In Conversation: Joey Chiaramonte of Koyo
Koyo's debut album is a love letter to Long Island hardcore. As they continue to navigate new heights, Joey Chiaramonte is determined to keep their home close to heart.
Very few bands represent for their local scenes the way Koyo represents for Long Island hardcore. It’s a major piece of their identity, a constant topic in conversation, and most unusually, a part of their songs. (Say what you will, but not even Glassjaw have a lyric like, “You know it’s LIHC forever!”) After getting to know Joey Chiaramonte, though, it’s clear that his dedication to community isn’t a schtick, nor does it derive from some sort of misplaced hardcore dogma. Joey is just genuinely grateful—for the people and for the shows—and by singing their significance, he believes he is paying it forward and paving the way for the next generation.
Koyo’s debut album, Would You Miss It?, arrived last week, so I asked Joey to sit down for a more comprehensive conversation about Koyo’s devotion to hardcore heritage, their flirtation with “emo,” and the pitfalls of scaling up—while simultaneously growing your band. I was greeted by a complete lack of pretense and un-jaded point of view that decidedly rings true with Koyo’s inward monitor.
I’ll start with something funny. Someone once described Koyo to me by saying, “Oh, that's the band that’s pop-punk on record but hardcore live.”
JOEY: [Laughs] I think that is an accurate descriptor if there ever was one—for a variety of reasons. Not only in how we operate, but also, speaking personally, there are some times where I’ve had a rough time singing. Like, there are other times when the sound is great and the monitors are blaring and I can hear myself and I can tap into the part of myself that actually knows how to sing from a trained childhood chorus perspective, but a lot of the time, I’m just shouting into the mic and the vibe is more, “Fuck it. It’s hardcore.” If I don’t sound pristine, if I don’t sound like the polished record we produced, it’s not because I can’t. It’s because I care more about letting some other kid try and sing it and just scream maniacally into the mic rather than perform it myself. I want people to connect with it—and that’s the hardcore component. Beyond the fact that it’s just our background and where we come from, that’s the component that is obviously absent in so many other genres of music. We want to keep it a hardcore show as much as we can.
You mentioned vocal training. Does that mean that you already felt like a “singer” by the time you started singing in hardcore bands?
JOEY: The only accolade I had in school was that I did chorus. Myself and Harold [Griffin], who plays guitar in Koyo, we both learned how to sing properly there. I did an AP Choir for two years that would compete, traveling throughout the Northeast and performing. It was something I did because it was the only thing in school that I was psyched on. It was just something involving music.
As far as hardcore bands went, I sang for me and Harold’s first band, but truthfully, I always thought Harold was a better singer than me. We had this childhood band that evolved with us as we got older, reflecting our taste. It started as a pop-punk effort when we were fourteen, and then transitioned into a more metalcore thing, and then eventually into a more proper hardcore effort. After that band broke up when I was eighteen, I didn’t play in a band for another three years, and when I finally did, it was a band called Typecaste where I played bass and did background vocals. So singing in Koyo was a real return to form for me.
I feel like a lot of singers get into this without fully expecting the trappings of being a singer. And by that, I mean two things. First, I think that when that first wave of attention comes, a lot of singers I know start to feel that people are now also expecting them to be a “writer”—meaning, people expect you to level up at some point in terms of how you say what you’re saying. And then secondly, there’s also this social obligation where singers often become the mayor of your band. I’m curious if you’re feeling those things right now or if that’s created any insecurity.
JOEY: That’s a really great question. I think from the creative side—that, to me, is the joy of doing this. The writing component, the necessity to write about something of substance. That is more or less why I do this. That’s the type of shit that makes me love it dearly.
I mentioned earlier that I think Harold is a better singer than me, but he’s also an excellent lyricist and a very intelligent guy. I could so easily pass the wheel over to him and let him write, and I could just sing it and coast. Maybe it’s the hardcore kid in me, but I feel a duty to write openly and honestly about my experiences—to present something of substance, to not write about nothing, to not let someone else write for me. I’d rather write nothing than half-ass it.
As for the social component, I was talking to a friend last night about how I’ve never been the type who likes to make things about themselves. Obviously, I sing for a band. I don’t shy away from people’s positive sentiments—of course, I’m not outright straying away from stuff like that. But I don’t get off to the idea of people putting me on some type of pedestal that I don’t think [I deserve]. I’ve spent so much of my life participating in a music scene where everything is about being eye-level. But it’s been a little complicated for me because our band bleeds over into pop-punk and emo and all these spaces where singers and people in bands are these celebrated figures. Obviously, I will never be rude to someone who is psyched on the music we’re making; that is a beautiful and appreciated thing. But I do struggle with how to navigate that stuff because it’s not my instinct. My instinct is not to celebrate myself or what our band is doing in that way.
