Original subtitles

(sighs)

- I really wish I'd played my cards differently

when dealing with that label.

I would have honestly, if I had known then what I know now,

I would have never signed to them

for anything

because I lost two really important people in my life

out of paperwork.

Over paperwork.

Yeah.

- [Dave] I played in a band with BJ,

Matt played in a band with BJ,

and Armine played in a separate band.

Armine had a dance studio in Havertown,

he was doing shows.

And I think it was from a second story window it was playing.

I just jokingly said something like,

"Why don't the four of us start a band?"

I was like, "It'll be interesting."

- And I swear, that Dave said

we should start a joke grind core band.

And I was all about it.

(metal music)

♫ Teamwork ♫

- That was the initial concept,

and then a couple weeks after that we got together,

and we just were talking about music

and things that we liked, and then started playing,

and the exact opposite came out

of what the initial idea was.

- [Jesse] I met the other guys in Rosetta through Mike.

We shared a practice space with Mike's band

that he was in before Rosetta, Mikado.

He comes in and tells me he just saw this band

which is basically Rosetta without Mike Armine,

and Mike was just getting in to

bands like Isis and Neurosis.

Just real loud, wall of noise, heavy riffs.

(metal music)

And he wanted to do stuff more like that

and these guys were doing stuff in that genre.

Less than a month later, he was in a band with those guys.

(metal music)

Some bands that play that style of music

have six, seven members. (laughs)

And they're basically three guys playing instruments

and one guy doing electronic stuff.

(metal music)

They had to be a little bit more

economical with their sound.

And figure out how to

have that vast sound they wanted.

(guitar and drums playing)

(clapping)

- [Drew] Me and Armine, we were in bands

that played together, and we struck up a friendship

that revolved around playing shows.

Translation Loss at that point,

I think we put out at least five or six records.

And I felt like they were

the band that we should be working with.

I just was very, very gung ho about it,

we had to work with Rosetta, and it was,

there was no other option,

we just had to work with Rosetta.

- [Christian] Mike just gave us both demos,

and maybe Drew listened to it first,

and was like, "Oh, we gotta do this."

And I remember I was totally in to it,

but I didn't really care for Rosetta a whole lot

when I first, it was kind of more a Drew thing.

- We signed Rosetta.

I'm not sure that I remember

the process of signing them,

it was just the fact that

Christian was on board,

and he believed that I believed

that this band was something special.

- [Jesse] It was just a natural fit.

They were a label that was just getting started,

and they were looking for bands,

and Rosetta was a new band.

They are definitely what I would call

a working-class band in the sense that

they all have jobs.

When they tour, they have to accommodate their daily lives.

- [Mike] They're giving up their time to be

with their families.

- I've been emailing my parents,

and like, they don't email me back.

- [Camera man] yeah, my Mom did that to me.

- Dude, my sister's not...

I'm being really, really good about

emailing everybody at home,

and they're just not emailing me back,

so I don't care, whatever.

- [Voiceover] It's not easy, it's not easy for any band.

- Alright, my people!

- [Male Student] Didn't really think he was

a teacher at all.

Like freshmen year, he just looks like

a normal student, he's not a really big,

he doesn't look too old,

he just kind of resembles a student in a way.

- Look, what you feel that's not my problems

is your opinion.

- [Female Student] He treats us like we're

his intellectual equals as opposed to just teaching us

straight up facts and having us memorize them.

- [Mike] I need you to construct

a letter to your Congressman outlining

where the bill stands, who is poised to vote on it,

and most importantly, what you think about it.

- We've talked about things that I would never talk about

with other teachers, just because

I would be afraid of getting in trouble

or the class would just feel,

the class would probably feel awkward.

- Instead of this, what we could be doing

is funneling more money into education.

- I think Mr. Armine is Batman.

- [Mike] To any susceptible...

I'm a teacher first.

If I wanted to tour nine months of the year,

it could be done.

I don't want to.

The impact that I'm having,

or that I want to have on the world,

is in this building.

Not out on tour.

- [Drew] Translation Loss is a independent record label

co-owned by two guys who just love music.

The goal for Translation Loss, I think,

was never to have a specific genre that we cater to.

