Rank Your Records: Superman Is Dead Look Back at Their Favorite Albums

Superman Is Dead are hands-down Indonesia's biggest pop-punk band. But they are also surprisingly down to Earth, the kind of guys who are willing to lend a hand, even when no one expects them to. The first time I met the band is a perfect illustration of what makes them so great.

Back in 2003, I booked a show at Jakarta's legendary BB's Bar for my band Sajama Cut as well as Seringai (the early lineup, with the original bassist, Indah Bangsat’s Toan Sirait), local grunge veterans Toilet Sounds, Henry Foundation, pre-Goodnight Electric, and Snorg, Deathrockstar’s Eric Wiryanata’s whatever-core band. Everyone performed spectacularly.

Except for me. You see, I had no idea how to book a show, and right when the night was about to wrap up a whole bunch of new people walked in the door of BB's. Apparently, I had started the whole thing waaaay too soon for the Jakarta crowd. What the hell was I going to do?

It was right then that these guys, all friends of Seringai who had spent the night hanging out in some dark corner, volunteered to save our asses. The trio—Jerinx, Bobby Kool, and Eka Rock—were members of Bali's Superman Is Dead and they just happened to be in town the night of the show.

They offered to play, borrowing all of our shitty equipment to completely tear the house down. They borrowed Sajama Cut's shitty off-brand Korean guitar, our nameless bass, and worn drum kit and delivered the kind set from the tiny stage of BB's that was made for stadium tours. It was then that I realized Superman Is Dead weren't just some shallow rock stars. They were as real as they come, the kinds of musicians that can turn even the worst-planned show into something to remember.

I reached out to Jerinx, the drummer of SID, to see if he would list his records, in order of his favorite. He refused to rank them, instead offering to tell me a bit about what he liked about each one. Good enough for me.

VICE: This was your low-budget debut album. Can you tell me about SID's early days?
Jerinx: A wise man once said "the more we know, the more we don't know." I took a lot of pride in making this in-your-face, skill-is-dead, fuck-the-world piece of work because… honestly… this is the most fun album we ever made. And the whole reason why was because we had no idea how to record an album. We were just a blank canvas ready to be torched by some pyromanic painter.

We had just started college. The Reformasi era was still in its early stages and we were drinking and doing drugs on a daily basis. After a year-and-a-half of playing covers by our favorite bands—NOFX, Green Day, Bad Religion, and AFI—we figured out the formula to write our own songs. At the time Eka and Bobby were more dominate in the creative process. I was more of a conceptor/ marketing person who helped write the lyrics.

I remember that we had no money, no label, and that our music was hard to sell. So we came up with the idea of organizing these underground gigs and then using the profits to record and produce our debut album. So suddenly, we were event organizers too. [Laughs]

Did the plan work?
Yeah. We did great. After this successful concert at Tabanan with SID as the headliner, of course, we had about Rp 2 million ($145 USD). The ticket price was Rp 2,500 ($0.18 USD) a piece and the venue held about 1,000 people. That night was incredible. So with that Rp 2 million and a few dozen songs, we booked two days at the Midi Quest studio in Denpasar. Everything but the vocals were recorded live. It was "no metronome, no skill, just pure fire." We played all the songs fast. We wanted it to be "NOFX as fuck." Bobby even sounded like Fat Mike. At the time I was really into prog nu-metal gurus Helmet and I wanted the snare to sound like theirs, which sounds absurd and ridiculous now. But whatever, we still sold 1,000 cassette tapes in like three or four months.

How were you selling them?
Door-to-door. We even had college cafeterias selling copies for us. It's not bad for an album that wasn't even mixed or mastered. Plus the cover was lame as fuck. The sleeves were photocopied and it was full of all these in-jokes about other pop-punk bands and venue security staff in Bali. But everyone's positive reaction made us more comfortable with writing our own songs. It finally felt like we were a proper band. We had songs of our own for fuck's sake. I was like more sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Hell yeah!

This was the album that introduced Superman Is Dead to a wider crowd. What was the transition from small Bali punk band to national stages like?
If Case 15 was our funniest album, then this is absolutely the craziest. I remember in mid 1999 telling this reporter at the Bali Post that if five years from now, SID doesn't have a future or get signed by a big label, then we will call it quits. We were indie as fuck, but we weren't happy. We want to live off our music. Well we also wanted to be drug dealers, but we didn't want to go to hell. The point was we didn't want office jobs. At the time, I was selling stickers and working as a freelance writer. Eka was doing IT work and Bobby was a graphic designer. Our albums post-Case 15 were doing well—they were all selling out—but we never made any profit because of our awful management. We just wanted to have fun, not deal with awful management issues. That's why when Sony Music approached us, we didn't make it too hard for them. As long as we weren't going to become slaves to the label or have them interfere with our music then we were good to go.

During this era, I started writing more songs, not just the lyrics. Social Distortion, The Ramones, and Tiger Army were all big influences. Long story short, we signed a deal with the "devil," and moved to Jakarta.

