My idea for “How Can They Intend to Heal” came in the summer of 2009. By this time blogs were sprouting everywhere, especially in the hardcore community. I had previously created, operated and documented the Culture and Bird of Ill Omen Myspaces, in 2007, which at the time I had received a lot of help from the band members to make it happen. It was my first job as an archivist. Then one Chip Walbert, was so grateful that I did this archiving that he started a blog focusing on Florida hardcore and asked me to contribute. By this time it was 2009 and I got in touch with the members of Rosevelt and conducted a huge interview with them, for the Florida blog. Chip ended up not only never publishing it, but also stole my write ups from Culture and Bird of Ill Omen, changed a few things around and reposted them on his blog taking credit for it.
I then started my own blog that would concentrate solely on Canadian hardcore, to be sure that no one out there was already doing something like it. I opened a WordPress.com blog and published my first post on July 18th 2009. The first post was Shoulder, and I had also named the blog “How Can They Intend to Heal” from lyrics of their song. What I wanted from the start was a blog that could give people the full story of the bands. Their full retrospective and a full discography download. All these blogs were posting just an album for download and a cheap review of what they thought of it (if any writing at all). I wanted to change that and be not only different but important.
The first “About” section of the blog
I created this blog after being a big fan of my countries music. Though I live in Montréal, most of the music that has inspired me is from Ontario. The name of the blog comes from lyrics of a Shoulder song. The goal of this blog is not to tell great stories, because I wasn’t there to here them (I was too young), but rather to help spread out of print and rare releases in digital format for all fans of this genre of music. Each post features all my digital compilation of that band.
If you have something that I don’t have, I’d appreciate you sharing it so I can further the collections I post on here.
I also run the Abridged Pause Recordings. Not the same type of music, but great nevertheless.
You may contact me at alex@abridgedpause.com
Alex
The first How Can They Intend to Heal design, circa 2009
In early January of 2010 I came in contact with Ian Hart, a legend hardcore musician from the maritimes that was interested on contributing to the band. Ian joined and started writing on January 28th 2010. The on March 15th 2010 I posted an ad looking for new contributors to the blog. Obviously I was limited in my knowledge and focused mostly on Ontario bands, and Ian on the maritimes. Ideally I wanted someone to handle the B.C. scene, another for the prairies, another for Quebec and a last for the 80’s hardcore. From this came a long list of “possible” contributors. The first to Join was Judd Asoyuf who would concentrate on lesser known Ontario bands. Richard Boivin was at one point close to joining to write about Quebec hardcore and Chris Iler and Chris Logan were both supposed to do guest posts, but that never happened.
In November of 2010 I changed the layout of the website. Instead of staying with the default WordPress theme, I went for the Grunge theme and designed a new banner.
The second banner for How Can They Intend to Heal
The second How Can They Intend to Heal design, circa 2010
On August 19th 2013 I merged the entire How Can They Intend to Heal website into the Abridged Pause Blog, to dedicate a single website. At the same time, this no longer forced me to only do Canadian bands.
Abridged Pause Blog
With all this I managed to publish full retrospective writeups on
- A Taste for Blood
- Ache Hour Credo
- Acrid
- Alter-Ego
- Avarice
- Benchwarmer
- Bird of Ill Omen
- Boize
- Blue Monday
- Blundermen
- Breaking Violet
- Bree
- Burden
- Burst of Silence
- Castevet (CSTVT)
- Chris Gray
- Confine
- Crisis of Faith
- Culture
- Day of Mourning
- Dirge
- Drop Forge
- Eliot Rosewater
- Emissary
- Endless Fight
- Face Down
- FaceDown
- Firestorm
- Forsaken Trust
- From This Fay Forward
- Funerary
- Gates of Dawn
- Grace Like Winter
- Ignorance Never Settles
- In Dying Days
- In This Defiance
- Ire
- Jonah
- Jude the Obscure
- Karenza
- Left for Dead
- Loveless .1.
- M Blanket
- Montgomery 21
- New Day Rising
- Officer Down
- One Eyed God Prophecy
- Parabstruse
- Platform
- Raise Them and Eat Them
- Render Useless
- Roosevelt
- Rosesdead
- Say No More
- Searchingforchin
- Seer
- SeventyEightDays
- Shiner
- Shoulder
- Sinsick
- Soufferance
- Spread the Disease
- Sun Still Burns
- The Abandoned Hearts Club
- The Black Hand
- The Fullblast
- The Payback
- The Republic of Freedom Fighters
- The Separation Suicide
- The Wolfnote
- This Day Forth
- To the Lions
- Two Line Filler
- Unheard
- Union of Uranus
- Unmarked
- Vision Éternel
- Zyon
And the following record labels
- Abridged Pause Recordings
- Dirty Kidz Records
- Fans of Bad Productions Records
- Klink Publishing
- OneDaySavior Recordings
- Ragamuffin Soldier Records
- Redstar Records
- Rhythm of Sickness Records
- Structure Records
- U-Iliot Records
- Upheaval Records
- Winter Records
- Workshop Records
- 13th Day Recordings