It was just put out good music that both of us really liked.

- I work for a manufacturing plant

that manufactures different types of insulation.

I would love to just do Translation Loss full time.

It's a love thing,

not a thing that's gonna help me put

my kids in college and put food on the table

at night and stuff like that.

Absolutely not.

- [Sean] Being in a band is very much like a marriage.

You have to love them in a way that you,

you set things in up in advance,

and you just treat it like a relationship.

It's not just four dudes hanging out.

- [BJ] One of the first tours we did,

it was sort of the test of,

well, will we,

will we survive touring with each other?

- There was a string of about seven shows

that were bad, we got ripped off

by a couple promoters.

- You go and you play a show

and there's probably 35 people there,

and all of those people paid to get in to the show,

but the guy at the door polled the door

and he found out that,

"Oh wait, nobody actually came to see your band,

"they were all here to see the other band

"so I'm not gonna pay you anything."

- There have been moments where

we're faced with that decision,

do we cancel tour now

and drive home,

or do we continue on to the next show

and chance it being as shitty as the last three?

- [Dave] Me and Brett from against the wall,

I think we stayed up late drinking

and then just like,

fell asleep in their van,

which was parked next to a dumpster,

and there were flies all in the van all night

because it was hot,

and we had to leave the windows down.

I don't even remember where the dudes

in my band slept.

Early in the morning, the dudes in Opus Dei

run down and they're like,

"The toilet's overflowing,

"and there's water all over the place."

It was just a bad day,

and the show was terrible.

- [Mike] We were just like, look,

we can go on to the next three shows

and make it home, or we could just

count our losses and drive home.

And three of us counted,

we were like, "We're gonna leave now."

And Dave stayed and hung out.

Three of us just went home.

- It just, when are there mini crises

that form on tour, and then those things

seem to always hit on the same night

as you have an off night, and the club owner

or the promoter is a jerk, and...

you're just like, "Man, I don't even know

"why I bother with this."

- [Mike] We were driving through Canada,

and we were talking about religion

and some troubles that he was having

with faith, and he sort of admitted to me that

he felt closer to God playing his guitar in Rosetta

than he felt at church.

If you can equate playing in Rosetta

to be being at church,

he must really find some sort of self-fulfillment in this.

- In some respects, Rosetta might be

the most selfish thing that I'm involved in.

That being said, maybe there's nothing

that is more pertinent to my spirituality

than Rosetta, because Rosetta

might be where the great bulk

of my identity formation is happening now.

- Music has been a conduit,

where I've tried to,

to be of use to other people

at least as far as maybe bringing

some hope to them,

giving them something that they can listen to

that stirs something in their heart

that they wouldn't feel otherwise,

being like a positive presence in people's lives

even if you haven't ever met them in person.

(birds chirping)

- Drew took a special interest in our band.

He wanted to manage the band.

He was really interjecting

in areas that

were honestly none of his business.

- [Drew] There's this band where I see limitless potential.

And I'm pushing as hard as I can

to help them produce amazing records,

produce awareness.

- [Mike] He thought he was doing the best thing

by giving us a piece of advice.

- This band's amazing, everyone needs

to know about this band, and we need to

get them out there, I need to get them bigger tours,

I need get them more press,

I need to get them everywhere.

I secured amazing press for them,

they had a two page feature in Decibel magazine.

There was a CMJ showcase that Rosetta played

and I brought the magazine in,

and I showed all the guys,

I was like, "Ah, this amazing

"coverage, two page spread for Rosetta!"

And Matt was like bummed.

He was kind of bummed about it

because he was like, "Oh,

"I didn't think we want these photos used."

I mean I think that really helped to

get them to where they are now,

but maybe that wasn't what they wanted.

- My name is Bruce McMurtrie and I am everything.

- Does BJ have hobbies?

(video game shooting)

BJ doesn't have hobbies in the way that

baby boomers would define hobbies.

BJ does not distinguish

between vocation and hobbies.

- Put his hands to his face--

- [Camera man] Oh my God!

- Smelling the gloves.

- As far as I can tell,

there's no difference in the intensity

that BJ puts in to making and editing video

versus playing video games.

BJ lives on the internet.

