Killing Time


Killing Time guitarist Carl Porcaro is psyched. His hardcore band is set to release 'Three Steps Back' on Feb. 9, the first new collection from the New Yorkers in more than a decade.

"We put a lot of work into it and it's been like a two-year-long process, between writing the stuff and getting in the studio and mastering and mixing," Porcaro told Noisecreep. "We're really excited. It's got a good mix of all the types of styles that we've touched on throughout the years, which is New York hardcore with some punk elements and metal elements. We're ready to go."

Porcaro -- who is joined in the band by vocalist Anthony Comunale, guitarist Rich McLoughlin, bassist Christopher Skowronski and drummer Anthony Drago -- said Killing Time didn't intend to make a diverse album. It just came out that way.

"This is our third album and this is our third decade we've been around," Porcaro explained, while walking to his band's rehearsal space. "We started in 1987. We picked up a lot of influences over the years. It's just what we wrote. It doesn't sound like there's different kinds of songs. It's just those flavors are there. Some of those have the crunch. Some have a metal kind of vibe to them. Some are more punk rock.

"When you think about it, coming out of the New York hardcore scene, those were the elements that made that scene, initially. A lot of the earlier New York hardcore bands were really thrash bands and really punky sounding. What made the sound unique is when they started to do the slow breakdown, the mosh parts. Then a lot of metal people started coming into hardcore in the '80s that formed the music. That's really where me and the guys in Killing Time kind of started -- at least the people who write. Anthony, the singer, has been around in hardcore since it was invented. He was hanging around as a kid in the really early '80s. The rest of us came around in the mid-'80s when, like, metal and hardcore and punk and all the styles were started to flow together."

Porcaro said, frankly, he's unsure why the band hasn't released an album or played frequently in 10 years. He does know that the act "ran out of steam" and the members "had enough of each other for a while." That led to a rather lengthy break. But once Killing Time got back together, they got to work.

"It's so weird," he said. "There are waves with this band. Whenever we get together, things start to get a groove like with playing, [then] we always write new stuff. A lot of people really love our first album the best. But we're not going to be one of those groups that's going to come out there and play all the songs we started off with and be some kind of nostalgia act.

"I guess around 2006, we started playing a bunch of shows, and we were really having a good time with it. The band was sounding good and the band was psyched. [So we said], 'Let's write some stuff.' We went after it. We had all these other things going on in our lives. We kind of pulled it together, and we wrote a really great album in six months. It was cool. We were really focused. It's just a matter of whenever we get together, we want to play new music. We got together and thought it was time for a third record."

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