In Conversation: Michael Hanser of Phantom Bay
One of the brightest lights in hardcore's future, Phantom Bay's origin story is thoroughly modern—born under lockdown and emerging online. But Michael Hanser is ready to meet you now.
When I first started putting together a list of my three favorite hardcore songs of 2023 for a year-end review I was planning with Jeremy Bolm of Touché Amoré, the only question I really had was which Phantom Bay song would take the number-one slot. (“Airtight” won out, but “Collective Decline” was so close.) There are any number of reasons why this was surprising to me: Phantom Bay was a band that I’d only discovered in July from random playlist-surfing, I’d not yet heard of the label that released their debut album and last year’s incredible Underground EP, and most surprising to everyone I’ve played them for since—including my German friends—they were from Germany. And yet, in the end, they earned that position. Musically, lyrically, and even aesthetically, Phantom Bay almost effortlessly tap into everything I love about hardcore.
In many ways, this interview was somewhat of a personal excursion—a reconnaissance mission to find out more about a band that I listened to so much, but still knew very little about. Singer/guitarist Michael Hanser and I met for lunch in Brooklyn last November, shortly after the band finished their first U.S. tour, and it was at that point that I realized I wanted to open this space for them in Anti-Matter. We reconvened for a more detailed conversation just before Christmas.
My first direct exposure to European hardcore was in 1993, when I went to Germany for the first time with Shelter—pre-internet, freshly post-Berlin wall. It felt like a limited access situation, where kids found out about things through fanzines, tape trading through the mail, or that occasional kid who goes to New York and comes back with a bunch of new shit [laughs]. American hardcore felt somewhat fetishized there, and especially New York hardcore, so it took a little while for those European hardcore bands to start forging a more singular identity. You’re probably more of a millennial hardcore kid, so I was curious: How would you compare what I first encountered to the hardcore scene you discovered?
MICHAEL: When I discovered punk and hardcore, the bands I listened to were almost exclusively from America. There were some bands from the UK here and there, but American hardcore was what I listened to, and that was what me and my friends looked up to. When we started talking about forming bands, and thinking about what we would sound like, we talked about American bands. At the time that I got into the whole scene, there weren’t really any European bands that I considered role models in terms of sound. So it was still like what you described, except it wasn’t just the New York scene. It was also the hardcore that came out of the Bay Area, and also Boston hardcore.
What was going on in your life at this point that hardcore even appealed to you?
MICHAEL: I got into the scene around 2007 or 2008. I grew up an hour south of Vienna [in Austria], where we didn’t have anything like a countercultural music scene. There wasn’t really anything. I discovered this music purely through the internet. I didn’t have anyone showing me. I got into alternative rock first, and then I used the internet as my way to discover other bands from there. I would find out when these bands would play shows in Vienna and I would go up there, and I slowly made my way into the local punk and hardcore scene. That’s where I discovered that this was something that you could do yourself and play, too.
Living outside of the city, in almost rural Austria, I felt disconnected from everything that was going on in the culture there. There weren’t a lot of things you could be out there. You would grow up, go to school, go to college, and then you might be interested in hiking, maybe skiing, or maybe doing sports. That was about it. It was very black and white. The only real thing that I connected with from a very early age was music, so I really wanted to be somewhere that there were other people who shared that love for music.
I think that especially when you’re young, and you come into the scene with the idea that “I can do this too,” a lot of what that looks like is dependent on seeing other people like you doing it. So obviously, I grew up in New York City. There were a lot of people “like me” doing it, and so everything felt in my reach. But growing up in Austria, was there an Austrian musical identity that felt within your reach?
MICHAEL: There’s an Austrian musical identity, but I did not connect to that at all. It’s basically European folk music. You might have heard it at some point, but it’s very different from what we do in hardcore [laughs]. Honestly, I’ve never thought about this before. But music, for me, I need to connect to it on a very emotional level. What that music gave me, it just didn’t do anything. Even the rock bands in Austria were heavily modeled after American or UK bands. Everyone would sing in English, and only every now and then would you get a German-singing band. That’s where the disconnect was for me. There were very few original artists in there.
It felt a little meaningless.
MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely.
Were there hardcore bands in Austria at around that time really doing it?
MICHAEL: There were a couple. There were two or three bands that I would see open for bigger bands, and eventually I joined one of them a little later on. That was around the time when that sort of melodic, or darker melodic hardcore vibe was going on, inspired by American Nightmare and those bands. The band I joined—we were called Grey Years—was kind of a modern touch on American Nightmare, and maybe a little bit of Ruiner in there. Through that, I met a lot of the people I still call friends, and everything expanded from there.
