With Love: A Ritual Of Tension, DIY Ethics & Screamo That Refused To Fade

Active between the late ’90s and the early 2000s, With Love emerged from a fractured Punk and Hardcore landscape, carving out a space that was confrontational, intimate, and deeply rooted in DIY ethics. Their music wasn’t designed to entertain or comfort, but to confront, blurring the lines between band and audience through raw physicality, emotional urgency, and a clear ideological stance. With Yours, Truly, Shove Records brings together the band’s scattered recordings into a long-overdue vinyl anthology, offering a chance to revisit a project that was very much a product of its time, yet resistant to easy categorization. Gab De La Vega spoke with With Love about tension, identity, the limits and freedoms of DIY, and why their story could only have existed in that specific moment.

With Love existed at a time when punk and hardcore were rapidly mutating. Looking back, do you feel your band was reacting against something specific in the scene, or simply documenting a personal state of unrest?

“Even though in those years the scene was fragmenting and losing strength and unity, to the detriment of many small and weak factions (a few years earlier the youth crew was preaching diametrically opposed concepts), I believe that With Love was born from the need to find its own identity of expression within a very dull and overwhelming provincial community that was not open at all to any attempt at subculture or counterculture.”

Many bands from the late ’90s have been rediscovered and recontextualized today. When you listen to With Love now, do you hear a product of its time, or something that never fully belonged to any era?

“I definitely hear a product of that time: very genuine, sometimes a little naive, made with heart, commitment, and with the few means and resources we could have as a bunch of barely adult fellas. Listening to the remastered tracks took me back to the bedroom where we used to rehearse. The laughter, the jokes, the lightly made decisions. It was a period that had a profound impact on me and helped me grow, to get out of my small town and meet many interesting people I have deep respect for. With some of them I still play, collaborate, or keep in touch even after almost thirty years.”

Your shows are remembered for being confrontational rather than entertaining. Was that tension between band and audience something you consciously embraced?

“We knew there couldn’t be a show without a strong tension (I’d say sometimes a morbid bond) between the audience and us. There were no barriers. The physicality of the concerts was released only by establishing an almost ritualistic synergy with the people. I vividly remember legendary shows, piles of bodies on top of each other. You could cut the air with a knife.”

“Yours, Truly” puts together recordings that were originally scattered across different formats and moments. Does hearing them side by side change the way you perceive the band’s identity?

“Absolutely. I feel like I’m embarking on a journey, going back to the discussions and decisions made with the record labels of the time. I wish these records had been released on vinyl back then. I remember we sold a lot at concerts, but objectively the CD/digital format was gaining popularity. While fairly anonymous, it was very easy to carry around, to ship, or to take on tour. Despite this, we were all vinyl maniacs, so it wasn’t nice for us to see the first two albums released only on CD, with cheap cases and shoddy artwork.”

Back then, terms like “emo” or “screamo” were often used dismissively. How did those labels affect the way With Love were perceived, and the way you perceived yourselves?

“Despite those overused, on-everyone’s-lips terms, we always considered With Love a punk band. Not only for the kind of music, but for everything that was behind the project. Atheism, veganism, vegetarianism, anti-militarism, pro-choice were just a handful of the themes we were into. DIY is still the driving force that governs our actions, our lives, our choices, and our work.”

DIY ethics were central to punk at the time, but they often meant frustration, limits, and conflict as much as freedom. What was the hardest compromise you had to accept as a band?

“I honestly don’t remember having to compromise back then. We always supported our ideals, and we used to talk a lot before, during, and after the shows. With Love wasn’t just music. We got slapped a few times, sometimes our words were misunderstood, but at the end of each show we loved to stay with the people and clarify, if there was any need, our commitment to DIY.”

If With Love had started today, in an era of streaming, social media, and constant visibility, do you think the band would have survived in the same form, or was it only possible in the conditions of that specific moment?

“I think the second half of the ’90s was a perfect and very prolific time for “independent” music. I remember the amount of records coming out (especially from overseas), the tons of distros from all over the world, the expectation of receiving records at home and literally devouring them. The excitement was quite high, and it paid off 90% of the time. Today, records no longer have the weight they once had. Even if something good is released, it’s immediately overshadowed by the next one. Records have a very short lifespan, and people’s attention has dropped dramatically. So, to your question, I’d say With Love, in this age where everything is so fast-paced, adrenaline-filled, and superficial, would certainly have had a short life.”