Like he lives in the coming cyber punk dystopia

in a way that none of us do yet.

And that's the think, is you could,

maybe you could spend time worrying about,

is this affecting BJ negatively?

But I don't think it works that way,

I think that BJ might be affecting

the internet negatively.

- The court jester.

("In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg)

(imitates drums)

Can you hear me through my beard?

They respect the fact that I just

do what I do, and I am who I am, and...

- [Matt] BJ, do you want to sing the top part

or the second part?

(laughs)

- What you're going to hear about today

is nothing short of a miracle.

Life in three dimensions.

(calm music)

- So it's a double disc,

the first disc is all contemporary songs,

and then the second disc is all soundscapes and noise.

You can play them together at the same time.

It was a landmark occasion in release for Translation Loss

because it was the first release Rosetta put out,

but also the first time that Translation Loss

released a record of that magnitude.

- When we put out the Galilean Satellites,

that was when things were at

their best.

- I can't think of anybody else who would have taken

a dumb local band that had played four shows or something,

and say, "Hey, we'll put out your record."

And then when that band plays a half dozen

more shows, and then comes back and says,

"Hey, can we do a double disc that syncs up?"

Who in their right mind would say yes

to something like that?

Even the freedom that was afforded to us

to work with better graphic artists for example,

than we might have been able to otherwise.

I totally dorked out when I was, what,

twenty years old and Aaron Turner's gonna

do the artwork for my band's first album

that's a double disc?

That's just crazy, nobody gets to do that.

That's great!

(mysterious music)

- [Mike] Well I grew up not knowing

who my biological father was.

And that has always been this really weird,

haunting echo in my brain.

Are you who you are

because you were raised by your mother

and her sisters and all your great aunts?

Or are you the way that you are

because it's genetic?

Like are you really your father's son?

Because my mother has always been like,

"Oh man, there's so much about you

"that's like your father.

"So much, you're so much like your father sometimes.

"You're stubborn, you're manipulative,

"you're a sweet talker.

"There's so much about you

"that reminds me of him,

"and you've never met him."

Which was so scary to her.

I think I could've used him

to help me get through that hump.

Because I wrote him in 2006,

and he wrote me an email

that was basically like,

"Hey, I'm glad you're well,

"but some doors are best kept shut

"and we shouldn't open this

"particular relationship."

- Somewhere in between all there,

there's the split with Balboa.

- We wanted to do a split with them

because they had toured with us,

they were really good friends.

Drew was one of the founders of Translation Loss

and he played drums in Balboa,

so there were just so many deep connections

with those guys.

- [Drew] Three songs from Balboa, two songs from Rosetta,

and one collaboration track called Project Mercury,

which was the title of the release as well.

We were sharing a practice space at the time,

so it was easy to do a collaboration,

just get together.

- [Drew] This was a cohesive piece of music

that was created by all parties involved

from start to finish.

- So that was a really good experience

for everybody that was involved with it.

It was something where

at the end of it, it really felt like it reflected

the vision collectively of both bands

rather than just a hodgepodge of different things.

It felt integrated in a way that everybody was really into.

- It really came together

beautifully.

It was cool.

- [Jesse] And then Wake/Lift is just

a fucking monster of an album.

- [Eduardo] There I thought the band

really found their identity.

I do think that their distinction is in

the density of layers that they really operate in.

I thought Rosetta really found a good balance

of both the extreme aggressive part

of what they wanted to do,

and started really separating that

from the more ambient, atmospheric

moments where they were very melodic.

- [Jesse] The music is heavy and oppressive,

and as heavy and oppressive as any band

in that genre of music,

but they're not a dark band.

- That contrast between dark and light

was where I think they really

hit their stride on that record.

- [Jesse] I think it's really easy for a band to be dark.

You're a heavy band, you're a dark band.

Sometimes that goes hand in hand.

The thing with Rosetta that I find engaging,

they're not a dark band.

They have a very positive, uplifting vibe to their music.

(mysterious music)

- [DJ] The friendship waned the more

the business side of things started to upset us.

- If things got strained, it was just because

I wanted the best for them that I could do for them.

- It's a business, it is.

It's something I love doing,

but it's definitely a business.

