Disconnection Notice (Maverick)

Well-hung pop-punk kamikazes Goldfinger reveal an eclectic side in their return to the sonic wars with their new album Disconnection Notice.

But Goldfinger isn’t returning from anywhere.

Yes, they enjoyed their biggest hit, “Here In Your Bedroom,” right off the bat on their gold self-titled debut. Since then the band has toured incessantly becoming a live underground legend. “We pride ourselves on our live show,” Goldfinger main man John Feldmann states. “We did 382 shows in our first year, which is some sort of world record. We earned our insane following.”

How insane?

Actually, Goldfinger is returning from somewhere: England, where they performed before tens of thousands at the Reading Music Festival. “Reading was one of the best show we ever played. Out of the 80,000 people who were watching us, at least 70% were singing every word,” Feldmann says. “I don’t usually feel like a rock star, but I felt like it on that day.”

The typical Goldfinger concert: chaos personified.

Feldmann, along with bassist Kelly LeMieux, guitarist Brian Arthur and drummer Darrin Pfeiffer, have developed a well-earned rep for their unforgettable onstage antics, such as lighting themselves on fire and inviting half the audience on stage to sing along.

Live, they may be as incredibly wild as ever, but on record Disconnection Notice brilliantly illustrates Goldfinger’s creative growth, honed from all those years on the road since they first formed in 1995. “All I ever listened to back then was Bad Religion,” Feldmann recalls. “Their singer, Greg Graffin, has always been my favorite punk rock vocalist. So when we first recorded, we were so derivative of that, our first album really wasn’t 100% us. Before the second album, we had toured with all these ska bands (Reel Big Fish, No Doubt, The Skeletones), which hugely influenced my songwriting for that record. On the third album, we started to finally figure out our sound, and by now we've figured it out even more.”

For Disconnection Notice, it was like, “Fuck it,

…we want to make a record where whatever we want to record, we record.

So we have a song like ‘Damaged,’ which has with mandolins, this crazy Indian sampled vocal, and no distorted guitars at all....I felt like we really pushed the envelope on this record."

Even the first track, “My Everything,” is a startling, refreshing change of pace. “I see what the kids are saying about this song on our Web site,” he says. “It’s very uptempo, and because I worked with Story of the Year, they hear that song and think I’m going emo. It’s easy to assume that just because I produced Story of the Year and The Used, those bands influenced my work with Goldfinger, but I don’t think so. The kids may think that after hearing how hard the new single is, but they’re judging after hearing just one song, while the entire record is so eclectic. ‘My Everything’ is the heaviest song on the record, but there’s nothing else on the album like it.

“I’ve always tried to push myself…

as a songwriter as far as not being genre specific,’ Feldmann continues. “Everyone used to classify us as ska-punk, but my three favorite artists are Ani DiFranco, Slipknot and The Beatles. So, as a songwriter, where do I fall in the middle of that? I don’t want to be too much like anyone. I agree that this record probably is our most mature effort, but that’s sounds so cheesy. I’ve just been so music industry-saturated in the last year of my life.”

How saturated? Besides touring and recording with Goldfinger...besides producing Mest, The Used and Story of the Year…Feldmann also wrote songs with Good Charlotte. When you’re producing, mixing, touring and writing with other bands, that’s your whole life,” he says. “I do keep current to see what kids are watching and buying, and I still turn on the TV and see what's popular. Yet I don’t want all that to influence how I work with Goldfinger or anyone else. When I watch TV, I see so many new bands getting interviewed and some are so boring. What do I think of all this?

Fuck it!

Where’s Keith Moon? Where’s the excitement in rock and roll? What happened? What we’re trying to do here is make a mature record, but I'm not saying that our band will ever stop getting rad...like pissing in the Sex Pistols’ dressing room or flipping Conan O’Brien over his head. Rock music is about

…stirring the pot. Our band is what I think rock and roll should be.”

(Truth in advertising: Goldfinger actually did all of the things described above.)
“Obviously my whole life has turned around 180 degrees since we first started. I was eating meat and I didn’t care about outside issues. Now that I’m older,

I realize what it is for me to be a human being…

With animal liberation, I feel I have a purpose in life. I do protests to rescue animals, and when I hear a kid say, ‘I’m now a vegetarian because of you,’ and I know that kid’s decision will save the lives of 250 animals, it gives me a higher purpose.”

Which brings up the reason why Feldmann titled the new album Disconnection Notice: “For me it’s about being really disconnected from society. My diet and my beliefs have, in a sense, disconnected me from the majority of society. It’s also about not fitting in, which is something I’ve always felt. For years I’ve been told that I’d never succeed in music, that it was too competitive and I’m not good enough.”

Truth being Disconnected: Goldfinger has always been far more than “good enough.”