot of align­ment there.

Stéphane Bre­itwieser is not an artist, but he’s a famous thief. I think that there is a lot of inter­sec­tion between con­tem­po­rary art and the con­cept of own­er­ship and appro­pri­a­tion in gen­er­al. I think some­one who was so infat­u­at­ed with art that he was phys­i­cal­ly tak­ing it from a muse­um, I think that’s almost artis­tic in itself. The moves he had to do to steal these things and to accu­mu­late mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of art from a Bel­gian muse­um I think that’s a per­for­mance in and of itself, too. 

There’s a play­ful­ness with­in the art, music and lore of The Armed. It reminds me of The Church of the Sub­Ge­nius – your Dan Greene char­ac­ter being like J.R. ​“Bob” Dobbs. You said in anoth­er inter­view that, ​“in most great art there is a sense of whim­sy and mag­ic and humour.” That echoes what Ivan Stang would say; that just because what they’re doing is fun­ny doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be tak­en seriously.

Yeah. The KLF are also a mas­sive touch­point for us, too. We actu­al­ly straight up ref­er­ence the mil­lion quid burn­ing in the lyrics to ​‘Pub­lic Griev­ing.’ The KLF, Sub­Ge­nius and Bowie cre­at­ed real­ly won­der­ful, cul­tur­al­ly defin­ing, cul­tur­al­ly trans­for­ma­tive art in all these dif­fer­ent ways, through dif­fer­ent lev­els of sub­ver­sion and they did so with a twin­kle in their eyes.

There’s some­thing quite entranc­ing about it all. Mak­ing the audi­ence ques­tion whether The Armed is com­e­dy, or real­ly seri­ous. Is it per­for­mance art, or is it an inside joke or all of the above? 

You hit on some­thing; that pre­ten­tious­ness aspect which is what trig­gers a lot of people’s defence mech­a­nisms, espe­cial­ly in hard­core and in punk. You’re sup­posed to know like, this is what you do at a show and these are the spe­cif­ic cool iden­ti­fiers, but that’s not in the spir­it of punk. Black Flag wasn’t cov­er­ing Elvis, know what I mean? This idea that we’re sup­posed to be fetishis­ing some­thing from 40 years ago with such accu­ra­cy and try­ing to recre­ate things just doesn’t seem in the spir­it to me. It makes peo­ple defen­sive, it makes peo­ple think we’re pre­ten­tious, but in our band a lot of us come from a visu­al art background.

Some of us went to school for it and the fun­ny thing is you kind of learn that a lot of peo­ple who you might think are pre­ten­tious are just nerds like you! I think some­times it’s people’s own defence, like if they don’t imme­di­ate­ly pick up what the intent is, then peo­ple are like, ​“Fuck that! They think they’re smarter than me!” The Armed def­i­nite­ly don’t think we’re smarter than any­body [laughs]. I promise. We’re just try­ing to have a good time!

It seems like you’re see­ing punk through a mod­ernist lens. See­ing punk as some­thing that sep­a­rates itself from the past. Mod­ernist artists weren’t aping clas­sic art from pre­vi­ous cen­turies or aspir­ing to be like that, they were start­ing afresh, sub­vert­ing or chal­leng­ing. I feel like that’s what you’re doing, rather than lean­ing on the past.

The thing is, this is not a dis­own­ing of any of that stuff in the past, it’s an acknowl­edge­ment and a growth from it. With bands like Minor Threat, you had Rev­o­lu­tion Sum­mer hap­pen­ing in DC years after the advent of those bands. Black Flag kept rein­vent­ing itself. Those bands were not con­tent to just sit there in what­ev­er the cur­rent exchange rate of vin­tage trendi­ness was to some­thing they’re pay­ing homage to. They were try­ing to break new ground and to them punk was mod­ernist. We’re try­ing to embrace that con­cept of modernism.

What’s the sto­ry behind the album art?