Grey Years was the most aggressive band that I’d been a part of musically up to that point. Playing that music—rehearsing it and then performing it—it gave me a sort of catharsis that I hadn’t experienced in any of the music I had been doing previously. So it was an eye-opening moment for me to feel that [energy] on stage, to feel the people at shows who would sing the lyrics back to us. It gave me a different sense of connection with everyone in that room. That was a big thing for me.
You moved to Berlin in 2016, but Phantom Bay didn’t start until 2020. It was sort of a pandemic band.
MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely.
I read somewhere that you and [drummer] Yannic [Arens] barely knew each other at that point—which, in my mind, is sort of like dating and marrying someone at the same time [laughs]. So I was thinking about how, sometimes, when you’re first dating someone, you kind of withhold aspects of your personality that you think that person might not like. I was wondering if there was some aspect of your personality that you withheld from him during that time for the sake of making the band work under pressure.
MICHAEL: Oh yeah [laughs]. When we started writing the record, I had a couple of the demos together and I’d already mapped out how I kind of wanted the drums to sound and everything. I thought about this a lot before I brought it to Laurin [Rutgers, bassist] and Yannic. But once we started arranging it, essentially with Yannic, I felt like I was trying to make it a collaborative effort without really wanting it to be a collaborative effort. I didn’t know that Yannic was a great songwriter! He’s a very creative person, a great drummer, and he has a lot of great ideas. But I didn’t know that at the time. You only really know once you start writing and doing the things. So it was this weird spot where I would show them a song and be like, “This should be done like this,” and then Yannic would say, “Well, maybe you want to try it like this”—and there had to be this gradual letting go of control, essentially. I was trying to hold that back as much as I could, but I’m not sure if I succeeded.
There’s something about you that reminds me of Brendan [Garrone] from Incendiary. Like, you could put him in an Oxford and khaki pants and he’d look like he’s ready to go to work. There’s something about him that’s very buttoned up and reads to me as: “You like to be in control” [laughs].
MICHAEL: 100 percent, yes. I can very much relate.
Do you see that as a feature or a bug?
MICHAEL: In some ways, it can be more of a feature than a bug. Especially considering that Phantom Bay was able to do a lot of things pretty quickly because I had an idea of what I wanted to do and then brought it to the group—the vision was clear. But at some point it does become a bug, because you need to develop as a band, and the more you get to know each other better, you find your spot. Being the guy who wants to be in control, that doesn’t help. It just makes things worse at some point. I feel like I’m still in the process of working through that.
Another interesting thing about that first album, to me, was that you were able to get a subsidy from the city of Bremen [Germany] to help pay for the recording—which is something that I think most American bands wouldn’t even understand. But the culture there is just different in that way. There’s a recognition there that the arts and music actually contribute something of worth to society. I see that as a very European value. Do you feel that?
MICHAEL: I do. That support for music and the arts in general comes in various forms here. One thing is the grant programs, and there are lots of them. There’s a countrywide grant program in Germany. I think Austria has the same. And then, even within states, they all have their own subsidy programs. It goes all the way down. So there are many opportunities for artists to get grants. But another thing that I’ve noticed is that, within Europe, there are so many venues that also rely on grants and that continue to be around for decades—even if they seemingly don’t make a profit because there aren’t that many people coming there. Talking to bands from America, lots of them have been saying that venues just open and shut down within a couple of years, or even months sometimes. So things in Europe might be a little more stable in that regard.
It’s interesting though. I feel like on the U.S. tour we just did, we played two kinds of venues: One kind was the smaller bars and clubs, which are very similar to what we would play in Europe. But the other kind were these really DIY venues. For example, the basement of a Tasty Burger in Cambridge [Massachusetts]. Or the basement of a church in Baltimore. Those are things we don’t really have in Europe. Our equivalent would be some government-funded youth center… or a squat, maybe.
Oh, that’s true. I’ve played in a lot of European squats. There’s a very rich history of squatting there.
MICHAEL: And they are still around. The European scene owes a lot to the squats for giving bands a chance to play. But I feel like that second type of venue that I was talking about, that was what was most interesting to us. When the people who are working at a burger restaurant make that decision—“We have a basement here that we can use to host a show”—and they bring a PA by themselves and they basically create this place where bands can present their art, and where a scene can develop, they are making something out of nothing. Those were the shows I appreciated the most because it kind of reminded me of the videos that I would watch ten years ago on YouTube from American house shows and stuff. That’s how we learned about punk and hardcore—by watching YouTube. That’s how I got into this whole thing. Those venues reminded me of that, so I really loved them.
What did you go to school for?
MICHAEL: A combination of computer science and business administration.
Very practical.
