Fort Reno is nearly upon us, and we relish that time as an opportunity to discover new bands and new sounds. However, Beasts of No Nation, one of the three bands opening the Fort Reno season, comes to us with a very familiar sound. Coming together from bands like Trial by Fire, The Explosion and Darkest Hour, Mike Schleibaum, Jason Yawn, Kevin Lamiell and Andrew Black embody the sound and attitude of D.C. punk bands of yore. The guitars are loud, the lyrics incendiary and the songs short of three minutes. Songs like “Allegiance” off their debut seven-inch have all the fire of the bands these D.C. natives grew up listening to and can be found in the same vein as many of these idols’ current project. Sleeper Agent, who opened Fort Reno last year, is probably the closest sonic point of comparison.

We sat down with Yawn to talk about a lineup that was a long time coming, and how Fela Kuti inspired both the band name and mission.

Find them online: http://www.beastsdc.com/
Buy their music: From their online store
See them next: Monday June 27th at Fort Reno with Railsplitter and Valley Tours

How does it feel to be playing the first Fort Reno show?

It’s weird.

Why is that weird?

It’s surreal, I guess is a better way of saying it. Because we all had pretty formative experiences. If you grew up around the D.C. punk scene and you haven’t seen Fugazi play at Fort Reno, something’s wrong. So, we’ve all seen shows over the years at that place that kind of make it a pretty sacred thing and to be able to be on a show there, much less open the season, this is pretty weird. But really cool. It means a whole lot.

Had any of you guys played Fort Reno previously with bands that you’d been in?

I have not. Andrew might have. I don’t think Kevin has, and I think Darkest Hour might have at some point, but I’m not positive. It’s a totally new thing for me. Trial By Fire never played there.

You guys have been in different bands, some of whom we’ve covered in DCist. What are you achieving with Beasts of No Nation that’s different from what you’ve done previously?

I’m really saying what I want to say a lot better, I think. But as a group, we’re playing with our friends and it’s really important to have this mix of people. We have grown up in this music and this is the music that commonly animates the four of us. So, it’s a big deal for us to be able to do this and we spent a lot of years trying to put it together so that it would be these four people and that it would work for all of us. We’re finally here and the music is reflective of four people who are pretty inspired by what we’re doing. If we’re moving and we’re not staying in the same place every record that’s what we’ll achieve.

So even though the band just came together last year, have you been playing together for awhile?

Somewhat. We’ve played off and on for several years but Andrew was really the last piece of the band that came together in the last couple of years. Amidst everybody else’s lives and projects and bands, we were playing a bit here and there. As a band in a room, we don’t get to play that often together because we live in three different cities right now. But when we schedule shows — for instance, we’re playing in Pittsburgh and New York and Fort Reno this weekend and the band’s getting together tomorrow at nine o’clock for a two hour practice and we’re leaving in the morning. We’d like to play together a lot more, but we know each other and we know how each other plays and it just feels good. Maybe that comes across, I don’t know.

What three cities are you guys in right now?

Kevin is going to grad school in New York and working bar jobs, and Andrew is out in Los Angeles. He’s teaching drums and doing a bunch of different stuff out there, and Mike and I are still in D.C. Mike’s in D.C. proper. I’m out in Virginia.

The first thing that came up when I did a Google search for Beasts of No Nation was the book…

I hadn’t heard about the book. The band is actually inspired by the Fela Kuti record. That came along in a really bad period in my life. It was after Trial by Fire broke up and over the next couple of years I just didn’t know what I was going to do. I was having a really bad writer’s block in terms of writing any kind of music, but I saw that record and I’d always wanted to listen to him, in particular, but those words put together on the album cover was really interesting. And it hit me in a way that inspired me because I kind of feel like that’s the point of view where these songs are coming from. It just kind of rang true as the name of a band and when I heard the music I had to realize, “Oh, there are no rules. Why are you beating yourself up over not exactly writing what you want to? Just let it flow and don’t give yourself any rules.”