(drumming)

- So there's BJ, who's the drummer of Rosetta.

(drumming)

- [Jesse] BJ is definitely very key in the way

the songs flow and move and build.

(drumming)

- [Drew] He is an amazing core to that band.

- I think BJ's drumming,

the spastic, almost jazzy,

it always sounds like everything's gonna just,

like they're on the verge of losing it,

and they don't.

And I think it builds attention.

(drumming)

- BJ's a busy drummer,

but he's one of the few that can really hold it down

and stay in the pocket.

- [Voiceover] I think it adds a cool element to the mix.

It gives some competition to Matt's guitar work.

- [Drew] His playing's so intense,

it's probably the most enjoyable thing

that you will see when you go see Rosetta play.

He is hands down my favorite part of Rosetta.

(calm music)

The relationship itself I guess,

wasn't the best that I want it to be,

and that really sucked,

but I think the best thing that came out of it

was me kind of removing myself

from that business aspect.

And so Christian kind of,

he stepped up,

I think he knew how close of friends

me and Armine were,

and just kind of, he kind of created--

Or not...

He didn't create, but he,

he facilitated the business aspect

between Translation Loss and Rosetta,

and that was huge for me,

because it helped me remove myself

from the business aspect with the band,

I just wanted to love,

wanted to just kind of hang out with.

- I think Dave is an incredible musician.

- He learns how to play bass

when he starts in play in the band.

- I think Dave didn't even own a bass at that time.

When we started, he was borrowing a bass from somebody.

(practicing with metronome)

(laughs)

- Just from playing ability,

I'm probably above average and no better than that.

- I don't trust him.

- [Mike] He will never give himself

the credit that he deserves.

That's something that I've learned about him.

He won't do it.

- I'm glad that he's not just like,

"Oh, I'm the best player ever."

But I wish he at least wouldn't go the other way

and be like, "Oh, I'm replaceable."

- I mean there's other aspects that go into a band,

like songs and passion, whether you connect with people,

you can't control that.

Those other things, I think that I'm better at.

(singing)

- I don't think this band would survive

with anything other than Dave on bass.

(electronic music)

- That was a big moment for Rosetta I think,

because it was the first time that Rosetta

actually let someone else record them

from start from finish.

Being that Wake/Lift was more,

it was a much more raw production,

and I felt like it might be good

to go in a more different direction.

I was really into this guy Andrew Schneider

from New York, he produced the unseen record,

which sounds amazing, he did Pelican.

We were under a time crunch during the sessions

for Determinism, and part of that process was just

finding our own limits personally around...

It's such a crush, it's so intense,

it's so relentless.

(Mike singing)

- Let's do it one more time from the top,

remember where,

remember what the pattern is you're doing,

try and see if you can get one

that goes into the heavy part,

and then we'll double it that way.

- Ok.

- At the end of the day being relieved

that you're not also the person

who's sitting behind the board

in the control room.

Being relieved of that responsibility,

and being able to focus on the performances

with somebody's who's there to actually

push you and coach you through it,

and to say when enough is enough,

versus to do say,

"You need to do it again."

It was a pretty intense period of time.

- That's still to this day,

easily my favorite Rosetta record.

(water bubbling)

- That year, Rosetta had

a pretty disastrous summer tour,

lost an enormous amount of money.

My wife and I had closed on a house,

and the day that we moved into the house after the tour,

I found out that my Dad had cancer,

and then two months later I found out

that my Mom had cancer.

That November was my sort of

first Thanksgiving with dealing with

the mortality of my parents.

And in my mind, during that period,

I just had so many other more important things going on

in my life than writing songs

for the next Rosetta album.

(metal music)

- I don't think the relationship

was as good as it could have been,

and it kinda broke my heart a little bit.

- [Mike] The stress of Rosetta

and trying to get what we want

while they try to get what they want

has really kind of broken apart

the bounds of friendship,

and replaced it with a business agreement.

The contracts are stronger now than

the bonds of friendship, and that's a bummer.

- [Mike] This is gonna be so interesting,

getting this out of here.

Straighten it out,

straight,

you're good.

Ah stop!

Stop!

Now you're,

now it's touching.