What was the recording process like?
I remember being so impressed by Jakarta's recording studios. We had nothing even close in Bali. But living in Jakarta was tough. We had to deal with the traffic every day and living with your bandmates in the same house for a long period of time turns toxic. As if all of that wasn't hard enough, Jakarta was a total culture shock and everyone hated us. The punks hated us and called us sellouts. Then we got tangled in all these racial issues with the right-wing religious folks. We were like what the fuck? The news went ballistic. Our gigs were like war zones. People literally tried to kill us. Girls literally tried to fuck us. We made headlines everywhere, which was great from the perspective of a major label.

For the first time we actually made a profit. Thankfully I wasn't heavy into drugs or anything, so I was able to use the royalties from Kuta Rock City to renovate my bar—Twice Bar.

But musically, we sounded lost. Our references and influences were richer, but the album was, emotionally, a failure. Instead of sounding grand, it sounded cheesy. When we needed it sound raw, it sounded too polished. But on a brighter note, this album definitely elevated us to a higher level. We went from the bale banjar to the festival. From the back page to the front. My favorite song will always be "Kuta Rock City." I knew it was going to be bigger than just a song. It was a statement, a big middle finger to the mainstream music industry and the elitist big cities who think they can control what small-island youth wear and listen to. 2003 was a very crazy time for us and along with all this hype and shenanigans, something deep inside of us died…

A lot of your fans call this your masterpiece. But what was going on behind the scenes in your personal lives at the time?
Reliable sources call this our masterpiece. And I think I can proudly agree with them. It's a dark, versatile, but also majestic album. There are ballads, ska, rockabilly, grunge, latin, and more. I wrote the majority of the songs and came up with the concept and art direction. Somehow it got really dark. The album had songs about my serious health issues stemming from my self-destructive lifestyle ("Goodbye Whiskey"), the second Bali bombing ("Year of the Danger," and "Bangkit dan Percaya"), and Indonesia's rising fascism ("Kita vs Mereka"). There were songs about global warming ("Marahbumi"), falling in love with the queen of karma (“Menginjak Neraka”), the death of close friends ("Lady Rose”), struggles with depression (“Bukan Pahlawan") and so much more.

Because we were touring out of Bali so much we became way more socially conscious and understood the extent of the huge economic gap that divided so many people in our rich country. Sonically, conceptually, and emotionally, this album can't be replicated. Instead of songs, it's a series of recorded moments. Almost every lyric and melody on this album brings me back to the golden era of Twice Bar, since I wrote most of them there We jammed them all at the bar before they became proper songs. Most of my boys knew our hits before we even recorded them. Yes, it was dark, but the fun, muscularity, and elegance were there too. There was so much emotion. So much love, rage, and fire. My favorite tracks still are “Bukan Pahlawan”, “Lady Rose,” and “Goodbye Whiskey.”

This album got you a lot of new fans. How do you feel about it now?
This album is the greatest misinterpretation. The opinion divider. It's also a hell of a victorious work. When we started SID, we didn't expect our songs and albums to win awards. But this is the album that made that happen. We were finally one of them, the real musicians with the real awards. And I'm not talking about the cheesy SCTV, RCTI, Panasonic, or AMI awards. I'm talking about the next level awards, the ones handed out by professors, lecturers, and academics.

Didn't you basically take control of this whole album?
I wrote 11 songs on this album. Some are dark (like the hardcore-infused “Forever Love Insane," and the psychobilly of “Bulletproof Heart), some are bright (“Water Not War”), and some even have some dubstep in them (“Burn The Night”). But it was actually a three cord song that changed everything. The song, "Jadilah Legenda," was written while I was surfing in Kuta. It was about my hope that Indonesia's economic disparity would soon be reduced. The song turned into a working class hymn, a prayer of progressive academics, and a fire for social activists.

This was definitely an "award" album. It’s very commercial. But it also has a lot to say and the lyrics are poetic as hell, sometimes I even got lost in translation of my own writing. After “Jadilah Legenda,” our second single was hook-filled “Sunset di Tanah Anarki” (which I dedicated to the unsung heroes: Munir, Wiji Thukul, Aidit, Tan Malaka, and more). Musically and emotionally, the album translated our ideas very well, perhaps better than we thought it was going to be.

The lyrics on this album are more socially conscious than your previous output.
Musically speaking, at this point we didn’t really care about genres and chose to focus on the substance and essence of punk itself instead. It ain’t a genre, it’s a way of life. You know you are a punk when your enemy is bigger than you.

They say timing is everything. This album was about timing at its best. I have zero faith in religion but I believe the universe had aligned for Bali. In 2014, when we started the holy war against the Benoa Bay reclamation and this album reached the height of its popularity. It goes without saying that we all know who’s behind the destructive project. Only the fearless with nothing to lose can stand against them.

Thanks to this album, Bali’s fight got heard and became bigger. However every fight has its consequences. Slowly, we got banned from playing shows and there were some intimidation acts as well. We used our free time to find ways to survive without polluting our dignity, and, of course, worked on a new album. This disaster made the bond between Bobby, Eka, and myself stronger. As a band, as a gang, as brothers, and as Balinese. Now, we are working on our ninth album. The fight against the Benoa reclamation project—a project that will destroy our hometown—is still going. It’s hard to make an album that isn't angry at a time like this. But love is the only reason we fight. Love is actually the reason for everything we do. "Angkara cinta" (Angry Love) would make a great name for our new album, no?