Echoes of the Past: In Loving Memory Unplugged
Photographed by: Andrew Ferren 2023
20 years ago, six Iowa locals named In Loving Memory defined screamo in just fourteen songs. Involved in Iowa’s DIY music culture, playing basements and selling out Midwest tours, the high school students created one of the first documents of the genre that musicians today are still trying to emulate. Despite the production of only one full length record, In Loving Memory’s status has only grown in the intervening years. As “dust returns to the earth from which it came,” ILM has been resurrected, and from coast-to-coast fans couldn’t be more excited.
Speaking on the album you all put out back in May, I think it sounds a little heavier, maybe darker than your old stuff, but of course a lot of life has been lived since your old music came out. How has this reunion been for you all? Relationally with each other, chemistry wise as bandmates? Is it more of a continuation, like picking up from where you left off, or has it been difficult to get back into the groove of things?
Jen: Just the process of getting back together, like I haven’t seen Tanner in twenty something years, but to me personally with getting back together everybody still has the same personalities, and working together everybody truly contributes to it. Even more so than back in the day.
Brian: Once we decided to do a reunion show, the first step was let’s all get together and see if we can actually play these songs, and see if me and Jen can still fucking scream, but I think everyone was real intentional about what we’ve been doing and the way we’ve been going about the reunion. I think everyone approached it that way, from the get-go. When we all got together I think everyone worked really hard on making sure they had their parts kind of nailed down, like our drummer Spencer hadn’t played drums since we broke up. So when we all got together I think we plugged all our shit in and ran through the album all the way through. We ripped it out the gate, it was pretty sick.
Jen: Yeah, first we chit-chatted for like an hour or so, and then we just got right into it. I don’t know if you felt the same but I was blown away, like we could play tonight. I mean from what I was expecting, to what we could do, there were tears in my eyes.
Brian: Having people in the band who have been playing music all along … everybody kind of knew what they were doing, and getting back together wasn’t a big leap.
Their original album release from 2001, A Discography, is an apparent ode to undaunted juvenile passion. Mirroring that angst in their 2023 album, As Years Pass And Feel Like Seconds, In Loving Memory recounts life into the pages of their past, and reamplifies emo anthems like “I Burned It Down,” or “Moments Like These.” Opening both albums with piercing vocals blaring atop bright guitar with the track “This Is Ours,” and opening line “I can feel them slipping through my fingers,” hailing listeners with shrill screams meant to confound them, it’s apparent In Loving Memory’s adoption of this disrupted discord is what sets them apart from their peers; it’s what has grown them an expansive fanbase during their absence. Listening to the remastered versions of songs that once launched an idea that hardcore could represent the gray area between cataclysmic and alluring, between unbounded and endearing, prompts the question of what it’s been like not screaming for 20 years?
Jen: I feel like the same energy is going into it. It definitely has a different sound but I still feel like it sounds and feels like In Loving Memory, but just a more grown-up version. I mean that first album we recorded we went into the studio, they pushed record, and we ran through the entire album like once through and that’s how we recorded it. Versus this one I feel like we produced it a little more thoughtfully and put a little more time into it.
Brian: I think I have less lyrical stuff to really put out there, because I’ve kind of emotionally processed all of the true emo stuff.
Jen: Actually, Spencer’s friend is a poet, and a lot of our lyrics are inspired by that now. I mean before some of the lyrics would’ve been written about stuff I was going through, so that was kind of a detachment from before. Also we have our group chat that people will send lyrics or stuff into. Sometimes I’ll be out and about and I’ll think of something that’s makes me feel like this, or damn that really hits, and I’ll put it in my mental ‘I’ll use this for lyrics’ sort of bank. So maybe not so much angsty-teenage-emo stuff going on, but everybody still has their shit.
Brian: I think there’s a certain outlet that comes with being in an aggressive, scream-y, hardcore band in general, regardless of if you’re really putting your heart and soul into the lyrical content of it, [there’s] just kind of those emotions that come with letting loose and being on stage again.
Interviewer: The whole subculture too encompasses those emotions, and I’m sure that causes certain feelings to resurface of ‘oh wow I haven’t thought of that or felt that way in years,’ but they were still real emotions you felt at one point. That definitely transfers to the music you all create.
Brian: Yeah, definitely some of the OG lyrics still hit pretty hard too.
What would ultimately transcribe punk rock into the melodic yet aggressive genre that retroactively defined In Loving Memory, screamo, was the vulnerable and emotionally-charged lyricism, backed up with screaming vocals, and chaotic and harsh instrumentals– an overall accidental and impulsive feel to music crafted by (typically) teenagers. Their release, and those from their influences in the 90s would become law, or at least a rough outline to inspire a wave of screamo predecessors and raise an almost cult-like following that persists today.
What has the creative process been like, musically, both in the past, and in the more recent 2023 redux album?
Jen: It usually starts out with our group chat, and Tanner or Jordan will have some riffs they want to run past us, so they'll put that in the chat. That will usually inspire Spencer, and he’ll record some drums and send that in there, you know. Then that will inspire lyrics… Back in the day we’d have been in a garage or a rented practice space, kind of doing it as it comes. It’s kind of the same process from beginning to end, just now we can do it online since we’re all over the country.