The con­cept of Per­fect Sav­iors is about the increas­ing dog­mat­ic sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of morals and ethics that is emerg­ing. I’m a mil­len­ni­al and I think our gen­er­a­tion real­ly fell hard for the cap­i­tal­ism rebrand: ​“I’m not just a guy try­ing to make my own busi­ness, I’m actu­al­ly sav­ing the world, and let me tell you why.” We’ve start­ed mak­ing an equiv­a­len­cy between activism and start­ing a shoe com­pa­ny or a for-prof­it com­pa­ny. It’s not that doing that is inher­ent­ly bad, we’ve all got full-time jobs out­side the band, but try­ing to hide that behind the veneer of every­thing being altru­is­tic is just dis­hon­est. I feel like the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion real­ly drank our own Kool-Aid and every­thing now has to have this pur­pose, which is mak­ing every­thing so much bet­ter. It has result­ed in this thing where peo­ple think if you eat a spe­cif­ic brand of quinoa you’re a piece of shit. 

The iso­la­tion from the pan­dem­ic fur­ther drove this unrest every­where. You saw this excit­ing stuff start hap­pen­ing, like in 2020 peo­ple got upset about some real­ly insane injus­tices here in the States. There were protests and there was momen­tum. Then you even­tu­al­ly see that devolve and turn into gen­er­al malaise. At the same time, there’s this eth­i­cal bina­ry now where every­thing is either good or bad. There’s an increas­ing black-and-white thought and the con­cept that you’re either going to be per­fect or you’re going to be the dev­il. So that’s the idea of the Per­fect Sav­iors.

Where does the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence come into it?

Tech­nol­o­gy has foist­ed its own ver­sion of what we are onto our­selves. Like, even if you and I like 90% of the same music, have the same polit­i­cal beliefs, you’re still going to get a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of that than I am. We’re not all sit­ting around watch­ing the moon land­ing any­more, we’re not all watch­ing the Super Bowl any­more, it’s all very dif­fer­ent for every per­son. But we as humans, I feel, haven’t caught up with that yet. We still think every­one is kind of expe­ri­enc­ing the same thing, even though it’s dif­fer­ent for everyone.

So, with Per­fect Sav­iors we want­ed to take the con­cept of this algo­rith­mic deliv­ery sys­tem of a one-to-one cul­tur­al pas­tiche that is you. We want­ed to apply that to a visu­al­i­sa­tion, and what bet­ter tool to do it than AI. It’s an amoral, bor­der­ing-on-uneth­i­cal robot machine that cre­at­ed these super­hero rock star pas­tiche mashups.

How has it been received?

We’ve seen a lot of blow­back from that because a lot of peo­ple are dis­gust­ed that we would use AI. That kind of baf­fles me. I mean, I don’t think that art is intrin­si­cal­ly eth­i­cal. I think it rais­es eth­i­cal ques­tions for you, the view­er, and some­times it makes you uncom­fort­able. And that’s what we’re doing. We’ve stolen people’s videos before, we’ve recre­at­ed oth­er people’s art­work… to me, this is the nat­ur­al exten­sion of that.

We embraced it because it would be con­tro­ver­sial too, you know what I mean? We went into it know­ing that this would be some­thing that isn’t sup­posed to be okay. Also, the fun­ny part is that a lot of peo­ple have been using AI in oth­er ways that they’ve had no idea about. There’s been AI inte­gra­tion into all kinds of VST [Vir­tu­al Stu­dio Tech­nol­o­gy] plu­g­ins, into all kinds of visu­al tools, into Pho­to­shop, into Illus­tra­tor, Live Trace. To say AI is just bad seems sil­ly to me.

What did you even feed into the AI for it make the artwork?