Go up a little bit and try and straighten it out.

- Hey I got a solution, I'm deadly serious,

everyone out of the van,

we're picking up this fucking car.

(metal music)

- I can't believe that I'm in Russia right now.

This is the final march of capitalism right here.

(metal music)

- Flossing!

I care about oral hygiene.

(metal music)

(calm music)

- We all used to be really, really, really good friends

with the people at Translation Loss, friends.

We used to hang out, tour together,

play shows together, go to shows together.

Drew Juergens and I used to have these

sushi-eating contests, who could eat more.

We don't do that anymore.

(calm music)

We had asked them for a thousand dollars

to help us fix our van, and

they said, "Sure, if you re-sign."

We gotta fix the band, we gotta tour.

No one else is batting down the door.

We certainly don't have money

to put out a record on our own,

so we might as well do this.

We fixed the van and the money never came.

- I do think that it's kind of a bummer

to tell somebody that they're going to get something

and then not give it to them.

- We didn't ask for that van thing in writing.

I swore that we did.

And I remember looking for that

Translation Loss agrees to pay Rosetta

1,000 dollars to help them fix their van.

And then one day I was like,

"Dude, it's not in there."

(calm music)

(clapping)

And we were stuck in this contract.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

- It gradually got better,

and I thought that was amazing,

because I didn't...

Here's a band that was,

this whole relationship was strictly based on love.

It's like, I just love this band.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

- [Mike] I was trying to do what was best for everybody.

I tried to give TL what they wanted

while giving my bandmates what they wanted.

I learned the hard way that that's not possible.

I would hate to work with another label

and have that be the same case.

I'd much rather keep it in house.

(cars driving past)

- Oh, I'm gonna get this thing home

and strip it for everything it's worth.

- I actually haven't spoken to Mike in a little while.

They have a new EP they're working on.

(mellow music)

- When they're done that EP,

we'll put it out, and it'll be awesome.

I guess it's technically the last release

of the contract that we have.

Hopefully in the future we can do more.

- [Christian] We've continuously gone back

and done things for a decade plus.

That means a lot to me.

Kind of almost sneaks up on you,

like holy shit, we've been doing this

with you guys for ten years.

- [Christian] I think they're the real deal, man.

A lot of conviction behind what they're doing,

and that's probably something they just feel

like they have to do at this point,

because they've been doing it for so long,

and that's something to be...

I respect that.

- [Matt] The decision to go independent

was the right decision,

not because Translation Loss was a bad,

evil, inhospitable place for us to be,

so much as that what we learned

while we were on that label

taught us that this is right way to go.

- We are gonna have 100 percent control

over everything we do,

and we're not that big.

You know, bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails do this,

but for us to do it?

I'm pretty excited to see the outcome.

- [DJ] Hello!

- [DJ] We are at Studio G in Brooklyn.

And it's quite nice.

And it's air-conditioned.

I like air-conditioning.

- [Mike] I feel like I'm at NASA headquarters

with all this stuff.

Matt, what would happen if I turn this knob?

- Don't touch anything.

(laughs)

(mellow music)

- I think the sound is gonna be a departure

from what people are used to

in terms of a typical Rosetta record.

- We wanted to have similarities

to stuff we've done before,

but we also want it to be really dirty,

and we want it to be really heavy

and thick and crushing.

(heavy music)

- I hate to be a pain, but you can't give me

any music to follow?

♫ Embrace and share in the moment ♫

(whispering) Sweet wayfarer.

♫ Sing its praise ♫

Oh, listen to this.

♫ Come and rest your woes

♫ Sweet wayfarer ♫

(whispering)

♫ Come rest from burden's embrace ♫

I need to get water.

♫ Quietly weeping

♫ Allow me to express

♫ My ways

♫ A creed of isolation

♫ In silhouettes ♫

(gentle music)

- [Dave] The future of the band

is riding on this record.

This pretty much was the last time

we could all invest personal money into it.

- I'm not a rich man.

- [Mike] Because we've put ten years into this,

if we can't survive sustainably at this point,

sadly, there's not a lot of

reason to keep pumping time and energy

into what is essentially a bona fide hobby

that is extremely expensive.