OK, but you were also the band that signed with Triple B and then rolled out a marketing plan that was literally, “Emo is back” [laughs]. Do you realize how bad that could have backfired?
JOEY: Oh, 100 percent. But that’s another Koyo trope, in that we like to do things intentionally that we know might rub a little. Not in a full-blown contrarian way or anything like that, but we went into that knowing that we were putting out a record on a hardcore label as a collective of hardcore kids and we’re going to put a banner out that says, “Emo’s back,” with a bloody razor blade on it. The amount of discussions we had where we were like, “Yo, this might be a bad idea…” [laughs]. It was absolutely discussed as a calculated risk that thankfully paid off. The amount of psyched response versus outraged response was a massive margin, though, which I’m thankful for.
At what point did you feel like hardcore kids were your people?
JOEY: Truthfully, if I look back on it, I probably had a good two years of just going to shows with my core high school friend group and hardly knowing anybody else, but going no matter what. People would interact with me in small gestures. I wasn’t a ghost in the room, but I didn’t know anybody. So when I started to inadvertently make a few friends outside of my core group and gain some type of, for lack of a better word, acceptance… It’s weird to say, because it sounds so negative, but that’s what made me think, “Damn, this really is it.” Because in so many ways, the culture is about getting back what you give. And what I gave was true, genuine, passionate attendance that had no regard for the social component. It was like, I don’t care if anybody knows me, likes me, wants to be my friend. I just want to be here and see these bands that I’ve become obsessed with. I gave passionate, unwavering attendance, and I gained the acceptance of my peers, and then made many standing friendships that have spanned a decade long now.
It’s funny you say that because I did this interview with Ed from Friendly Fires, and I feel like his hesitancy to call himself “a hardcore kid” was rooted in the fact that he felt like all he ever did was go to shows and he didn’t think that was enough. He buys records, he buys t-shirts, he goes to the shows. So, it’s a lot like what you’re saying, which is that your contribution was that attendance and support and just being there.
JOEY: Precisely, yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s all the next levels that people always refer to—the start a zine, start a band, book a show. I did all that, too, but on a baseline level, the only real requirement to genuinely participate with this culture is to just be there and literally get through the door. Be a paid head in the room that is there to experience the music in whatever way is meaningful to you. It doesn’t always have to be through moshing or even singing along. Those are definitely exciting things that make it so unique and attractive to many, myself included, but just being there every week, unwavering, that in itself is participation in my mind.
Absolutely. And also, the scene couldn’t possibly sustain it if every single person in that room did a zine, booked a show, started a band. It’s just not feasible. We need people to just go to the shows [laughs].
JOEY: Not everybody needs to kick it into overdrive. Respect to the idea and the ethos of that, but it’s not sustainable at all. Don’t get me wrong. I know we’re in perhaps the most popular era of hardcore music ever in the way of attendance or pop culture awareness, but economically, it can’t keep up [laughs].
One of the reasons I bring this up is because both in conversations you’ve had with other people, and also with the song “Anthem,” it feels like you’ve been trying to speak to the next generation. It feels like there’s this sense of continuity that you are acknowledging, and the fact that you’d even write a song like that says something to me about the place that community holds in your psyche.
JOEY: For sure. I think about the prior generations, the prior bands, the prior figures that participated in this, and how they turned into other bands or how they took what they learned in hardcore and applied it to a real world scenario, whether it be starting a business or engaging with society in a particular way.
What I’m ultimately saying is that in itself has been a fascination of mine—the eternal turnover, the eternal existence of community, and even the feeling that you left any type of mark on that community is substantial. And that feeling for me, whether it be with Koyo or when I was just booking small shows or road-dogging with bands, those things will all be looked at retrospectively to someone, somewhere in 20 years. It will be looked at like a mark in the history books, whether big or small. And that is such a beautiful thing to me, that we all just do what we do off of instinct and a feeling of necessity, and then one day it stops, and another person takes our place doing the same allotment of things. That’s the inspiring part to me: We all go out and do really cool, unique, interesting, and perhaps life-altering stuff, and when we call it a day for one reason or another—when we recede from that activity a little bit—there’s always a young person who just takes our place immediately.
