credit card are the hardest band in detroit to photograph

It was a little after 8 p.m. on April 28 at Outer Limits; I helped Credit Card load in. They opened for the wildly entertaining Seattle group Telehealth (along with the awesome fellow Detroiters Dori). It was one of my favorite shows of the year. Out front, Shaun (vocals) excitedly pulled one pant leg up a few inches to show Lu (drums) and I his sick new shoes. “Have you ever seen Vans like this before?” he asked, revealing he got them for five dollars at a shop in New York. When he wondered why they have a Marvel logo on them, my suspicion was confirmed: They were the Black Panther Vans. 

A few moments later, Shaun and Max (synthesizer, guitar, sample tracks, live light cues) discussed the amount of “juice” in the fog machine, which they bring to all their shows along with their own lights. I once heard people at a show talking about how odd they thought this practice was, and while it’s hard to blame them, I assume any and all fog machine confusion dissipates the moment the band launches into one of their reliably hypnotic sets. 

Well before they announced their album/mixtape Devil’s Night / Dead Internet, Credit Card were a band I’d made every effort to see for the year and a half they’d been performing. A red glow filled the room, occasionally obliterated by ethereal strobes. Lu’s pounding drums blended with Max’s synths and pre-sampled percussion tracks. Shaun screamed over it all, equal parts entertainer and street corner doomsayer. As usual, the experience compelled me to stay up front—dancing, pushing, and getting pushed back. It also made me wish I did drugs, like when I first found Jeff Milner’s backmasking page as a middle schooler. 

A few songs in, secret auxiliary pseudo-member Nadine emerged from the crowd, grabbed a second mic, and joined Shaun for fun and furious back-and-forth. Shaun produced a set of sticks and drummed on a dented aluminum trash can before ditching the sticks and wearing the can on his head (the reverse Oscar), while Nadine pushed him around. It was my fifth or sixth time seeing them and it felt like my first. 

After their set, we got their gear to the van and met out back in the cozy Outer Limits smoking patio. As the interview began, photographer Doug Coombe bestowed Credit Card with the newly-created Most Impossible to Photograph Band Award. They were all too happy to accept. 

Shaun: That’s good. It means we had enough fog. 

Lu: And also…we don’t care. We’ve never tried to be at the forefront of it, physically. It’s always been kind of an anonymous thing. It’s just for the music and the dancing. 

Shaun: The original idea was to be completely anonymous. 

Max: We tried to not have an Instagram. 

Shaun: Yeah, we tried that. [laughs]

Max: It was really awesome until there was another band called Credit Card.

Shaun: And they were some bros. 

Max: People would go to our shows, take videos on Instagram, and then tag them. 

Shaun: And they were young, but one photo had a guy wearing a shirt that said “I love boobies,” and it was like, “Dude, no! This has to stop. We have to make an Instagram.”

Max: It’s impossible to exist outside of that fucking system. 

Lu: It’s sad. Because we used to go to a million shows before this and it didn’t matter how many followers or likes you had. Sometimes I feel like people go to shows just because they have followers and you get to the show and you’re like, “Oh.”

Shaun: And hype is the worst killer, because you’re already set up for disappointment. If it’s so hyped up and you go and it’s pretty good, then it’s not living up to your expectations. 

That’s your secret weapon, though. Being the opener and making every band have to follow you after that is pretty awesome.  

Lu: But who wants to be that self-absorbed? 

Doug: Oh, some people do. [everyone laughs]

Lu: Or what if you get your feelings hurt ‘cause no one likes your shit? I don’t know, isn’t that silly? I just hate it. I can’t do it. 

Shaun: When we first started, me and Max and our friend Sam were like, “let’s jam,” just to do something for fun with no expectations. We recorded a bunch of shit on a 4-track and there were two tracks that ended up being really cool, and they were like this synth, punk sound. And we were like, “yeah, let’s just go with that.” 

Is the techno-punk hybrid specifically a Detroit thing or is that what you guys just ended up doing organically? 

