1. What is it about Bridge to Solace and about playing in the band that makes you most inspired?
Wow, this is a pretty good start, yet a difficult one. At first I thought it would be pretty easy to give an explanation of inspiration, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are different sources of inspiration. The most important of these sources and the one that is my main inspiration is self-realization. During our youth we are socialized to suppress individuality. We are literally bombarded to give ourselves up and to be little more than a living product. According to those widely accepted standards, I can easily be labeled as "no one" or "nothing". I am really happy that I had the chance to get involved with a subculture that was built on thoughts and rebellions with causes. And that is what leads us back to self-realization, as I had a pretty much socially aware upbringing, yet it was being a member of the hardcore punk community that helped me bring my individuality out into the forefront of my life. I had to learn to get rid of my demons through the years, I had to learn to accept myself, my situation, my hatred and frustration towards a fake world. At first, this pretty much seemed to be a mission that would be impossible to accomplish, me being a notorious pessimist, but as years passed by, I think I managed to evolve and learn how to transform negative energy into something positive. So yes, that self realization is my number one inspiration: that through our band, through our lyrics and music, through the tension and adrenaline rush we have at shows, I can get rid of my demons and all I can hope is that we as a band show a good example to people that lives can be lived in a different way and that improvements can be made. I was balancing a lot in my mind about how I should see the lyrics of BTS after the demise of Newborn which was a band in which I did address numerous political issues. And the best way for me was to basically strip my soul in front of people in the lyrics and try to start dealing with more personal issues. Face it, people have a hard time building a better world, finding joyful things when simultaneously our societies tell us through different channels, that we are wrong, we are ugly, we are useless. Through the lyrics I write, I hope to portray my own struggle with myself and how I am trying to balance in finding the best way to learn to love and to accept myself. And once you reach that point, when you are able to look in the mirror and honestly tell yourself that “allright, I won’t spit on that face looking at me anymore”, you are able to find other sources of inspiration that can benefit your own mental welfare. Negative feedback on what we've done as a band is now transformed into the inspiration to not give up and keep moving forward. Another main inspiration in being a part of the band is the circle of friends we have, who we are proud of and would die for. Watching those friends and family members, watching their lives full of both triumph and failure, and how they carry on, how they deal with joys and pains and how they give their total support and love is another catalyst for us to keep moving. So these are all the reasons we are still here and doing what we love to do.

2. Tell me about Kingdom of the Dead. Is there any one song on that record that means the most to you?
Musically, Kingdom of the Dead is another step forward for BTS, with tigther songs and better sound than we had on our full-length and yes, going towards a more metallic sound. To spice the EP up, which originally was meant to be a split record with our friends from California, A18, we added an intro, a re-made song off our full-length to the 3 new songs and asked Adam’s ex-schoolmate to sing on some of the songs. She is an extremely talented opera singer and we thought it would be really interesting how that female voice is connecting the songs plus no other hardcore band did try to mix up hardcore/metal music with such a different world as opera singing, and I pretty much think it did work well, as the feedback was pretty good. Lyrically, the record was done when I had my really low times. Out of all songs I pick "Believe" as the song which means the most to me, cause that is a sum of all the homage I pay for what the hardcore punk community gave me. I remember, I felt down by a lot of different personal reasons, and I was again glad, that I still can’t feel lost because I have something in hardcore itself that reaches way beyond everything else this world can offer. I was just glad to have a song about this. That pretty much became my anthem of BTS. Regardless of the ever growing dose of metal in our music, we are still hardcore kids, we are still a hardcore band that tries to tell something important to people, to shake them up a little and offer them a different perspective.

