"The guy was just like, 'Well, you can't play guitar because you only have one hand,'" Eisold remembers. "That stuck with me for a long time."
It wasn't the first time Eisold had been shunned because of his physical disability: A piano teacher also bailed on him after a couple weeks of lessons, and he often found himself the target of bullying at school. His parents did some research; it only took three fingers to play trumpet, and that could help him learn the fundamentals of music. But it wasn't until much later, when Eisold was an adult, freshly out of fronting a hardcore band, that he began toying with synths and pedals, and found true comfort in expressing himself with instruments. Once he realized he could use a computer to program the parts he couldn't play, and sync all his dark, gothic sounds together into pixelated, New Order-esque melodies, he was free. That's when Cold Cave was born.
Cold Cave, which performs July 17 at the Mezzanine, is the moniker Eisold has used for his solo electronic projects since 2007. Its dark, '80s synthpop-inspired tunes have been fleshed out by many collaborators over the years, including Sean Martin of Hatebreed and Caralee McElroy of Xiu Xiu. But when Cold Cave plays San Francisco, only Eisold and his longtime girlfriend and collaborator, Amy Lee, will be onstage.
The current Cold Cave is a more stripped-down configuration, which is fitting, because at its core the project has always been just one person: Wesley Eisold. So much so that Cold Cave would become intertwined with Eisold's identity — a gloomy reflection of himself filtered through lurid, danceable tunes punctuated by intensely personal lyrics like, "I lost a limb on the left-hand path, and I never, never, never got it back."
After high school Eisold wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, so he enrolled at the University of Maine. It was a particularly dark period, and he didn't go to class much. Instead, he spent most of his time playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater and listening to the Misfits and Samhain. He also started hanging out in Boston's hardcore scene, and before long quit school to join what would become the influential hardcore outfit American Nightmare.
"When American Nightmare came about I had all this pent-up anger, frustration, and emotion from an entire life of isolation, and all these words I had written to match," Eisold says. "I just exploded and went full-speed ahead with that."
Fans had connected with American Nightmare's cohesive aesthetic and meaningful lyrics in a way that an oft-isolated and dejected Eisold had rarely, if ever, found among peers in his youth. But Eisold, who's spent his life moving from one place to another, had changing tastes, and left the group in 2004. He'd been experimenting with different instruments — some unique or self-made, like a one-string bass, others a bit more over-the-counter but still foreign to most hardcore kids, like oscillators and circuit-bent synths. In 2007, all those lyrics, emotions, and his bottled-up desire to create burst open again, and the solo journey Eisold started so many years ago in Germany was complete: He was finally expressing himself not just through vocals, but also instrumentation.
"I was so proud of it," Eisold says of his first recordings as Cold Cave. "So proud that I kept it for myself. I was living in Philadelphia, just walking around the city, with no friends, listening to these songs I made in headphones."
Eventually, Eisold shared his haunted synthpop tunes with Gibby Miller of Dais Records. Miller loved them — so much that he offered to release Eisold's music. (Eisold also released Cold Cave's music on Dominick Fernow's Hospital Productions label.) The first few Cold Cave releases would be anonymous, though. Eisold wanted to sidestep the hardcore community's tendency to treat any non-hardcore projects coming from former members of popular bands as suspect.
For a few years, things seemed to go well for Eisold and Cold Cave, but in 2013 everything collapsed.
Justin Benoit, a former collaborator who performed with Cold Cave live, killed himself inside Eisold's home, with Eisold's gun. It profoundly affected the singer in a variety of ways, one of which was to make him more proactive in battling his lifelong depression. Eisold had been sober for a little over a year before the tragedy and had been working out with a trainer, which helped him process the loss and, as he puts it, kept him from "becoming too stagnant." But the tragedy also showed Eisold a dark side of humanity that he's all too familiar with, and which he sings about in the song "People Are Poison," in which he warns, "Love 'em and leave 'em before you're old / You can sell your soul for rock 'n' roll / But you better die young or you'll be me or something."
"I had a lot of people coming out offering to take [Benoit's] record collection off our hands," Eisold says. The offers were shocking. "Amy and I felt like we were standing in a house like a flyswatter hitting all these people away who were trying to take shit. I've been through a few deaths with close people now, and that seems to be the nature of humans — they do it every time."
That same year, Eisold toured and collaborated with Boyd Rice, an experimental underground musician who has provoked controversy throughout his career. Rice has long been associated with fascist imagery, been photographed with members of white supremacist organizations, and even appeared on infamous white supremacist Tom Metzger's talk show. When fans protested and clubs threatened to cancel shows unless Rice was dropped, Eisold stood by the musician, saying people failed to contextualize his art. A handful of shows were dropped.
I asked Eisold if he aligns with Rice's political leanings.
"Everything has been in jest. I hate saying that because it dispels this person's life of work. But it's true," Eisold says. "I don't like filling people in, like, 'Hey this guy's just been fucking with you for 25 years.' When people think of him and 'political leanings,' it's always some super fucked-up far-right ideology, and that's totally not what that guy is like at all. But he's so obsessed with nostalgia and '40s and '50s pop culture, he references this stuff, just like if someone is obsessed with James Bond and played different Bond characters throughout their life. It's more akin to that then a true political feeling."
Be that as it may, Eisold is not courting controversy on Cold Cave's latest tour. The gothic, darkwave outfit is its strongest ever, with a minimal, harmonious line-up consisting only of Eisold and Lee. ("We started hanging out a while ago and just kind of never stopped.") The duo has lasted longer than any other live Cold Cave configuration, and Eisold speaks passionately about cutting out relationships that are toxic for his mental and emotional health. On the duo's San Francisco tour stop, Cold Cave has a much less volatile opening act: Prayers, the much-talked-about "Cholo Goth" act from Southern California.
Eisold, who once sat miserabley in his dorm playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, recently returned home from playing Tony Hawk's wedding in a castle in Ireland. The next Tony Hawk game will feature a Cold Cave song, serving as a sonic life line for the next generation of brooding music lovers sitting in dorm rooms, disillusioned.
Meanwhile, Eisold now seems to be as content as possible, on the road with Lee, finally at home with his constant movement. "For three years it's just been Amy and I. That's the longest-running, most consistent lineup it's ever been," Eisold says. There's even a smidge of hope in his voice. "We're going to be this way for a long time."
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