Walls of Jericho’s legend is far from over.
A major force in the creation of metalcore in the early 2000s, the band led by Candace Buckingham (vocals), Aaron Ruby (bass/backing vocals), Dustin Schoenhofer (drums), Bobby VaLeu (guitar), and Kyle Gailey (guitar) is back after a ten-year hiatus from studio releases with their sixth album, System Error: Humanity, still under the Napalm Records banner.
Also worth noting are guitar parts recorded by Chris Towning before he left the band, as well as by Matthew Ruby.
The band hits hard right from the start with True Til’ Death, an opening track featuring direct, choppy riffs that confirm their return to their roots somewhere between Metalcore and aggressive Hardcore accompanied by the screams of a vocalist in top form who doesn’t hesitate to lead the charge. The band has never been known for making compromises, and they’re not about to start with Beginning, which picks up where the previous track left off, stringing together crowd-pleasing rhythms with impressive ease. And even if there’s occasionally a touch of dissonance in the harmonics, the track races straight into The Flame, which delivers its own palpable intensity, particularly during the central break. We continue with the very heavy and oppressive The Ascent, which doesn’t waste a single moment before hitting full throttle, but the band quickly moves on to Broken Mouths Can’t Speak, which offers us our first moment of respite before Candace takes the reins again accompanied by Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), who lends a hand on vocals. Needless to say, the track is highly effective despite a rather dissonant approach that stretches out over time, but the band returns to a more in-your-face sound with Untouchable, which follows hot on its heels and delivers pure Walls of Jericho in every respect, just as Rise does at a slightly faster tempo, bringing back that old-school vibe. No surprises here either for Agency, which sticks to much the same approach and lets the riffs roll out at a brisk pace to fuel the pit’s unbridled desire to fight, nor for Unchained, which lives up to its name perfectly and lets the band unleash a veritable torrent of double-pedal drumming right from the intro before giving free rein to their rage. Hostilities resume immediately on The End Before, where we even catch hints of thrash in the sharpest passages; then Humanity hits hard, featuring Guy Kozowyk of The Red Chord backing up the screamer, creating a formidable and fiery duo, an energy that carries over into Borrowed Ground, the next track, where she’s alone in unleashing her fury. After a short break, we’re back with Last Judgment, another track that’s vindictive in its own way and promises some serious mayhem in the mosh pit – in contrast to A Brighter Fire, a long song that starts off very slowly and where the musicians bring in Patsy Puopolo (the vocalist’s daughter) and Matthew Ruby to bolster their ranks, trading clean vocals and melancholic tones for a ballad full of twists and turns that ultimately leads to The Reckoning, where the musicians return to their usual sound, closing out the album with the rage we’ve come to expect from them.
I’m not usually a big fan of Hardcore and Metalcore, but I must admit that Walls of Jericho really knows how to bring the aggression! System Error: Humanity will make a name for itself not only as “the comeback album,” but also for its fierce compositions!
70/100
A few questions to Dustin Schoenhofer, drummer of the Hardcore band Walls of Jericho, about the release of their new album, System Error: Humanity.
Hello Dustin, and first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. How do you feel?
Dustin Schoenhofer (drums): I feel pretty good. How are you?
I’m fine! Walls of Jericho is of course anchored in Hardcore and Metalcore, but could you please describe the sound of your band without using any metal labels?
Dustin: Walls of Jericho is a freight train. That’s just about to come off the tracks. We’ve never actually come off the tracks.
I’m really fine with this answer! As far as I know, Walls of Jericho‘s name comes from a Helloween song, which is really far from the music you play. How do you personally link it to your music?
Dustin: Well, Walls of Jericho does not come from a Helloween album. The name of the band comes from the Bible story from the Walls of Jericho. So, it’s about the Israelites playing so loud that they broke down the guarded walls of Jericho. The city of Jericho. So, it’s from the Bible, it’s a metaphor of how powerful that story is, and how music coming together and playing loudly for a good cause can create change, and that’s kind of why we named the band that is because we wanted our music, we wanted the actual message and music to be so powerful that it could crumble down city walls.
Okay, thank you for the explanation! Walls of Jericho is about to release its 6th album named System Error: Humanity. How do you feel about the album?