3. Along those lines, tell me about the theme of your last record, the one with the spoken tracks on it. Why include the spoken tracks?
That record was born after the breakup of Newborn. Newborn has been a huge catalyst, and both Adam and me were bummed the band couldn’t continue so we had a lot of anger, frustration and doubt. As Newborn was getting quite well-known, we had a hard time handling how the reactions for the new band are going to be as we really put a lot of hope and effort in it, and you know how people are, they always compare and measure and judge you for no reason. So we definitely had a lot of pride and a strong will in that record, and even if we don’t play half of those songs anymore, I am extremely proud of that, especially lyrically, cause before joining BTS, I had a pretty lengthy uncreative period in Newborn and it was so great to get my life out to people. Just as I mentioned earlier, I had to strip everything in my head and be as concrete as possible so that people could really get a hint of what I’m talking about. I always liked both poetry and more straightforward hardcore lyrics and I tried to combine those two. As Adam just switched to guitar from drums, the songs had more of a simple structure, and we felt they sounded pretty much alike, and that is where we had the idea of putting something extra on the CD. My attitude, after talking a lot about it to our drummer Tom, was "fuck the routine, do something that is ours, and have someone join us and put a little more food for thought on there so that people won’t have to skip the zillionth intro cut’n’pasted from some third rate horror movie, but would be able to get extra poetry, thoughts, that match the themes of the lyrics". I was blown away by the end result. It is purely amazing and something I love to listen to.

4. What were your favorite shows you've ever played? Maybe pick a couple shows, with particularly potent moments in them, and then describe to us what those shows meant to you and why.
There has been quite a couple shows that mean a lot to us. I try to pick some and hope not to leave anything out. First off, Krakow (Poland) in March, 2004. That was the first time we ever made it to Poland and we always knew there has been an amazing scene there, but what we experienced at that festival was beyond all dreams we had. You know, whenever we got to play Hungary its like, BTS is the band where THAT dude sings who is booking shows and talks a lot of shit, and THAT dude plays who is a jerk. There is a lot of jealousy and people basically are against us as a band for what we believe. We are all honest, outspoken people and we have no reason to hold ourselves back when things need to be said and done if we feel so. So we are at this festival in Krakow, and there are a shitloads of people, which means about 700 or so, the place is extremely full, if you would have sneaked in an extra person, it would have exploded. All we got to know from playing shows before that, is that in Hungary people do measure us, and in the wealthy West, people are just way too convenient and hold back to have fun. I turn to my friend Patryk, from this amazing band Sunrise and I’m like, dude, do they know us here at all, haha. And he is like, with this huge smile on his face, that wait until you start the set. And yeah, that was beyond control, people gonig apeshit, singing along word by word, stagediving, headwalking, fingerpointing, I remember during the whole set the whole band kept looking at each other and be like “wow”, “oh my god” and the likes. What made is so special was the atmosphere, that we weren’t THIS and THAT dude there, but a band who is able to create an amazing and friendly atmosphere with hundreds of people, who are taking serious care of each other, who are caring for who you are and not what you are, and are there to have fun, not to beat the shit out of each other in the pit. Some more great shows include our show in Bolzano, Italy, that was September 2004 I think and we were on tour with our friends Nothing Gold Can Stay from Austria. We had a last minute show set up, had a day off, rang the promoters and in a minute we were in a dreamworld, full of great fucking people I hold close ever since. In hardcore, it’s an ever growing issue of older and younger people not getting along, and Bolzano was a great example how kids should work and interact with each other, regardless who is around 30 and is into old fashioned hardcore, and who’s an18-19 year old kid playing metal. Again, that atmosphere was amazing. Tho I don’t really like bigger shows, where interaction is easily getting lost, but we have played a show in Budapest at this festival called Sziget (which is a week long fest with all these different stages and different artists, pretty similar to what you guys have in Seattle called Bumbershoot), and we played this 5000-6000 capacity tent, sponsored by the local Metal Hammer magazine. We were about to play at 4 PM on this past Friday (August 12) and were totally scared to open up that day at the metal stage as we were like, no fucking way that anyone will see us. And they opened up the tent after the soundcheck, and we were suprised to see that there are hundreds of people waiting outside. Finally we started for a crowd of around 2.000 people and you know these festivals are like, a bunch of different people being there, not really getting along at times, especially when a hardcore band plays, but we managed to create some sort of a good and friendly atmosphere, I even climbed off the huge stage and ran around behind this crazy barrier I pretty much hate, but still, it was a lot of fun to play there and the fact a big festival show with this huge stage could be turned into something that has a more human atmosphere, and that was pretty much a victory for us to achieve to show people, that not all these bands playing over here are a bunch of rockstar assholes, but down to earth people, who do care about those who come and see them.