That’s sort of what struck me about this song. Usually we read lyrics about how we’re gonna be young forever, but this song is literally just like, “We’re gonna get old and die” [laughs].
JOEY: Yeah, literally. I am happy to pass the reins off to whoever is ready to ride. That’s the reality of this stuff. Don’t get me wrong, there is a beauty to being down for life, and I hope dearly that I am just as psyched in ten or twenty years to engage with the subculture that’s given me so much in my life and inspired me so much forever. But that doesn’t mean that I need to be in the trenches forever—not because I wouldn’t want to be, but because it’s perhaps better suited in a young person’s hands. Young people dictate what the scene is, what bands are happening, what’s cool, what’s not. It just so happens that my band at this time is part of a moment. But that moment will pass, as all of them do.
There was something you said in another interview that I thought was interesting. It feels sort of related to “Message Like a Bomb,” but I don’t think you were talking about that. You said, “Hardcore can be for anyone, but it’s not for everyone. The more eyes on the subculture, the more above ground it gets, I think there are drawbacks that come with that.” I wanted to know what you were thinking about when you spoke about drawbacks.
JOEY: I’m not a particularly gatekeepy guy. That’s not my M.O., you know? The broader idea of that sentiment is that anyone who feels like they should be able to take a crack at it should be able to. It should be an open door policy for any and all that feel attraction to it. And I think people naturally work out whether or not they want to stay in a fairly short period of time.
That can be a drawback, or at least a concern, in the way of this music being underground music. This music is attractive and impactful to so many people because it’s so vastly different from anything you’ve experienced before, and even at the largest scale—the biggest room or the craziest reunion—it’s still a modest effort, comparatively speaking, to most [mainstream events]. It raises concerns for complications.
But I think there have been a lot of things that have happened in recent times that should quell those fears a little bit, or prove them wrong. Like, for instance, an event like Sound and Fury being what it is in the modern era—where, in scope and scale, it’s almost this giant outdoor rock fest, but it’s still hardcore. It’s a hardcore festival. It’s one of the staple hardcore festivals of the last 15 or 16 years or whatever it may be. And it works. Does the scale have an adverse effect on the experience? My answer is no, it doesn’t. But [the bigger it gets], there’s more of an interjection of agents and managers and perhaps even corporate entities in this space. And I’m not even outright rejecting those things; I can’t change that Live Nation owns like 80 percent of the world’s venues. But it poses the question: Someone from the outside world, who doesn’t have the perspective or even respect for where we come from, will they come in and muddy this? Will they come in and mistreat bands? Will they come in and not get it and potentially poison the well here? It’s a real question.
It’s hard, because scale has also allowed me to do the things I love to do for so long. I mean, I remember when Texas is the Reason first started drawing “real” crowds. There was never a point when I looked at the audience and thought, “Wow, I wish there were less people here” [laughs]. So I understand the rub, but there was a certain point where I had to tell myself: You don’t control this. Lots of bands work hard, lots of bands tour all year, lots of bands have marketing campaigns. Not every band gets the same result. You get what you get and you just try to do your best in that scenario that you’ve been given.
JOEY: For sure. I have never thought, “I wish there were less people here”—that has never once crossed my mind [laughs]. I do want it to go as far as it can because I love it dearly, and I love my friends dearly, and I want it to be whatever the people want it to be in the sense that I am not putting a cap on it. I’m not gatekeeping it. In whatever ways that people meaningfully interact with it, at whatever scale, that’s good.
Maybe it’s because I feel like we’ve been having some version of this conversation every decade since 1986, but I’ve sort of put my faith in the idea that hardcore is more of a way of being than it is a replicable music. And as long as you are conscious of who you are and your way of being, then scale can’t touch it.
JOEY: I mean, despite all that we’ve been discussing, I feel the same way in that regard. I think there are examples of people that carry that unwavering way of being, that truly authentic and genuine way of being, and take it with them to places that were otherwise inconceivable. And that’s an inspiring thing to me. That’s reassuring. That makes me feel like it’s gonna be all right, you know? And perhaps through being that way, you set a positive example for all these people that walked in the door. Things like that are the stuff I try to carry with me as we traverse this upward crawl we’ve been doing.
One I find interesting is that Koyo carries this deep sense of community with it, but on the new album, the lyrics also really seem to express a sense of disconnection—or at least distance—as a recurring theme.
