Censors as written by Justin Conrad

I figure now that we've broken up, its a good time to write an actual biography on our band, Censors. I will likely go into too much detail, then panic, and wrap it up prematurely. Much like other facets in life. Anyway...

Censors started pretty abruptly in 2010. I had purchased a baritone guitar from the wonderful Senator Tom Kelly, planning to use it to write heavy songs for my other projects. Instead, I found myself writing weird down-tune punk riffs and managed to write a handful of songs. I showed them to a few friends and we decided to do something with them. Around this time, my other band (Barnaby Jones) had dissolved (and oddly enough, just re-united?) and decided to really focus on this thing rather than "side project" it. Nick Nizinski from Barnaby came in for drums, bringing with him Moe Shahbazzadeh to play guitar. I had long time pal Dave Friedrich play the bass, and I asked JR to come on board for vocals. While writing the songs for the Demo, I had his voice in mind, and was ecstatic when he agreed to give it a shot.

This is already getting too lengthy and we have barely started. I'm sorry?

We went in and recorded a 4 song demo with Mr. Tom "Birdman" Malinowski (also from Barnaby Jones and BTMI! fame) and before we knew it we released it and played our first show. September 19th 2010 at Ethical in Garden City, with Rvivr, Sister Kisser, Rations, and Crucial Dudes. Our second show was at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn with Bomb The Music Industry! and others. Things were going pretty great right from the start. We were playing fun shows with great friends, and our band felt like something we had been doing for years when it was really months (or even weeks).

I'm not exactly sure what wrench was thrown into what gear, but things suddenly started to slow down. Some of us had quickly started to feel the effects of "getting old," some of our friendships became strained, and we ran into hurdle after hurdle with recording and releasing our first EP, appropriately titled "Disappointment", which eventually came out in July of 2011. It was around a year from the time we became a band. The downside to this is that we were already sick of playing the songs that we hadn't even released yet. Some of those songs (I think "Welcome To Moes!" and "Industrials at 8") we had been playing for nearly our entire time existing as a band. As some of our friendships strained further, morale completely gone, and a sense of stagnation set over us - Nick and Moe quit the band. Actually, their last show with us was our "record release show" (meaning, we finally got the physical records).

And then nothing happened. I personally presumed that Censors was finished, as none of us really talked about it. We looked briefly to see if any drummers and guitarists would be interested, but quickly stopped trying. I'm not entirely sure when, but JR asked me if we were actually going to try continuing this thing. We had two friends who were interested in playing with us, Mike Tamborrino on the drums, and Salvatore Rex on the guitar. I think this was in January of 2012.

I don't think there is much left to say, actually. We learned our old songs with the new line up, but took quite a while to do so. By the time we even returned to play some shows again (after a nearly year long break) we were once again already sick of the songs we were playing. Before Nick and Moe had quit, I wrote a very strange set of songs that would take Censors into a weird direction. After working on these songs as a group, we used two of them, and both appear on our final EP "Severance Package" (I think they are titled "247" and "The Nanny"). Speaking personally, these songs were a breath of fresh air for me, and a welcome departure from some of our prior, simpler material. It felt great to be a part of something that felt different, instead of re-hashing the same ideas ad nauseum. I fear now this writing seems like I am romanticising what in reality was just a bunch of friends making music. I'll try to wrap this up.

In the year and 1/2 with our new line up, we played a lot of shows, went to Virginia twice to play Stay Sweet Fest (both of which were absolutely the high points for our band, and the most fun we had). But it still just wasn't enough. I personally think things were too slow for too long, and in the end none of us really felt a passion for this band. While our friendships were still in tact, and no true commitments to our band anymore, we decided to call it quits rather than run it into the ground.

And that is really the whole story. After we decided to call it quits, we stopped writing and decided to go into the studio, once again with Tom Malinowski, to record a sort of "farewell EP" with the three songs we had finished. We did so in May 2013.

A list of thank-you's would be pretty shitty to write, considering there are so many great people who supported us in so many ways. Anyone who gave a damn in any way - Thank You

tl;dr this is our final swag. #yolo