5. Tell us a bit about the state of European hardcore/metal today? Most people know very little about it here in the States.
Well, I really don’t know how and where to start, but I’m not too satisfied with the European scene. Sure, we have great bands, but the good labels are slowly disappearing and there aren’t as many forceful labels out there as a couple years back. We still have all these American bands coming over here to play, who released a 7” on the other side of the ocean, but haven’t done a decent tour in their homecountry yet. That is far from good for the local scenes. How many Euro bands made it over there? Not many. And people still do care if there is USA written behind a band’s name, making it hard for European hardcore bands to tour. Also, this big metallic hardcore wave (what is basically a US version of the Gothenburg death metal sound) did reach Europe, too, and while a couple years ago there were a couple cool summer fests around with so many different styled bands from the hardcore punk scene, we have all these commercial festivals, with mostly big US bands headlining. Most of the bands did sign to bigger metal labels and I’d like if I’d say I’m not proud of a band like Cataract from Switzerland who are close friends of mine since ages and damn, even Bridge To Solace is a type of band that has potential to end up being a part of a bigger label like that, but kids nowadays pay more attention to music and care very less about ideas. People tend to dress up, mosh hard and go home without any real interaction from shows and watching this, I often seem to be losing hope, and therefore it is refreshing to meet up old friends of mine who share a lot of good ideals and are good talking partners besides the usual bullshit that is considered to get you cool scene points. Bandwise, there hasn’t really been any band that had such an impact on me, that I would go nuts for, but I definitely do respect bands like Dead Stop or Justice, both from Belgium, who showed a good example to kids, that DIY hardcore isn’t gone yet, they have a good community, where they put out their records, book their own tours and that is a healthy way to keep hardcore alive. I am a big metal fan myself, too, and like most of these bands who ride this cheap metalcore train, but I’m pretty sure we would need more kids who got socialized on Cro-Mags, Minor Threat, 7 Seconds and not on Unearth, Atreyu and Killswitch Engage. On one hand its of course a great thing, that these bands are reaching out to wide audiences and tons of new and young people have the chance to meet the term "hardcore", but one would need a more in-depth look on ideas and history, than to buy off all the available merchandise. We should let people know the meaning of the word "hardcore punk". And that is what is lacking nowadays in the European scene in my eyes. People are really chasing convenience: they get to see every band, they get to buy every record and they are sort of burned out to reach beyond the surface.

6. You book bands and shows. Tell us all about that. Who do you work with, how do you work with them, and how can bands reach you?
I used to do AntiTouristGuide Booking, but some friends and me joined forces to start a booking company and band community called Budapestrockandroll. You can check out our website at www.bprnr.com, and I can be reached either through zoltan.jakab@bprnr.com or zoli@bridgetosolace.com. Basically, BPRNR is more than a simple hardcore punk DIY thing. We do run a business, that might be a paradox with my hardcore punk ethic, but again, I have seen way too many people fuck things up in the name of DIY, so we try to run a fair business and that is what I currently make some sort of a living from. We have a local roster, which is a community of Budapest bands regardless of style being friends and playing shows together, doing things together and we have the booking part, where we do shows for international acts, place those acts to bigger festivals here, or do club shows. We started booking shows for bigger metal bands, such as Meshuggah or Clawfinger, while I can still just do a hardcore show and lose money on it easily. We have a pretty wide list of on and offline media, TV channels, radio shows, so the promoting is slightly different than it used to be back in the days, where it was more DIY. We have a pretty good team working for us, flyering, helping out with the production, doing art designs. We also started to book tours again, though we are mainly doing 4-7 day long exclusive tours, mainly in Eastern European parts of it. Anyway, if there is any band that might wanna play Budapest, we surely can help, and I can be reached at the above mentioned addresses for any booking requests, while I would love to see more people taking the time and communicating about any ideas that I might have brought up in this interview and in the lyrics on the BTS records!