Brian: To Jen’s point, it’s a real democratic process creating new songs and working on new stuff. Spencer’s friend Thomas had written a lot of poetry and kind of gave us the green light on utilizing some of his stuff so I think Jen and I kind of literally brought a bunch of that stuff and had a big piece of paper to just write out pieces of it.
Jen: It almost reminds me of our old show flyers, very cut and paste, like ransom note style, taking something that’s very poetic, and making it a little harder.
Brian: It’s just chopping up bits and pieces, and Jen will add some flourishes or lines that she’s got. I’ve never been much of a writer but we’ve always utilized Tanner or Joe writing some lyrics and Spencer and I would literally cut lines out of magazines or books we thought were cool, and piece them together– it looks like lyrics to me.
At the time of In Loving Memory’s inception in 1998, the Iowa scene where the band got their start had roots in predominantly hardcore based noise. Speaking with both vocalists Brian Dingeman and Jen Wiley, seemingly ILM conceded to that crucial chaos of music surrounding them. Bore from Day of Atonement and evolved from the Midwest emotive hardcore scene, we talked getting their start from inspirations like Spirit of Versailles (shoutout Tanner), idols like Foxtails and Saetia, ultimately “shifting [their] focus to what’s turned out to be screamo or emo violence,” and how seeing Love Lost but Not Forgotten prompted the addition of dual vocalist Jen Wiley, because “it makes it extra chaotic and brutal.”
What’s the inspiration either musical or nonmusical for In Loving Memory? Seemingly a lot of bands from the Midwest in the late 90s mentioned being heavily inspired by their local scene because of lack of access to mainstream media, would you say that’s accurate for ILM?
Jen: Back in the day, it really was pulled from so many places– you would meet a cool older kid in the scene and you would try to absorb everything that they had to say. Or listening to music at your friend’s house because you didn’t have that CD or that album, and just try to pick out what you like and go from there. Versus today it’s almost too much. I don’t know that I could pick a genre or find a specific sound that I like because it’s almost overwhelming.
Brian: Yeah, and back in the day I remember you’d see a zine and be like I gotta check that out. Reading liner notes was really big back then too– All right, who’s Converge Thinking. I gotta check them out. You go down the line. I think we drew the most kind of internally from the Midwest scene. And it worked out. We heard Spirit of Versailles when we were young, and we were like: this is the kind of music we want to play. Jordan had more of a hardcore influence whereas Tanner’s more influenced by like 90s emo, so it worked out really well to have that emo influence from Tanner and his really superior songwriting skills mesh with five kids that had been playing in a band that was kind of ripping off Disembodied breakdowns. So, we like heavy hardcore and metal stuff and I think the culmination of that kind of makes In Loving Memory special and stand out.
Having finished their rather abrupt run and released their sat-on songs burnt to a CDr (now available on streaming platforms), In Loving Memory was avowedly gone nearing the end of 2001. Members would fragment off into projects such as: Antacid Trip, Mourning Recluse which would later become Dispensing of False Halos, and Too Pure to Die etc. All encapsulated paths In Loving Memory could have taken, had they stayed together. Leaving the scene as quickly as they entered, with screamo heightening earnestly, ILM directed the genre to their peers. Twenty something years later, In Loving Memory is back with more energy to expel, fueled by the momentum their redux album has brought them.
With starting In Loving Memory around high school age, what would be some advice you have for younger bands trying to break into the scene and get their name out there, or just get started in the scene?
Brian: I think just putting your whole heart into it, not giving a fuck about what anybody thinks or says, and really just going for it, I think that that’s where the most real music comes from. Is ust real young people throwing it out there and not trying to emulate something else.
Jen: We were almost so spoiled back then because we didn’t have the internet and nobody was online talking about our band we were just at shows living in the moment, and doing what we wanted to do and putting out the music we wanted– we didn’t feel like we were being judged really, and I think that’s a hard thing now that we never really had to deal with before. Versus now where people are like ‘oh this sucks,’ but as long as they can tune that out and do what they want to do… like who would have ever thought twenty years ago that we’d be sitting here doing this interview, you know.
With resurgences of 90s screamo bands from Jeromes Dream to Pageninetynine, In Loving Memory follows suit with stacked shows lined up and discussion of possible West Coast tour on their minds.
What can we expect from In Loving Memory in the next year?
Brian: There’s a Usurp Synapse show that’s coming up this year, it should be official by the time this gets published, but yeah. We’re [also] playing Dilly Dally Fest in Philly, and that’s our first show ever outside of Iowa and immediately bordering states. We’re going to play Iowa City on our way out to Indianapolis [for the Usurp Synapse show] with Frail Body and Your Arms Are My Cocoon, along with some local Iowa City stuff. We’re going to play ZBR fest in Chicago in May, and I think that’s all really what’s going down.
Jen: We would love to do everything but Jordan has three businesses between him and his wife, Brian has his restaurants, Joe’s a doctor, there’s farming season, and Spencer’s gone for all his piano tuning stuff.
Tonight, In Loving Memory and fans can scream in unison, knowing the patient wait is over– that they are back.
Brian and Jen, thank you for your time! To catch up on what In Loving Memory is doing now, follow their Instagram, and catch a show date near you!
Written By: Allison Payne (@allieepayne)
Published: 22 November 2023
Cover Image By: @arieljuniper