Ned Russin of Title Fight and Glitterer did an interview with Norman Brannon (of Texas Is The Reason and more) for the re-launched online version of his classic ’90s hardcore fanzine Anti-Matter, and the conversation opens with Ned talking about how Title Fight–who haven’t played a show since January of 2018–never technically announced a breakup or hiatus:
One thing that I’ve really tried to adapt to in the more recent years is the idea of not subscribing to any sort of binary, which means the idea of a band existing or not existing is not so important to me anymore. I used to fight back against the definitions or the language that people tried to put on the band—like, we’ve never said “hiatus,” we’ve never said “broken up,” we’ve never said any of those words. These are words that have been put on us, but it’s not anything we’ve ever said ourselves so, like, everything is a misconception.
Was that ambiguity deliberate? Or just something that developed along the way?
I mean, yes and no. It’s complicated, as you can imagine. Part of it, I think, is that “the big breakup” is just something I do not care to be a part of, but it’s also something that doesn’t really exist anymore. There is a chance that any band will play again, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if everyone hates each other; it doesn’t even matter if people have passed away. The bands will find a way to make things work if they want to and that’s totally fine. I get that 100-percent “yes” or 100-percent “no” is a thing people want to hear, but then also as soon as you give one of those answers, people start pestering you—like, “Oh, what will it take for you to do this”—and that’s also a thing I’m not interested in.
The interview went up following Norman’s We Never Close essay about “indefinite hiatuses,” in which he notes the closest thing Title Fight ever did give to an announcement was at Outbreak Fest 2017, when Ned said, “If this is it, it’s been a wild and beautiful ride. Thank you so much. We’re Title Fight. See you on the other side.” That ended up being their second to last show before the band went quiet.
“We stopped touring in 2016. We played shows in 2017, and then the last show we played was in 2018,” Ned continues. “So we entered a state of not knowing what was going to happen in late 2016. I was 26 years old, and I had been doing that thing since I was twelve.”
In the interview, Ned also talks about picking up bass to differentiate himself from his older brother Alex (guitarist of Cold World), softening up anti-mainstream stances that he adopted in his youth, looking at Fugazi “as the pinnacle of what I want to do,” his current band Glitterer, and more. Read the full interview, as well as Norman’s essay about “indefinite hiatuses.”
See also: Title Fight’s ‘Floral Green’ at 10 — the story behind a landmark of modern punk & hardcore.
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Norman talks about Anti-Matter, bridging generation gaps within hardcore, parallels between hardcore in 1993 and 2023, and more on the BrooklynVegan podcast:
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Read and subscribe to Anti-Matter here.