That’s the thing. I think a lot of peo­ple who don’t use it assume that you type ​“make me a cool-look­ing album cov­er” into it and it makes one, but that’s not how it works. My cousin Ken­ny Szy­man­s­ki plays bass in the band and he’s the design­er. I work on the con­cep­tu­al end of it and he puts togeth­er the visu­als. We had months and months and months and months of prompts and get­ting images that we like and then col­lag­ing it all togeth­er to make some­thing that’s cohe­sive and dis­gust­ing. There were a lot of pop cul­ture ref­er­ences, which falls into legal grey areas [laughs], so I don’t even want to speak specif­i­cal­ly about it, but the idea is that we want­ed it to feel alien and famil­iar and grotesque. There’s this weird push-pull where it feels like pop cul­ture at an arm’s dis­tance, and a lit­tle wrong when you look at it for too long, you know what I mean?

It feels almost sick­ly to me.

Yeah! And that’s the inten­tion. It’s sup­posed to make you feel a lit­tle gross because we’re talk­ing about kind of gross and weird stuff.

Album art­work helps to shape how peo­ple con­sume the music. I often think of an album cov­er when I lis­ten to the album, some­times con­scious­ly or oth­er times sub­con­scious­ly. Even the colour palette in the art affects how I digest the music. With that in mind, the pair­ing of this album cov­er with the music makes for an inter­est­ing experience. 

Yeah. A lot of the core peo­ple in The Armed are from around Detroit, Michi­gan, and we’re real­ly close to Ann Arbor and Ypsi­lan­ti where there is a real­ly vibrant noise music scene. I think that has informed where we get a lot of our thoughts on how to do the push-and-pull because they’re mas­ters of the high and low. It could be a song that’s just a sam­ple of a lawn­mow­er, but there will be an artis­tic trea­tise with it that blows your mind, all about what it’s referencing.

I think our brains are con­stant­ly try­ing to cat­e­gorise. With The Armed we’re try­ing push that so hard that in the long-term it repro­grams your brain and what it asso­ciates with cer­tain sounds and noises. 

In hip hop, there’s a whole slew of aes­thet­ics that are accept­ed and there’s a whole slew of silli­ness and whim­sy and seri­ous­ness that can be accept­ed. But for some rea­son, par­tic­u­lar­ly in heavy music and in punk and hard­core, there seems to be these real­ly spe­cif­ic swim lanes – heavy music should look and sound like this or that. At the most basic lev­el, we’re just try­ing to fuck all that up. We’re try­ing to repro­gram, to open peo­ple up to new ideas.

It’s a bit sit­u­a­tion­ist. It’s dis­rup­tive, really.

Anoth­er mas­sive influence! 

Like, jolt­ing peo­ple out of their real­i­ty tun­nels can inspire every­thing from polit­i­cal thought, to cre­ativ­i­ty, to imag­in­ing a new world. I once read you describe The Armed as a ​“social­ist art utopia.” You seem dis­af­fect­ed with the way things are now. What role does art play in build­ing a utopia?

When I said The Armed is a social­ist art utopia, I was talk­ing about lit­er­al­ly just The Armed. This is such a corny answer, but I think ulti­mate­ly it all starts from there. Find what you can affect and treat peo­ple fair­ly with­in those realms. We’re all in a real­ly cut-throat thing, but with­in the sys­tems that you can con­trol it’s just about being kind and fair to peo­ple and draw­ing the line. I think there’s a cer­tain amount of greed that per­vades every aspect of soci­ety and that fuels almost every ill. You don’t have to look at some­thing in terms of polit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic mod­els. There are just so many sys­tems that greed fucks up. It is ulti­mate­ly the dri­ving evil in this world. 

If we are able to estab­lish sys­tems that we can con­trol to some degree or exert our own influ­ence over, we just need to keep that idea of fair­ness at play in all of it. That’s the basis for an even­tu­al utopia, you know what I mean? That could hap­pen. I don’t know specif­i­cal­ly the trans­for­ma­tive way that art could get us to utopia, but I know that if a utopia can exist, it would need art because it wouldn’t be a utopia for me with­out it. Art is going to be impor­tant along the way no mat­ter what. 

Per­fect Sav­iors is out now. Album art Cre­ative Direc­tion by Tony Wol­s­ki and Design by Ken Szymanski.

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