I don’t know if you’ve heard it. It’s very freeform. It’s an amazing 25-minute piece of music and it really hit me and it helped me a lot. It inspired me in that way and of course Fela was referring to sort of colonial forces in Africa with that term, but I kind of took it as kind of a declarative statement. We’re evolved animals that don’t subscribe to that kind of authority. It’s kind of where the songs come from and where I write from. It stuck and everybody really liked it. It inspired the band so we kept it.

Similarly, I can hear from your songs that there’s a social conscience in your music. Is that what you’re going for?

It’s mostly me expressing how I’m seeing the world just to keep myself sane. It’s just what I write about. I just scrawl pages and pages of thoughts on subjects, and I’ll sit with it awhile and take different sections and try to work on a theme and work verses out of it. It’s something that I need to say and I’m not trying to preach to anybody. I’m just expressing myself and hoping that people find something to connect with in that. That’s where it’s coming from.

Is that how most of the songs are written?

That’s how the lyrics are written. With the songs, usually the music comes first and then I put the words to the music. The music’s always first. I come up with essentially a version of a song that’s worthy enough of people’s time to bring into a room and say, “Hey, let’s all learn this,” and then we all hash it out and find the final version together, whether it be we change a little bit of the structure or we change dynamics. Everybody kind of writes their own parts, but I’m usually coming up with the roots of all of it. In terms of lyrics also, it’s just not interesting to me to hear “I Want To Hold Your Hand” right now. To me, that kind of song just is not interesting. I feel like when the world’s on fire and everybody’s occupying this world and you don’t kind of remark on it in your own way, to me it just seems like the most urgent thing to talk about.

Is there anything going on that you think is particularly egregious right now?

That’s really hard to pick one thing. We can just be current. I think when a President comes on television and he tells you he’s withdrawing troops and essentially isn’t withdrawing troops — if you listen to the words, what he’s actually meaning to say — it seems to me that he’s promising permanent bases in Afghanistan. That would go along with how the American empire has run for a long time. So, to me, to then say this guy is a force for change in the areas that are most urgent to human need in the world and in this country, now, I think is kind of like having somebody spit in your face. I’m as left as it gets and I participate in electoral politics and I voted for the guy because the alternative seemed to me to be an overt ground war in Iran.

But at the same time, I’m under no illusion that that was going to change anything. I wasn’t celebratory when he got into office. I was like, “Boy, when this guy fails to do all the things he’s saying, it’s going to unleash a wave of cynicism in this country that’s going to be pretty ugly. I don’t want to see all these people who are really happy right now, I don’t want to see that fall on them and that’s a shame. But I also think we’re kind of kidding ourselves if we don’t trust our eyes right now. So, that’s one thing.

To what extent do you participate in electoral politics?

I participate in electoral politics in that I vote. For a long time, any kind of left vote in Virginia, you might as well just piss in a well. It didn’t really matter. It still really doesn’t matter a whole lot. But, at the same time, coming from my perspective, if you’re central complaint is that real people, the real wishes of the American people are never really done, as far as the core issues that the American people really care about, voting is ceremonial. If your complaint is that it really doesn’t change anything, but that you don’t have power, you might as well at least use the channel that you’re given to alter things. That’s electoral and that’s also street protest, direct action. But it’s a pretty urgent time. That’s the only reason that I participate is that I feel like, “What, I can’t even go five minutes down the road and push a button?” I see it as, I might as well.

But that’s a sad thing that that’s how a lot of my friends feel. That’s how a lot of people feel right now and that’s unacceptable. I just don’t think this system is worth anybody’s time anymore. I think until people really realize that it’s a system that’s really attacking them on a daily basis to sustain itself…is that a future? Is it going to get better? Really? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Any last things that you want to get out there?

Not unless you have any way to arrange that I get into a fist fight with Ted Nugent. That’s all I have. If you can work some magic, I’ll do it.