Active Bastard: “The Golem” and The Monster Within

Active Bastard is a studio project hailing from Toronto, Ontario. These two lost souls have created their very own blend of ’80s US hardcore, mixed with some heavy skinhead rock and crossover metal influences that even drift into post-punk and psychedelic rock spheres here and there.

With The Golem, Ionas von Zezschwitz and Ian Taylor have managed to produce a record that will pass any test of time. If this shit had been recorded in 1985 on the US West Coast, it would have gone down in hardcore history for sure.

Urban Lurk and No Fuss Tapes have just released their debut album on tape, and you better get your hands on one of those 60 copies before you have to buy this shit for unreasonable amounts of cash on Discogs, because this is already an instant classic, even if it may stay under the radar forever.

Who are you and what is the story behind starting Active Bastard? Could you introduce yourself a bit?

Ian: My name is Ian, and I have been into punk and hardcore since I was about 11, and in punk and hardcore bands on and off since I was 15, though the first one to play a show was an Oi! band I started with some friends when I was about 19. We were terrible. Me and Ionas have been in different bands for years at the same time, though never in a band together prior to Active Bastard, and I was dying to get something going musically, so I asked them if they would be interested in forming a band, and they said no, but maybe a recording project, which was good enough for me! Originally we were going to be an Oi! band, but things changed that way.

Ionas: Hey, Ionas here. Like Ian said, we both played in bands in our hometown of Barrie, Ontario, Canada, dating back to about the turn of the century, haha! My band had sort of a Clash/Bad Religion hybrid style. When we were kids in the same scene, we never really connected, but around 2010-ish we both started our own new bands after being out of the scene for ages. His being the old school hardcore group The Groggies, mine being Sardu, a crusty, apocalyptic, rocking black metal trio. Ian and I started hanging out at the shows and realized that we had a lot of overlap in our punk tastes. I mentioned that I missed playing punk and we sort of discussed a pipe dream that maybe the two of us could start an Oi!/street punk thing. It seemed vague and unlikely at that time.

In 2015, my partner and I left for Toronto for a fresh start somewhere easier to be our identity-questioning selves. 2018 came around and I had put Sardu on hiatus. I was looking for a new music outlet and I thought maybe it was the time to dig Ian up and see what we could do. I had done the rough mixes for the Sardu album and I was interested in trying to challenge myself to produce a record front to back and teach myself how to mix and master and all the rest. Ian was ready like a coiled spring to make music, so that’s how it kicked off.

One of the reasons we were so strongly impressed by The Golem is the way you combine familiar references in a truly refreshing manner. Even though the influence of the eighties is undeniable, you manage to create a kind of timeless cocktail; you’re blending USHC, Oi!, crossover metal, post-punk, and anarcho-punk. Could you tell us about your implicit and explicit influences and sources of inspiration? Musical or non-musical. Everything counts.

Ian: My big sources of inspiration hardcore-wise are Black Flag, Sheer Terror, Poison Idea, Slapshot, and the Germs. Black Flag stripped everything down to its most primal on those first three albums. Straight to the point and straight to the jugular. Sheer Terror, and this carries over to Joe Coffee. Paul Bearer is a lyrical genius, in my opinion the best hardcore has to offer. I struggle with mental problems and that first record I can really relate to in that way. He also, in my opinion, is the best vocalist hardcore has produced, not because he has a huge range but because he constantly is doing new things with his voice. I tried to do that with this project as much as possible. I mean, you do whatever best suits the song, but I tried different things that I might not have with my last band The Groggies, who were more of a straightforward old school hardcore outfit.

Poison Idea; Jerry A. is another brilliant lyricist, one of the best hardcore has produced, and then it’s the same that way with Darby Crash, so as to explain the Germs influence too. They blur the line between being lyricists and poets, just as Paul Bearer does. Slapshot; Jack Kelly has the perfect hardcore voice. He manages to be very expressive even though he has limited range and it’s very hoarse and angry constantly. He, unlike Paul Bearer, rarely tries new things.

The UK Subs, The Gun Club, and the Humpers also have had an impact on me, as all those lyricists are brilliant at what they do. Oi!-wise I like a lot of stuff. No particular band, but brick wall stuff in particular. The Sex Pistols were the first band that got me into punk and they will always have an influence on me, even if it is not obvious.

This is not sarcasm or a joke of any kind; one of the biggest influences on me at this point is Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday’s more downcast stuff. Not the swing stuff, like Frank Sinatra’s torch ballad albums. He described one album as his suicide song. It’s my big goal to merge that with hardcore, even though I am a lousy singer and do not have much of a voice, that is sort of where I am coming from with stuff like “Everything Could Be Wonderful”.

Ionas: I think our creative partnership came together over a shared love of UK Subs. We would listen to them a lot when Ian came down to record. Another Kind of Blues is sonically and atmospherically my favorite punk record, and that was really a jumping-off point for me musically. It’s no mistake that our visuals have a royal blue theme and it all points back to AKoB. A couple tentative album names were Shade of Blue (from “Prowling”) and Emotional Sewage (close to the Subs’ “Emotional Blackmail”).

I’m very restless stylistically (yes, ADHD does have an aesthetic, haha!), which meant I was never likely going to be able to stick to just a street punk format. I took this as an opportunity to indulge every kind of flavor of punk and hardcore that I’d ever wanted to try, which is why there is that range. I was trusting that Ian’s voice and the voice of my guitar together would somehow unify it all. My inspirations included Cro-Mags, The Dead Boys, Sheer Terror, Discipline, 4-Skins, Fields of the Nephilim, Templars, Biohazard—I could go on forever, really.