Shaun: It was pretty organic. I think it’s pretty unavoidable, because you’re influenced by what surrounds you. I played in another band that was similar when I was in Oakland. I got exposed to EBM and hard industrial stuff and really liked it. So when we did that jam session, I was like, “Bring your synthesizer. Does it do the thing that goes dun dun dun dun dun.” [laughs] “Do that!”

Between the name Credit Card and the song title that’s also your Instagram bio, “This is a debt you can never repay,” I feel like there’s a philosophy behind the band where—not to be too much of a college kid about it—the debt isn’t all monetary, but also the debt of living in society. 

Shaun: We kind of leaned into that, but I had this list of band names [laughs]. My original idea was Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery, and I really liked that one. Then I thought we should be called Commit Suicide [everyone laughs]. And I had all these ridiculous band names and the last one was Credit Card and I think I was drunk when I wrote that, but it’s the funniest name, it’s so fitting. 

Lu: And I think that’s a great way of looking at it, but art is meant to be interpreted by everyone, so if you give it away, then…

Shaun: If you want to have the most bleak, brutal, metal name, then actually Credit Card is the most evil thing you can think of [everyone laughs].

Lu: Totally.

Somehow more evil than Commit Suicide. 

Shaun: It is! Everyone has debt and you’ll never repay it. Always be in debt. 

Doug: I think you should call your most evil record 29.9% APR [everyone laughs].

You guys bring your own fog machine and lights, which initially sort of takes people out of their comfort zones and makes it feel more like a big show.

Shaun: When we were starting the band, we were a bit bored of music and wanted to do something fun and cool. We had a bunch of different ideas that didn’t stick like, “Should we wear masks? Should we do this or that?” I just wanted to do something where, if I saw a band, I’d be like, “Woah, that’s sick.” If it’s something that you would like, then other people would probably like it. 

Lu: And it makes it an experience, and performance art, and it’s more than just about the music itself. All of your senses are involved. 

Max: It’s just really fun dancing in a strobe light with a fog machine on. [laughs] I’ve felt that way since I was a teenager. 

Lu: And making things dark makes people more comfortable to let loose. That’s really the goal. 

This is the only band I feel any obligation to be in the  front for, and I think that’s all part of it. It’s the music too, but obviously there’s some reason for it, because I've only really moshed like twice in my life. I just don’t feel compelled to do it. 

Shaun: The more shows you’ve seen, it becomes just like anything else, like going to work. You have to connect with a reason why you like the music. You want to have fun and have a human experience. 

It’s annoying when bands try to make you do something—with the only exception being telling everyone to move up since no one really does unless you tell them to. To have it naturally happen is another thing that’s great about Credit Card. 

Max: It’s so funny sometimes when they’re like, “Move up!” And then no one moves. But usually people do. 

Shaun: That’s the most embarrassing thing. I always thought it was funny when the singer is like ordering you like, “Come on motherfucker! Get up here! Split the crowd! When this breakdown hits, you’re gonna mosh really fuckin’ hard, motherfucker!” People like being told what to do [laughs].

Max: They do. It’s an experience, you know? 

Shaun: Yeah, I gotta give it to ‘em. I don’t wanna be a hater, I don’t know. If any young people are having fun, that’s awesome. But they all do this specific two-step dance. 

Crowd-killing constantly.

Max: They love it. 

Shaun: It is kind of like a specific set of criteria that you’re supposed to fit into at the show. 

Lu: Yeah. 

Shaun: I don’t know. If that makes people have fun at a show, it’s better than people just standing around I guess. 

After the interview, I ran into Nadine and asked one question about her involvement in the show.

Every time I see this band, you just fly out of the crowd. Is that exciting? It’s so different from a normal gig. 

Nadine: It’s super exciting. It’s actually very nice to be part of something but not have any, you know… I don’t have any creative say, I’m just joining in. Shaun asked me if I wanna scream on one of the songs because he saw my band, and I’m like, “Sure.“ So now it’s kind of like, “OK, I’m just gonna go scream for three minutes and then I’m done.” It’s not really like I’m in the band. They don’t expect anything from me [laughing]. It’s kind of great!