JOEY: For sure. I think so much of the record is kind of an A to B of a physical distance that ultimately led to psychological distance. I love touring. I’ve been doing it my entire adult life, and I’ve always been fascinated with it, if not obsessed with it, to the point where my early efforts with it were working a job and then taking off and spending all the money you make at the job just to go do the tour and hang out for three weeks. I wasn't getting paid to do it. It was just because I felt a magnetic pull to it that was undeniable. I did years of nonstop touring, and then Covid happened, and then I snapped back into nonstop touring and had to reset the dial because we, as a band had to take our lumps, as all bands should, and tour for no money and sleep on floors—but now at an older age than we once were, doing it at 24 instead of 18. I don’t think I realized initially how much that was adversely affecting me because my instinct was to just tour, tour, tour. That’s what I love. But I didn’t realize how that was pulling at my mental health and my relationships.
So much of my life, I’ve always been a very available person to my friends, my family. I’ve kind of always had this playmaker behavior, for better or worse. If there’s problems among my friends, I always want to be the guy to make it right, and if someone needs to be taken care of, I’ll be the guy who will do it. I’ll look out for whoever is going through a hard time or needs someone to just be their guy. That’s how I ended up tour managing for Vein; I was just looking out for my friends chronically [laughs]. But amidst all that concern for others, a psychological distance formed—that lack of care for myself kind of formed. A lot of the earlier Koyo stuff was this retrospective post-going-to-therapy-as-a-young-man experience, writing about my improved headspace and the things that initially damaged it. But I wasn’t realizing that, in real time, my headspace was once again declining.
Hearing you describe yourself like that—as the person who always wants to show up for people—from a lyrical standpoint, that takes me to “I Might Not.” Which is very much the sound of someone feels like they’re always showing up for somebody, but maybe doesn’t always feel like they’re being shown up for.
JOEY: 100 percent. That and “Crushed” are the big particular tracks that touch on that on the record. Those are the ones where I dive in the most into those particular feelings.
I’m very much one of those people who tries to always be there for my friends. And at the same time I struggle with asking, Are you expecting something in return? So the question is, can you be a person who does backflips for people and then is really like, “Hey, it’s cool, that’s where the joy is for me.”
JOEY: I think that in so much of my life that was very much the case. For so much of it, there was no expectation. It was just good nature and instinct. You can give me nothing back aside from the positive friendship we have or the love you bring to my life. That’s good enough. Things don’t always need to be transactional. But even if it’s just a human nature thing, I suppose there is some degree of expectation in anything, whether you realize it or not. There was this innate expectation that even if people weren’t doing backflips for me, that at the very least maybe I could fuck up and we can shake it off. I’ve only done so much good and right, and only had so much advocacy for people I love in my life, that it’s like, my thought is that when I fuck up, you know, maybe I could skate by here and we can shake it off. But that’s not always the case, and obviously, I’ve learned in my adult life that I have to live with decisions and I can’t hold people in some type of good karma debt. That’s not a healthy expectation either. So that’s definitely something I’ve grappled with on this record.
I was talking to somebody yesterday about this Zen Buddhist teaching about withholding judgment as to whether events in your life are “good” or “bad,” or even just the idea of labeling things like that. There's a saying about it: You can’t say something is good or bad because you don’t know yet [laughs]. So, for example, there’s a story that’s almost folklore at this point about how you released your first EP the week the world shut down, and most people would be like, “Oh. That’s bad. Fuck.” But it worked out for you…
JOEY: …And it ended up actually being great. We hit a finite lick of time where people thought live music would be coming back soon after, and more people were listening with the expectation that they would see it.
So I guess my question for you—and this isn’t necessarily just a band question, it could be a personal one as well—but can you think of another setback or disappointment that you maybe now look upon almost fondly that, at one point, you thought was bad?
JOEY: There’s a variety of answers to that. There are even things that are presumably sad or traumatic that have a positive parlay. Like, for instance, it’s very retrospective now so I suppose I can talk about it a little more openly, but I had a very bad relationship about seven years ago now that did a lot of damage to me. I hold no negative harboring of that at this point, it’s long water under the bridge, but through being in that relationship and traveling for that relationship, I became really close with a lot of the people I’m really tight with now. Like, I probably wouldn’t have toured with Vein like I did if I wasn’t trucking out of state all the time to see somebody. And the band I was in, Typecaste… I used to crash at the singer’s house all the time and we became very close. So even though that relationship had a fiery, destructive ending, it created so much good in my life and has ultimately had a ripple effect to now.
