On March 30, eight years after imploding without so much as a farewell smooch, letlive. returned.
They had, of course, played the 250-capacity Chain Reaction club in Anaheim many times before, as both opening an act and headliners – a rite of passage for any band in the California scene. But this show was different. That night saw the re-emergence of one the world’s most explosive hardcore bands.
Blood, sweat and beers were shed, limbs thrown, bodies projected, hearts filled. Afterwards, iconic frontman Jason Aalon found himself sat, wide-eyed, trying to compute what just happened.
“This time felt like every one of those shows we’ve played here. From the first time, when I was really excited to be there, to the last time, when I felt so confident because people gave a fuck about us. But this show was a portal to understanding what this project meant to people.”
Jason is still pondering the gig three weeks later and 6,500 miles away. It’s 7pm in Auckland and he’s sitting in a dimly-lit room. The house is silent, and so, in the tranquillity of family life on New Zealand’s North Island, is the singer’s mind.
It’s little wonder. As well as being the place where Peter Jackson filmed The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and where billionaires reportedly plan to relocate in the event of the apocalypse, the country’s entire population, encompassing both the North and South Islands, isn’t much more than the city of Los Angeles in the grand scheme of things.
“The environment [in New Zealand] all but forces you to slow down,” he reflects, looking fit and well, with only the touches of silver at his temples belying his fresh-faced appearance. “The way of life here is just so much more accommodating to taking a break. It’s set up for families much more than Los Angeles, my home that I love with all my heart, so being here couldn’t have come at a better time for me.”
As well as enjoying the quiet life, Jason has re-embraced Eastern practices such as dharma, an organising principle in Hinduism that encompasses duty, virtue and morality. It’s not unreasonable, then, to wonder why a man who only last year told Kerrang! he was experiencing “a very real and threatening type of darkness in [his] own mind and my spirit”, having now achieved some semblance of equilibrium, would return to one of the most feral and chaotic bands on the planet – albeit for the farewell tour they never got to have.
Jason smiles. He knows there are questions to answer and a degree of cynicism to dispel. But the start of this new, yet final, chapter was more straightforward than trading on a name or making some money. It was a case of three estranged former bandmates – Jason, plus guitarists Jean Francisco Nascimento and Jeff Sahyoun – reconnecting.
“Jean, Jeff and myself kept saying that it had to happen organically,” explains the singer. “We started talking again more frequently, then got to hang out and kick it. Shortly afterwards we were like, ‘Let’s grab our guitars and DAWs [digital audio workstations] and start just fucking around.’ We quickly thought, ‘This is fun – it’s right, we love working with each other.’ We realised how synergistic it is with us, naturally.”
Although we’re loath to interrupt Jason’s flow while he’s building up a head of steam, we have to ask if this reconvening, organic or otherwise, was motivated by the feeling of there being unfinished business, given how abruptly the band halted operations in 2017.
“In the most respectful way I can say this… no,” Jason laughs. “I live my life as void of regret as I can. With letlive., I had to step out in an effort to save whatever purity there was in that project. The reason I stepped away was so that I didn’t do anything wrong with it, because I was in such a reckless place, and I was putting my idea of escaping ahead of self-exploration. So in that respect I was actually honouring the project more than I was walking away from it.”