On May 29, I walked into the Sanctuary in Hamtramck for a Lip Critic show where Credit Card were opening. I quickly learned that Max is a father-to-be, there’s a record coming, there’s a tour planned, and there are multiple personnel changes. During that show, for example, Hailey—a musician and Credit Card fan—was on guest vocals, rather than Nadine. I worried that all the new developments would render the first interview unusable. A few days later, I reconnected with Shaun over the phone.

When we talked before, I don’t think the album was announced. 

Shaun: [laughs] Yeah, and it still hasn’t really been announced. It won’t be digitally released until August 14.

I think a big part of why I like the record so much is that it puts me in the headspace that the live show does. I’d be very curious to see what someone who hasn’t seen the live show thinks about the record. 

Shaun: Yeah, the record’s still a bit different than the live show. It has pretty much all the songs that we play live, but it has some more experimental stuff on it. 

Yeah, there’s some interstitial stuff. 

Shaun: Yeah. And a few songs with singing [laughs].

And a phone sound on one of them. 

Shaun: It’s a dial-up sound, which just got retired this year; RIP dial-up internet. 

Is Nadine not going to do the guest singing thing anymore and Hailey’s gonna do it now? At the last show, you told me you might do a cycle of rotating members.

Shaun: Yeah, so the band is me and Max. We write it and record it. Lumen is our drummer. But, for example, at the release show Lumen’s not going to be there, so our other friend Sam is gonna fill in. And then Nadine’s been awesome and performed with us a lot of times, but she also has her own band, and I know they’re playing on the day of the release show, so she can’t do it. That was Hailey’s first show with us at Sanctuary, and it’s been awesome and we get along. And we’re all friends. My ex-girlfriend—who I used to be in a band with—has done it too, so it’s been a mix of whoever is available. 

And Max is about to have a baby, so the release show [which took place in June] is his last show for a while. We wanted it to be like our project, not necessarily a band. We make all the decisions together and everything, so we’re coming out with the album, we definitely want to play a release show together, but after that we’ve gotta tour the album. Otherwise what's the point of releasing it? If you don’t tour it no one will hear about it. So I was like, “Me and Lumen still wanna do the tour,” and we had played one show without him when he was sick or something, and it went fine. Hailey’s gonna be filling in for him on the whole tour, doing the synth, guitar, and that one song at the end. And she’s a great musician too. 

I think it’s interesting that the title of the record Devil’s Night / Dead Internet is a two-parter. 

Shaun: Devil’s Night is a Detroit thing where. Over the years, people were starting fires, causing mischief, so it’s kind of like an ode to Detroit. I love referencing stuff because, in my mind, there’s no such thing as being original, everything’s already been done before. I like to lean into that a little bit and just obviously copy stuff. Some of our lyrics, too, I’ve directly copied from other songs. Rappers do it; I don’t know why rock doesn’t do it as much. There’s that difference between copying someone, or doing an homage to someone, or a reference. I’ve always liked that about pop culture, how it’s self-referential and kind of a spiral that ends up eating itself. 

Originally we talked about releasing this album as two EPs, and that’s why there are two titles. So now it’s Devil’s Night and Dead Internet and we decided to put them on the same record. I think you could listen to one side or the other first and it wouldn’t really matter. The Dead Internet side is the one with the dial-up sound. I’m older than a lot of people in the music scene here and I remember the way the internet was and how it is now, and the Dead Internet Theory, if you’re familiar with that. 

I am, yeah

Shaun: We were talking about album rollout, release cycle, digital marketing, Spotify numbers, all that type of shit. And then I hear, like, of the top 100 artists right now 30 of them are AI and the listeners are also 80% bots [laughs]. And it’s like, this shit sucks. It kind of goes along with the whole vibe of Credit Card. We’re not careerist at all. I don’t think we’re really trying to sell something. If you look at the title of our first single, “This is a debt you can never repay” and the name Credit Card, it’s just talking about capitalism and money and how everything is just “sell sell sell” now. … I wish I had a really good one liner to say at the end. 

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