- If the album does not recoup,

there is no money to tour or make more albums,

and so it's just gonna be a long time

where we don't do anything.

- [Mike] Being in a band stalls your life.

You can't do this other stuff

that life is calling you to do,

because you're touring, you're recording,

you're playing shows, you're busy

sculpting this entity.

- The only thing that's still in my life

that was in my life when Rosetta started

is God and my family.

That's it.

(epic music)

- [Mike] I'm constantly broke because of the band.

I constantly have no money

because I'm always the guy like,

"Oh, you know...

"Ok we need 500 dollars,

"the van needs this repair,

"alright, here it is,

"here's T-shirt money, oh we didn't make it on tour?

"No worries, keep..."

That's fucking crazy.

- [Matt] The unclear outcome has the greatest potential

for generating conflict.

And absolute disaster jeopardizes

the continuing existence of the band,

but does not jeopardize the creative and personal

relationships among members of the band.

The middling outcome is worse

because it jeopardizes the relationships,

because it could throw us into a situation

where we're all fighting with each other

all the time about whether we should keep going.

- I would stick it out.

I would out of pure fucking lunacy

because I love it.

- Good luck trying to do this slot.

(laughing)

- Play a fucking sandal.

- [Band member] Oh is there a piano part ready?

- I just wrote one earlier

and now I have to go practice it

because I can't play it properly yet

for reprise.

- If Rosetta calls it a day

because we can't make money,

I'm gonna take that personally.

Then I've gotta look at myself in the mirror

and figure out, alright, well what's next.

What is it that you're gonna do next

to be able to express how it is that you feel about things?

(piano chords)

- I'm glad we're done drums,

because my muscles are like

ready to fall off of my body.

(sighs)

- When the mastering got done two days before

the album was supposed to be released,

so the sessions started about seven days before the release,

and it took about five days to get it done,

because I think we did three and a half

or four revisions on it,

Tuesday of that week,

I had to take the Megabus to Boston,

pick up the rental van for tour,

turn around and drive back home.

- I just watched the comments roll in,

and people sort of post bummer comments.

- I got home at 2:30 in the morning and released the album,

and I did stay up for about 45 minutes after I posted it

to see how it was doing.

I guess I went to bed at maybe 3:15,

and I got up at 6:30 or 7:00

to find out that PayPal had shut down our account

because too much stuff had come in all at once,

and they thought that we were engaged in fraud.

- When I woke up on the 8th and saw

that we had about

two thirds of our money in a period of 12 hours,

I didn't really know what to think of it.

- Success!

- I was a little bit shocked.

I was expecting the album to do

pretty well in the first couple of days,

not that well.

I wanted the outcome to be clear

in the financial, business side of things.

It was successful enough to let us know

for certain this was the right decision to go this way,

we're going to keep doing what we're doing.

That's good enough for me.

(cheering) - [Mike] Thank you.

(metal music)

- The reviews, there's been some positive ones,

and lots of negative ones as well.

I could really care less either way,

you can't focus on those too much.

- Did we make the album our fans wanted us to make?

No.

So by that measure it was not successful.

- They get to me.

They really do.

They stand out, sadly, more than the people

who are like, "This is the best thing you've ever done."

Or, "This song is perfect."

- Well the record's a success,

but the reason why it's a success is because

it is 100 percent what we wanted to do.

- There's good music and bad music.

And I feel like this is good music.

My emotions about it were very clear.

When we first finished it,

I was proud of it.

What I said to my parents about it was,

"This is the best thing that I've ever been involved in.

"Period."

(train whistling)

- I need you to just tape this to your shirt.

- Sure.

- So we'll hide it right there, actually,

wherever it's comfortable. - Gotcha.

Thank you.

(sighs)

- [Interviewer] We've talked about Translation Loss before,

but let's rehash it if we can.

- Sure.

You know I sat down to dinner with Drew one night

and we had it out,

and it was awesome,

and I really thought that at that moment,

ideally, we'd go back to being super good friends.

And I've reached out to him a couple of times

to see if he wanted to go a few shows,

but he hasn't really been too receptive.

And that sucks,

but I understand why.

(metal music)

(clapping and cheering)