Changing society

Music is emotion. Music comes from emotion, is built on emotion and, in turn, creates emotion. Musically, many bands hope that their invested emotion is transferred to the audience with positive results.

One local band wants to take that a step further. The members of Done With Society, which formed in February, said they hope that their audiences learn something about themselves as well.

Paul Goddard, the lead guitarist and singer for the band, serves not only as the band’s main contact point with crowds, but with the band members themselves. Many of the ideals that Done With Society sings about came from a realization that Goddard had.

“I was just working my ass off at jobs, 60 to 70 hours a week,” Goddard says. “All my dreams, which are music and martial arts and things like that, I was never able to formulize them. There was so much stress involved.

“I just stopped and took a look at the world and realized that the way everybody else was leading their lives—if everybody’s goal is to be happy, which everybody will obviously say it is—they are doing the wrong thing and living the totally wrong way. They are going the opposite way to achieve that result. They are actually putting things in place that are going to guarantee suffering in the future.”

This led Goddard into abandoning his prevailing thought process and pursuing his dreams, including music. At one of his jobs, he worked with Dan Bishop, and they decided to form a band. Rhythm guitarist Eric “Soupie” Campbell read their advertisement at Bizarre Guitar; drummer (formerly bassist) Nich Maus was friends with Campbell and joined a while later after a rotation of bassists that Bishop likened to Spinal Tap’s drummers, except that they didn’t blow up on stage.

Done With Society’s chosen musical medium for their message is alternative metal.

“We’ve been told that you can hear influences, but we don’t sound like anyone,” Bishop says. “It’s extremely well-constructed, melodic music with a hard edge to it.”

Those influences include Tool, Incubus, Metallica and Creed. Some bluesy music —like Stevie Ray Vaughn—is thrown in for good measure.

All the members of Done With Society concur with Goddard’s assessment of society and say they are trying to look at life differently. But not everyone wants someone to tell them what they are doing wrong and how they could better their lives, the band says.

“I’ve heard Paul do this,” Maus says. “He tries to talk to people and tell them what he thinks and offer them advice, and they just get offended by what he says. But it’s not his intent. A couple of the songs are pretty much Paul just saying, ‘This is my advice to you. This is a song. Take it or leave it.’ “

Sometimes it happens within the band.

“I told him, ‘I’m afraid of what you are going to point out to me, what I don’t want to see,’ “ Campbell says. “And it’s true that that happens. But it’s not a bad thing. It’s something that needs to be dealt with.”

“That’s exactly correct," Goddard says. "But I try to give some sort of motivational factor to begin with, to show you you’re not a schmuck and that everyone is fine, everybody’s great. But also not let you deny the aspect that you’re currently not wanting to look at."