Also, I don’t know if you’re aware—it’s not like this big secret or something—but I’m a Type 1 diabetic and I got that diagnosis when I was fifteen. So I had already lived fifteen years of my life like anybody else, and then I got very sick. I went to the hospital and they said, “Hey. Your pancreas doesn’t work anymore. You’re going to take shots and need insulin to survive and that’s just, you know, a part of your life now.” That has given me plenty of adversity to this day, especially being an adult navigating the world of insurance. It bears a lot of complications. But it was also a very quick reminder of how loved and supported I was, even at that young age. A lot of my friends and family were very much there for me and proved time and time again that I have a real support system in my life.
At the same time, I think that scenario depressed me deeply. It was very difficult to navigate that at a young age because I went from eating whatever I wanted and doing whatever I wanted socially to needing to take shots in my leg and prick my fingers every time I wanted to eat. And sometimes I’m feeling sick and sometimes I’m feeling fine. But that depression created an appreciation for life and a desire to do what feels good because life is so finite and fleeting. It put me very much in touch with a sense of mortality. And I think that ripple affects the entire way I’ve lived my life up to this point. Like, sure, I’ve made some unconventional choices, but I’m not going to be here forever. I’d rather do what feels magnetic to me, what feels right even if it’s unconventional, because at a very young age, my life was jeopardized and then complicated forever.
It’s not the same thing, but hearing you talk about being fifteen and being diagnosed, I thought about being fifteen and in the closet, and that moment when you realize you’re queer—which certainly, at the time, felt “bad.” But in retrospect, that experience has made me a more empathetic person and I would never give that back. I mean, I still have my own problems and I’m still as fucked up as the next guy, but I appreciate the fact that this negative experience gave me a gift to be able to step into other people’s experiences a little bit deeper than I think I would have been able to without it.
JOEY: For sure. And I can genuinely relate in that sense. I think I was a naturally empathetic person growing up as a kid. I definitely still had that problem-solver, playmaker, let-me-be-an-ear, lean-on-me nature. But that was only scaled with that trauma of being sick and with that awareness of mortality and all those prior sentiments. It definitely created, or even just furthered this ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and just listen for no other reason than you just wanna be there and you know that shit is fucked up in life.
Right. And a chronic illness, ultimately, it’s about suffering. So it puts you in a unique position to understand suffering, which is the nature of the human condition [laughs].
JOEY: Unfortunately so.
I’ll ask one more thing. You’ve previously said that there’s a whole world that doesn’t give a fuck about what we’re doing in hardcore, right? What’s your relationship to that world?
JOEY: For a very long time, perhaps until even just very recently, it was a rejection of that world. I think because I was ill as a teenager, and I didn’t necessarily understand how a conventional life’s path worked, I felt frustrated—and it produced a frustrated rejection of those things, you know? I felt like I had been slighted in some type of way out of a “normal” or “successful” life. I suppose there were ways I could have changed that myself, but at the time, I almost viewed it like a club that didn’t want me in. I just lived a whole young adult life rejecting all that shit and feeling like the world had this vendetta against me and I could only succeed by getting over through unconventional means like being in a band or tour managing or booking shows or whatever.
It’s hard to pinpoint when this happened, but I’ve kind of grown to accept that my path was just my path, for better or worse. The chips kind of fell how they did in that way, and what I’m doing right now is special and appreciated and I wish to do it for as long as I can—if not forever. At the same time, I’ve come to accept that, hey, this could totally end one day, as all things typically do. And while I once feared and rejected this idea that I might have to go work at a conventional office job, nine-to-five—I was like, “Lord knows I will not participate with something that mundane when life is so short!” [laughs]—well, I just don’t feel that way anymore. Don’t get me wrong: I love doing a band and I wish to do the band as indefinitely as I can, and I would much prefer to do that over working in an office, but I don’t have this outright rejection of that world. That passed through my system.
What might that kind of alternate future look like?
JOEY: I don’t think of an alternate future. I’m just open to a different future where I once was not. Early on I used to say that if Koyo ended, I would just tour more. I’ll tour manage or do merch; I’ll just go back and do more of that. But I don’t know if I would at this point. I love touring, and maybe I could do it in a recreational way, but I would do it because I love that time with friends and not because it was a career move. My instinct right now would be more to slow down than to just slam my foot on the gas, and honestly, that’s a change for me.
Anti-Matter is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading this, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and backing independent, ad-free hardcore media. Thank you, friends.
Brilliant stuff. Cheers.