-1. You come from L.A. Why did you name your band London After Midnight?
SEAN: Actually I come the east coast of the USA. I just live here in LA, until I move. I got the name from the lost 1927 silent film. Being familiar with film since childhood after reading about it in film books, I chose the name because no one knew what it was at the time (early 1990s) and the name was atmospheric, evoking a mood and emotion. To me the name evoked imagery ranging from danger to romance; from a foggy night in London during the blitz in WWII, to simply a name that is open and can interpreted by the listener any way he likes. When I named LAM no one but a handful of film fanatics knew what "London after midnight" (the movie) was, and that was the intent. But just a couple of years later the internet was born and now everyone knows. It's a lost Lon Chaney film that's actually not a horror/vampire film, as often stated. It's about a murderer who is "mind fucked" into confessing to his crime. The police utilize the Lon Cheney "vampire" character, an actor in the story, to fool the murderer into thinking he is surrounded by vampire type creatures, driving him to the point of insanity and eventually confessing to his crime. So, in reality, it's not a horror film. It's about affecting the state of mind in order to achieve some truth. Much like I try to do with music, effect people's minds and emotions- sparking thought or feeling or making them face (sometimes uncomfortable) truths. Or it's just a cool name.
-2. “Fear” was featured on the limited edition soundtrack of SAW 2. What do you think of such violent films and the meanings they convey?
SEAN: I find mankind's everyday reality of war, poverty, cruelty, vanity, and greed to be horrifying enough, so I rarely watch horror films. And they aren't a reflection of real-world horror at all, as perhaps some might argue, because significant parts of the target audiences are largely ignorant of any real-world situations and it's obvious that these films simply try to "out-gore" each other in order to make money, that's the goal. That's all. For the past few years the main types of films I've been interested in are documentaries, many of which are much more horrifying than any fiction horror film - because they are real. For example, watch "Darwin's Nightmare" by Hubert Sauper and try not to be disturbed. That is a true real life horror film.
Escapism, and people pandering to various societal dysfunctions, which make them glamorize gore, seem fairly destructive to me. Anybody who is really "hardcore" or a true "rebel", a rebel who needs to be pushed to the edge as some gore aficionados claim, would embrace reality rather than fake horror movies. Fantasy is just that, fantasy. It's safe and this commercial corporate garbage isn't art, it's made for 12 year olds. Death isn't pretty and I'm certain that if people who take such horror films so seriously or value them so highly were ever to be in a war zone or a nation stricken by famine, for example, and see the real blood, pain, death and misery, their fascination with cheesy gore films would disappear. I understand when people want mindless entertainment occasionally, and that's fine. But excluding everything but mindless entertainment is the problem, and practically all America does this, and America is exporting this mentality. So to allow mindless entertainment to dominate the market-place is a mistake. Also, glamorizing gore is something that's pretty weird. Desensitizing people to horror leads to bigger issues. It's pathetic when you see kids' MySpace pages loaded with images of real dead bodies, thinking its cool. These images from war should outrage people, they shouldn't make people think "wow, cool, look at that guy's brains all over a street in Baghdad".
-3. How do you see the goth scene today? Because of fashion, has gothic become “trendier”?
SEAN: I think "fashion" amounts to conformity. When that's an overly important aspect to someone's life or a "scene", rather than deeper issues or artistic originality and creativity, then your concern is only about vanity, about needing approval from others through having a socially acceptable image (to your scene). Hence, it's about conforming.
I look the way I look because it's just the way I look. I may dye my hair a weird color, but it's not what I'm about at all. I don't really go out of my way to look a certain way or buy clothing. There are other bands who dress far more elaborately than LAM does, and I'll leave that to them.
I have no designers. I either make a shirt myself or raid my closet for bits and pieces before a concert or photoshoot. In general, I think some people place too much importance on image and clothing. And some place too little on substance, honesty, integrity, or in a band's case, the message behind the music and the band's originality. Style is what gets people's attention now rather substance. So image is a very weird thing to me as far as how society pushes it so hard and that is more important to many people than being a decent person. While I have to use image in this industry, and LAM admittedly has a little theater in it, I find the obsession on looks and image very limiting. Having a theatrical image for the purposes of your art is fine- when you are actually offering original and well-done art to the world, but the obsession on image, fashion, status and vanity is disturbing. When artists are valued for their image rather than their music, it's a sad thing. And that is what we have today, especially disturbing since it's happening in subculture scenes like goth. Look who's popular. Are they good? No. Do they have an extreme image? Yes.
I understand fashion can be a form of expression, but you ask the average person to define what they're expressing and they couldn't tell you. Too often people are fans of a pretty face or cool clothing or an obnoxious attitude that projects pure vanity, rather than what that person stands for (or how good of an artist they are, in the case of a band). So, I put very little effort into image in general aside from comparatively minimal stage clothing. And even that used to have a meaning that's lost these days in an image obsessed society- in the past I was presenting something that was considered weird and ugly by the average person, but that had a deeper meaning that you had to look past in order to understand. There are always references to poverty in my image. An anti-image. That mentality is gone these days and people don't even get my message because image has been so corrupted and commercialized and overused. People have become their image. People have gotten more and more shallow. And sadly there is nothing inside some people, all they concentrate on is the outside.