MICHAEL: Very, very practical [laughs]. I think that direction was kind of what my family wanted me to be and also what I kind of excelled at—what I thought was interesting. And at the same time, I felt that it was also kind of my insurance, if you will, to be able to do music or the arts. To be able to have something to fund that, really.
There’s a very rare interview that I was able to dig up where someone in your band describes your first record as “definitely not a record for thoughtful and sad moments. The music works particularly well when you’re angry.” So that stood out to me because when I think of “thoughtful and sad,” that’s probably how I’d describe your last band, New Native. And that made me really think about how different Phantom Bay is from New Native. Like, your expression is radically different. What changed for you in between those two bands?
MICHAEL: I think two things. One thing being the pandemic, which affected me more than I wanted to admit at the time—just being isolated and seeing what the world did with that was pretty frustrating to me. So I think I was channeling some of those emotions through the music. And then the second thing was that at the end of New Native, I had started feeling a little bit disconnected from the music, to be honest. Like, whenever we played live, I was just not feeling it anymore. And that made me really sad because I connect with music on such a deep level; I can get so obsessed with how a song makes me feel. I wanted to have a band that gives me that feeling back, that energy or that incredible connection that you feel when you hear a song for the first time that hits all the right spots for you. With Phantom Bay, I wanted to write a record that does exactly that.
One thing I noticed about your lyrics is that, with New Native, they were very internalized. It was almost all in the first person: “I, I, I.” But with Phantom Bay, the lyrics are very directional. It’s “You, You, You”—and sometimes “we,” but very rarely “I.” I’m not sure who you’re screaming at half the time, but was that a deliberate shift or did that sort of just happen?
MICHAEL: It just happened. I feel like with Phantom Bay, I’m trying not to be so focused on myself, because there are things worth singing about that aren’t just focused on yourself. It needs to be more substantial than your own personal problems. I think that in the last few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices that I’ve made in my life—and even the choices that my wife and I make, or the choices that my friends are making—and I’ve been trying to put that into perspective, trying to imagine our role in society. That’s kind of the perspective where I’m coming from. And it makes it a lot harder to write songs about those things because you’re always critiquing yourself and your peers and the people you associate yourself with. But I also feel like the lyrical content is just better. I feel like I’m singing about things that are worthwhile to be written about.
Do you ever feel like you’re trying to hide yourself in the lyrics?
MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely.
What is it about putting yourself in the center that makes you feel uncomfortable?
MICHAEL: That’s a good one [laughs]. I guess I have kind of a fear of being watched all the time, where everything you do is taken at face value. I try to avoid that by stepping more into the background—both in terms of how I write lyrics, and also how we operate at a show. For example, I play guitar and sing, right? I don’t just sing and jump into the crowd. That’s not who I am as a person. I’m just very guarded. I’m not sure where that comes from, to be honest. I probably have to work on that.
The last songs on both the album and the new EP make these kind of cynical digs at the internet, which seems kind of funny to me considering how much the internet has transformed the European hardcore scene. Or how you just told me that you got into hardcore purely from the internet. Or even how the internet actually made the moment that we are in right now. And yet you have misgivings.
MICHAEL: Yeah, I absolutely do. One drawback of getting into this music—or getting into anything—purely through the internet is that it takes away a lot of the things that just happen in real life. I’ve talked to other people who got into this music through just going to shows or talking to people more in real life, and I just feel like they were exposed to it differently. You develop a kind of different taste. When you discover something on the internet, you don’t really learn [the culture].
But really, I think the point I was getting at in the lyrics is that I want to be more conscious of how I spend my time, and if I want to spend the entire day online, consuming the same things over and over again. Or if maybe I want to spend it differently, maybe write a couple of more songs or meet a couple of more people, and not get drawn into the whole machinery of social media. That was what I was most focused on. At the same time, I fully agree that without the internet, and without all these things being put online—the music, the culture, and everything—I wouldn’t be here talking to you, and I wouldn’t have had all these bands basically having my life set up the way that it did. So I’m incredibly grateful for that.
I remember when we met in New York, I felt like I broke down some sort of weird wall when I asked you what you did for a living. You almost seemed embarrassed to say, “Oh, I’m a management consultant.” Did I read you wrong, or was there an odd vibe to that?
MICHAEL: Oh, there is. I feel like, especially within my circle of friends, I know a lot of people who do jobs that actually contribute a lot to society—whether they’re teachers or social workers or things like that. A lot of people in the scene here do those kinds of jobs, and I’m one of a few people—or maybe there’s more, I don’t know—who have chosen a completely different path. I’m still not too comfortable talking about this, even though I like the job. At the same time, I don’t think it does the same [good] for society as other jobs do. It’s something where I’m continuing to try to make sense of it.