Dustin: I feel it’s our best album. I think it’s sonically the best sounding album we’ve ever put out. With Kurt Ballou being the producer and having like his signature sounds really brought this band to a different level. We are able to, in my opinion, kind of capture the energy that we bring to the stage in a live setting. We were able to kind of capture that same energy on a record, which I don’t feel we’ve ever been able to really do before. Our last 3 albums have been really polished, where I feel like this album is just so heavy, it just sounds like we sound live! So, yeah, there’s that part of it, and then I think music wise, it’s got a lot of… I would call new tricks that we have up our sleeve. There’s some songs on that album that you wouldn’t expect from us, but somehow we make it sound like us. You hear a lot of bands, they will say “you can give us any song and we’ll make it sound like us no matter what”, and I always thought that that was bullshit, you know what I mean? You listen to all these musicians talk about that, and I was like “whatever”, and then I didn’t really understand that until this album, and it’s true. There’s some new writers that we have in the band that came with some different ways of playing and different ways of writing, and when we all got together and put our collective thoughts to those songs, we made it sound like Walls of Jericho.
How would you sum up System Error: Humanity in only 3 words?
Dustin: The album in three words would be… Fuck, I don’t even know. I don’t think I could sum it up in 3 words. It’s “stand up for yourself”. That’s really what this album is about. It’s standing up for yourself, standing up for your rights, standing up for the rights of others, standing up for what we feel is the right course of action moving forward politically and as humans, because obviously from the title of the record, System Error: Humanity, I don’t think we’re very far off by saying that, especially what’s going on right now. So, “stand up for yourself”.
It took 10 years for System Error: Humanity to come to life. Are there any changes you noticed in the composition process, or do you think it became easier with time?
Dustin: We kind of made a conscious effort after The American Dream to stop putting out albums every couple of years because it just wasn’t doing anything for us. There was a lot of oversaturation for us. So this time around, what changed the most is that we had a lineup change with our guitar players. And we had a lot of contributions from other people in the band that necessarily didn’t contribute a lot in the past, felt that they now had a voice and they now could contribute, so there was a lot of different songs coming in, which was really cool, and from my standpoint from the drummer, it was cool to interpret those songs the way that the writer wants them to be interpreted and still kind of put like our spin on things, so that made it really fun. I think we’re in a better place as a band, just all around. There seems to be a resurgence with us, lots of the younger generation that are coming into the Punk and Hardcore scene are discovering us, and we’re starting to see that wave now. So with this album, I feel like we’ve kind of standing our ground again, saying “hey, we’re still here”. I know we don’t put out albums all the time, but we still tour, and this is what we’re doing, and I think that the people like it. We seem to get a lot of really good feedback from new listeners and old listeners, so that’s good.
Walls of Jericho is of course still true to its roots. Maybe you have some influences in music or maybe outside of music to create your songs?
Dustin: We have, both musically and outside of music. This record especially, outside of music, we’re literally addressing the social issues that are going on in the world, this tick of fascism that needs to just be burned all the way to the fucking ground. That was definitely a huge influence on a lot of the lyrical content that Candace (Candace Kucsulain, singer, ed.) and Aaron (Aaron Ruby, bass player, ed.), both wrote and Randy Blythe helped kind of get us to the end of all of that. Musically, personally, I listened to everything. So, I take from everything, you know what I mean? I could sit there and tell you “hey, this part right here in this crazy ass Metal breakdown, I took that from Toto”, you know what I mean? I find a lot of different influences in music and a lot of different music. But yeah, I think those two things are definitely a huge part of this process on this particular album.
Maybe you have a personal favorite song on the new album?
Dustin: I think my personal favorite song is Agency. Both lyrically and musically, it hits all the things that I stand up for. I love the video as well. I had a hand in the concept of the video, so I really like what it represents with the song. And it’s so short, fast, with a breakdown song, I just love it. I love playing all the little weird parts. I get to do like a discharge, fast beat for the first time on a Walls of Jericho record, which is really cool. So, yeah, I’d have to say Agency is my favorite all around.
Maybe there was a song which was really hard to create?
Dustin: No, we didn’t really have that problem. This whole entire process was very, like, natural, you know, even from the very developmental stages of the these songs when they were just demos, it was so easy for us to get into a room and listen to them and start, voicing our critiques and making changes, and it was very diplomatic amongst the five of us, and everybody that brought in music, it was treated as such, even all the way down, recording these songs, when we would sit down with Kurt, and listen to these demos that we had redone, I don’t know, 5 or 6 different times, then we get his perspective, so we were kind of shaping things that way too, so it was a very big effort amongst everybody in the band, including Kurt. Including Randy to get these songs to the point where we felt that they were finished, and it was very easy for us because everybody just gets along so well. So it was just a walk in the park, this is one of the easiest albums I’ve ever done with Walls of Jericho, literally.