I’d say my lead guitar style would be something like if you could mash up Cheetah Chrome, Carl Fritscher of The Templars, and Ennio Morricone. I only do leads if they can evoke some kind of emotion or cinematic framing, and I let that instinct run free on these songs. My hope was to create a warm blanket of melodic gothic melancholy around the raw nerve self-destruction of Ian’s lyrics. I’d like to make a point that I am a huge fan of what Ian does, and I don’t think there is a punk lyricist like him. He is one of one, and it was amazing to work with material that was so brutally honest, funny, and original.

When we had 14 songs together, I wanted to cap the record off with something overblown and dramatic, so I built the 19-riff arrangement that became “Everything Could Be Wonderful”. When I sent it to Ian, I cheekily called the demo “The Golem” because I felt I had created a monster. He went ahead and created this incredible spoken word monologue, almost like something out of a depressive urban ’70s movie. When we were putting the finishing touches on the album, Ian suggested we use The Golem as the album title, being more mysterious and ambiguous than the more typically punk-sounding titles we were rolling around.

That decision sent me in the direction of using the Francisco Goya El Coloso painting to match that mythical scale. It also falls in the tradition of a few great bands who have used Goya for album covers, including Citizens Arrest, The Obsessed, and Reverend Bizarre.

Since Active Bastard is a studio project, could you tell us a bit more about the creative process and songwriting? Since Ionas took over the instrumental and Ian the lyrical duties, what did the collaboration look like?

Ian: I write in bits and spurts, but when I do I write a lot and fast, so I had a ton of stuff written, and a lot of the time I would give Ionas stuff to write music for, and then they would write the soundtrack for it. The opposite did occur, though—they would write a song and I would then step in and write the lyrics for it.

Ionas gave me a ton of freedom to come up with the lyrical style on each song, but they were a taskmaster as far as making sure we got the best possible performance for each song. Once in a blue moon I would have an idea for arranging vocals and they would be cool with it if it was a good idea. We were a good team when we were recording.

Ionas: We bounced lyrics and demos back and forth remotely starting in 2018, and Ian would come down to Toronto a couple times a year to record vocals at my apartment. We usually would combine that with going to a classic punk gig. I think over those sessions we went to see Slapshot, GBH, and Forgotten Rebels.

The earliest tunes we came up with, I think, were “Into the Abyss” and “Boring, Bitter and Ugly”. Ian wrote those lyrics for the demos I sent him.

You announced your debut album to be released in 2021. We have 2026 now. What happened? Did COVID cross your plans?

Ian: COVID crossed our paths for sure, as well as other unavoidable things. We kept getting setbacks.

Ionas: I have to be honest in that the length of time it took is entirely on me, and I am grateful for Ian’s patience and support because it was a difficult process for me. The unmixed tunes were all done some time in 2020, I think, but that also coincided with me having a nervous breakdown and hitting a rock bottom moment. At that time, being in my late 30s, I had been living as a closeted trans and queer person my whole life, and I knew if I didn’t choose to radically accept myself at that point I was as good as dead. Thankfully, with a supportive partner, therapy, sobriety, and friends like Ian, I was able to pull myself out of that black hole, but decades of self-denial leaves one with a scarred, haunted soul that needs a lot of time and care to heal.

In all that turmoil, I had little creative energy. I would look with despair at that album’s worth of material that we worked so hard on. For a long time I didn’t believe I had what it took to get the mixes to a place that honoured the love that went into the songs. It was slow going and at times psychically agonizing, but I kept chipping away at it and kept learning until I finally reached sort of an epiphany moment in 2025, where I realized I had finally arrived at the skillset I needed to mix and master the thing to a level I could stand behind.

Some of the best punk records are a snapshot of a moment and made with spontaneity. This one is more like the slow bleeding out of two aging, mentally unwell punks into a shared vessel. This is the last time I’ll make an album in this torturous, painstaking way, but to me it will always represent a time where I fought for my own survival, and for this project to come to life. I learned a lot in making The Golem and working with Ian that has made me a better musician and creator.

Is there a specific subcultural scene you see yourself part of? Any bands to recommend from that scene?

Ian: I suppose I am a non-racist skinhead, but you know what, I am 44 and have mellowed, and a lot of things that used to be important to me just are not any more. As far as bands, if you are into old school hardcore and have not heard them yet, there is a band from Toronto called Random Killing that is as old as the hills, but I do not know how much exposure they have outside of Canada, and they are one of my favorite bands.

Actually, they could be in my influences, particularly the album Stranded. The vocals on that album are insane. If you are into Oi!, there is a defunct band called Alliance from around Ontario that I have high praise for. Good brick wall Oi!

Ionas: Over the decades I’ve participated in a lot of scenes; the Barrie punk scene, the Toronto punk and metal scenes, the international metal punk community. Overall, though, I felt like an outsider in all those spaces, so I guess I belong to a very small subculture, which is my own person.

If I’d mention any band, it’d be Decade out of Hamilton, Ontario: most excellent purveyors of late-era Discharge worship. As for myself, my next project is a solo electro-punk diva act, which will get me back into performance and spontaneity, which I miss terribly. Think Wendy O. Williams meets Peaches or something like that. For Active Bastard, I think that we have at least one more project in us, but who knows when. I feel like our creative partnership still has things to express, so we’ll see.