Maybe it was also in the pandemic where you kind of realized how important certain roles or certain jobs in society really are. Maybe that’s one thing. But other than that, I don’t really know where this feeling comes from. Even with music, you do have an impact on people. So it’s worth doing because you are giving other people something to enjoy, or something that inspires them to do something, or something that helps them in some way. For me, it’s like: How can I spend my time and do something in a way that helps bring people forward?
I feel like there is a recurring theme throughout this conversation where it feels like you think about being “someone of value” a lot. And I understand that as an impulse, or even just a desire for yourself, but for some reason, talking to you, it also sometimes feels like a weight.
MICHAEL: I don’t know where that comes from. It wasn’t a family value, or at least something that anyone would explicitly talk about, but it was implicit in the way my parents would interact with other people. They were always trying to be helpful, they were active in the local church, and my dad was pretty active with the Scouts. They are very community-oriented, so perhaps that principle was ingrained in me. Maybe that’s why the things I do have to stand that test of needing to be helpful to someone.
I wanted to talk about that anecdote in “Ends Meet.” There’s this story in the lyrics:
A while ago I talked to a man
And he said: hey boy, I like your work but you need to understand
There's no value in what you do
Self-expression isn't something to be sold
So first of all, is there any reality to that?
MICHAEL: I hate to disappoint, but there is not [laughs]. I was trying to put that sentiment into a situation to make it more concrete. I’m not even sure I like it too much in retrospect, but it’s concrete and I guess it kind of summarizes how I perceive the way that making art or making music is just not treated as something that you should be making money from. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. If something is being made, and if it has any significance to you, then there’s value to it. It’s worth something. So, to be clear, [this song] is a critique of the argument in that anecdote.
To me, it’s kind of sad that despite this music being around for so long, really good bands still have a hard time making rent from being a full-time musician and touring and everything. I don’t have a solution to that, but I think it’s a conversation that we need to keep having. There are so many ways that this music and our scene can benefit from being able to allow more actors—where it’s bands or graphic designers or promoters—to focus on doing what they do best and to be able to sustain themselves doing it.
We don’t really talk about it in these terms, but I would argue that there’s a difference between “doing something to make money” and “making money for doing something.” I think there are still a lot of people who think that it’s fucked up to make a living off of your music or your art, no matter what. But I feel like that’s kind of a exclusive take. Not everybody is in a situation where they can afford to do these things for free—but that doesn’t mean they should be disqualified from contributing.
MICHAEL: Of course not [laughs]. One thing I just really believe is that people do their best work when they can purely focus on whatever they love doing—and in this [community] there are people who have to do a lot of other things to be able to do what they love doing.
OK, I’ll end with this. Can you think of a specific lyric that you wrote where you feel particularly satisfied that, by saying it out loud, you told us something very substantial about who you are?
MICHAEL: That’s really tough. [Pauses] As a song, it’s probably “Collectively Decline” for me.
Which is interesting because there’s something about that song that expresses the weight I was talking about earlier.
MICHAEL: There’s a lot of myself in that song. It’s very much filled with all the questions I ask myself. Like towards the end, when I say, “If we work hard, show up, with enough time and enough thought / We still won’t make a difference, collectively.” I feel like that’s the thing I’ve been saying: I try to be useful, and I try to make a difference for other people, but still, with everything that’s going on in the world, no matter how much work you put in or how much time you put in or how much you think about stuff, it still feels like what you do doesn’t matter on a grand scale. You can take the “we” out and put “I” in and that’s pretty much the conversation that’s going on in my head.
And then the same thing a little further down the line, where it goes, “If we’re being drawn to the same jobs / False incentives, poor outcomes”—again, that’s a self-critique. I’ve been drawn to the job I do because it brings me a lot of benefits. I mean, I like what I do, but it’s just a job, basically. It ties back to what we spoke about before. The outcome is probably not that great as opposed to somebody who contributes a little more to the community.
Honestly, though, it was probably just necessary for me to write this all down as a therapeutic measure. Because I had to realize that you can make a difference, but maybe in a different arena—like inside the [immediate] community you’re in, and among the people you spend your time with. By talking about these things, you can start a conversation. You can spark a thought in somebody else. Maybe that’s all you can do sometimes. And maybe that’s enough. It can grow and it can go from there.
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Thank you for this - it’s a wonderful interview with a thoughtful, fascinating guy. And it’s great to see a piece about German hardcore too, which has produced some great bands the last few years (The Tidal Sleep were really excellent, for example).
Awesome insight into a great band! Hopefully they come back to the UK soon