That’s great! On this album you have several guests, Randy Blythe from Lamb of God, Guy Kozowyk from The Red Chord, Patsy Puopolo and Matthew Ruby. How did you decide to collaborate with all of them and how did you find them a place?
Dustin: So, Randy came in as a co-producer for vocals. We know that Randy has worked with several bands in that capacity, and going with Kurt, we didn’t know how it was gonna work with vocal stuff. So, we approached Randy, we did a cruise with Lamb of God called Headbangers Boat, which – if you ever get a chance to go on that – I highly recommend, it’s one of the best times ever! And he’s been a big supporter of the band, and we got into the conversation about what we’re doing next, and told him we’re doing an album with Kurt, and he was like “man, that’s gonna be awesome”. And I said “you wanna come and help with vocals and lend a hand with just helping?”. He’s like “absolutely”. So, when he came up to Massachusetts, it was working with Candace first, and then once Broken Mouths Can’t Speak came along, he just decided that he wanted to sing on that song, he just really liked that song. And the same thing with Guy, we have a very long friendship with The Red Chord, they’ve been huge supporters of us, and us as them, and we felt that on the song Humanity, Guy would sound really good on that, and that turned out really good. Every record that we’ve put out since The Bound Feed The Gagged, we’ve had a ballad on it, and we’ve also done an EP that was nothing but ballads that Candace just sang on. This was no exception, so when A Brighter Fire was written, she made the decision that she wanted her daughter to sing on it with her. We have no problems with that, so that’s how that came along. And then with that being said too, Matthew Ruby, who is Aaron Ruby’s son, our bass player, he actually co-wrote that song. That’s why he has a guest appearance on A Brighter Fire, and he actually helped us on the entire recording process. I think he was there longer than I was, to be honest. Helping as engineer on the album, he played some guitar stuff on the album, he helped with the writing process on the album, he helped with all the vocals, the pre-production vocal stuff on the album, when we were actually in the studio, our friend Greg from The Red Chord, the bass player Greg Weeks, did all the pre-production for the vocals, for all the demos with Candace. So, we just had a lot of friends and family people that we trust, help us with stuff. So, I think all around, all of the guest appearances and everybody that helped us with the album made a huge impact on that, and we can’t really thank them enough, to be honest.
Maybe you think you improved yourself as a musician with this new record?
Dustin: I don’t know if I’ve improved myself as a musician. I don’t really look at things like that. I feel like my performances on this album are some of my favorite. For any Walls of Jericho album, it’s definitely my favorite sounding Walls of Jericho album. But I don’t know if I’ve improved. I probably, in my opinion, probably got worse, just because I’m my own worst critic, you know what I mean?
I understand this!
Dustin: But I definitely feel like the band itself has grown musically over the last 10 years for sure. There’s definitely some more open-mindedness going on, as far as the writing process on this album, as compared to other albums. So, if you wanna call that growth, which I do, then yes, I feel like the whole band, including myself, has grown. On the cell, for sure.
Walls of Jericho is known for pioneering the Metalcore movement. How do you see the evolution of the music you helped created?
Dustin: Well, I’m gonna start off by saying I hate the word Metalcore. Metalcore is an industry term made up by people that needed to sell something new and exciting to the industry. And to the stores that are going to start carrying this stuff cause they have no choice because this type of music is just becoming more and more popular throughout the years, but Walls of Jericho is a full on, we’re a Hardcore band, we’re Hardcore kids all the way through and through. I don’t feel like… yes, we have Metal influences, obviously, you can hear bands like Slayer and Anthrax and Testament in our songwriting, and even now with the new record, there’s other influences like Meshuggah, there’s some Death Metal stuff in there too, but we’re a Hardcore band. For us to be one of the pioneers of what would be called Metalcore, I just think that we were there when Hardcore was becoming more mainstream. And again, they just started calling bands like us Metalcore because Metal is a bigger sales point than Hardcore is, so they had to put that name in there to get people to make it more palatable. But being influential in any scene to me is important. We never looked at ourselves as some sort of influence, we just have always done what we’ve done and we’ve always just tried to stay true to ourselves, and not really worry about what other people are doing or how we’re influencing, we just do us.
So let’s talk about a live show now. How do you live a Walls of Jericho show from your point of view?
Dustin: It’s pure chaos in my brain. I second guess every little hit that I do, it’s exhausting, especially when we have to play like the 1 hour plus long sets. This band does not write songs that are easy to play for the most part, we also put 100% of the energy that we have for the day into that 45 minutes to an hour long slot. So it’s very exhausting. My legs are covered in bruises, my hands usually start falling apart after about a two week long run with Walls of Jericho, the skin on my hands literally start falling off. I played barefoot, it’s a bad habit, so then the bottom of my feet, the skin starts falling off too. It’s very physically demanding. It’s also mentally demanding as well, but at the end of the day, we all have fun playing these shows, that’s what it’s really all about, connecting with people and having as much fun as we possibly can. And I feel like we do a pretty good job with that live. I think that our live show is what’s kept our band relevant through the last.. let’s say since 2010, so let’s call it the last 17 years, that’s what’s kind of kept us going. Without releasing records every other couple of years, people come to see Walls of Jericho, they’re like “oh yeah, they haven’t had an album out in a while, but their live shows are awesome”. So we rely on that.
You have a European tour coming next month, how do you guys get ready for this one and how do you build the setlist between the old songs and the new songs?
Dustin: So we picked 4 songs for this new set list, 4 songs that we feel are the most important on the album right now, and then we’re just gonna kinda see how they go. We usually do like 2 new songs a night, because let’s face it, nobody wants to go see a band that’s been around as long as we’ve been around and watch him play all these songs. Nobody does. So we gotta hit him with all the hits, if you will, or the classics, but we have 4 new songs that we’re gonna rotate around, and we’re just gonna kind of see how they go over, and then, we know what songs we’re gonna play live, and we just kind of put together our setlist and kind of go from there.
Maybe you also have some plans for the band’s future after the album release and the European tour?
Dustin: Yeah, we’ll be back for the European summer festival circuit in 2027, we’re looking at South America, Australia, some US dates as well, so we’re gonna be fairly busy. We’ve always kind of kept ourselves busy throughout the year, so this is just gonna be a little bit more just cause we wanna get out there and support the album. We have great partners with Napalm, so we wanna go out there and showcase that.
You already played a lot of shows in France. Do you like to play in France?
Dustin: Yeah, I love playing in France. I love France, period. France is awesome! The food’s awesome, the people are awesome, the countryside is beautiful, the cities are beautiful. It’s just a great place to go. It really is.
Maybe you have some French Metal or Hardcore bands you like?
Dustin: Who doesn’t love Gojira? They’re like literally the one of the greatest Metal bands that are out right now. I don’t know about French Hardcore bands, to be honest with you. There’s some that are out there, but I don’t really mess with those bands. I do love Gojira a whole lot, since we were really lucky, Walls has been around so long that I remember when Gojira first started. I remember seeing them back in like their first two albums, and just being like “this band is awesome”, and then they’ve just turned into – in my opinion – they’re one of the most important bands in Metal right now, period. What they’re saying politically, what they did for the Olympics, what they’re saying for France says a lot. The brothers in that band are incredible musicians. And they just put on one of the greatest shows that I’ve seen in a long time. I was super lucky I got to watch them headline Hellfest a couple of years ago. I think that was their first time doing the Mainstage, and we kind of know those guys, so we went up on stage and watched, and it was just amazing. The French audience just lost their fucking minds. So it was cool to see, it really was. They deserve it.
Yeah, definitely. So maybe there are some bands you’d like to play with?
Dustin: I think the only band that we haven’t played with is Metallica. We’ve done festivals and club shows, theater shows, with pretty much every band that I could ever think of that’s in our genre. And bands that aren’t even in our genre… I’ve gotten to see like Wu-Tang Clan, and got to see all kinds of crazy bands throughout, you know, the 20 plus years we’ve been going over to Europe. So Metallica is the only band that Walls of Jericho has never shared a festival date with or any kind of support date with, but getting back to the point, there’s a million bands that I’d like to see to continue. And a lot of them we call friends, I can’t name one that I’m particularly looking forward to yet. We’ll see what happens.
So this will be the last question on the funniest one: is there any dish you would like to compare Walls of Jericho’s music with?
Dustin: Oh what did I say? I said in the last interview that we were almost like a beef bourguignon, and we would be the beef, you know what I mean? Because it’s a very delicate dish, it has to be done a certain way and only a certain way, otherwise it’s not beef bourguignon, so I will go with that answer again. We are very much like a beef bourguignon. We were very specific on how we’re prepared, it’s very traditional, and if we don’t, if we’re not prepared a certain way, then it’s not us. And I say that because anytime we have to play a small club show and they put up like a shitty barricade, to me that’s not representing what this band is, we don’t do that. Yes, we have to use barricades when we play the festivals and stuff, and I understand that part of it, but when we’re playing club shows, get this fucking barricade out of here.
I understand this. So as I said, that was my last question, so thank you very much for your time and for your music, the last words are yours!
Dustin: Thank you so much, and hopefully we see everybody next month when we’re in France!