Biohazard: “Everybody wants you to believe what they believe because they think they’re right.”

After more than a decade apart, Biohazard have reunited with their original lineup and a renewed sense of purpose. The legendary New York hardcore band, who helped define the genre’s crossover sound through the 1990s, return with their first new album in over ten years, Divided We Fall Reconnecting the energy of their early years with the perspective gained from time away, the record sees Evan Seinfeld, Billy Graziadei, Bobby Hambel, and Danny Schuler confronting the modern world much as they always have, through honesty, aggression, and reflection.

The band’s latest single, Fuck the System, embodies that message. A defiant wake-up call wrapped in Biohazard’s trademark intensity, it questions conformity, manipulation, and the growing divide across societies on both sides of the Atlantic. For Seinfeld, the song and album alike are about accountability, looking inward, resisting polarization, and searching for truth amid chaos. Now based in Mexico, Seinfeld reflects on how travel, self-awareness, and time away from the industry have shaped his worldview, grounding the band’s return in a deeper sense of clarity and purpose.

In our latest Cover Story, V13 sat down with Evan Seinfeld to discuss Divided We Fall, the personal and political themes behind the record, and the renewed chemistry that brought Biohazard back together. From reflections on society’s growing disconnect to the band’s commitment to authenticity and live energy, Seinfeld offers a candid look at how Biohazard have evolved, while continuing to challenge the system that inspired them from the very start.

The latest single from the new album is, ‘Fuck the System,’ which really does feel like a wake-up call of a song. I believe that’s how it’s been intended?
 
“For me, Biohazard, we’re four guys. We started on a street corner in Flatbush together.  Standing around like a bunch of knuckleheads, thinking that Brooklyn was the world. Then we travelled a little bit, and we wrote Urban Discipline after seeing that man’s inhumanity against man, and the way we’re so at odds with one another is not a local problem.

To guys from the street corner in Brooklyn, we thought we were special. Then, our global view after touring the world, State of the World Address, which literally came out of your mouth, seeing the state of the world now. Everybody has an opinion. Opinions like assholes. Everybody has one, but it doesn’t mean their opinion is right or good. Popular opinion is often swayed by issues that are tabled for us. By people in power who want us to take the bait. There are a few entities, whatever they may be, that call the shots on what everybody’s picking. One side or another. Personally, it’s not my agenda.

I spend the majority of my time solo travelling. Mexico, is my home base, although I’m an American citizen. I don’t even fucking pay attention to what’s going on. When I have to fly to the USA and I hear the conversations, I just hear everybody’s mad about something, and everybody wants you to believe what they believe because they think they’re right. Something I learned in life is that when there’s some kind of disagreement or argument, you have to decide if you wanna be right or if you wanna be happy, because rarely is it the same thing. I’m turning 58 years old in two months. I just want to be happy, bro. I don’t need you to fucking believe anything.

I’m more interested in the spiritual side of people. I’ve gone down a deep rabbit hole of journey inward. Change in the world starts with ourselves. I’m focused on self-development and trying to be a better version of myself. Trying to inspire other people to be mindful.

I wasn’t always mindful, but you get a stop and look at yourself. It can be a rude awakening sometimes because we have a lot of us, me included, who can lack self-awareness. 
I was on the way here to this interview, and I was in the car with Carlos. He’s my driver. Carlos is Mayan, who grew up here in, and a guy was lying on the side of the road, just lying there. In downtown LA, people stepped right over homeless people like they were a piece of garbage in the street. That’s the culture. If you stopped to help a homeless person or offer them some help, other non-homeless people would say, What’s wrong with them there? 

My heart stopped. We stopped the car. We got out/ We woke the guy up; he was drunk, and he passed out there in the middle of the night. We gave him some money to get a taxi, and we helped him up. It’s gotta start… anybody who wants to affect change, it’s gotta start with us. This is where I’m at, the album, the song, ‘Fuck The System’, it is just to question everything. Don’t take the bait. Don’t tell me who’s left. Don’t tell me who’s right. The party system you have in the UK is very similar to that in America. Everybody pick a side.”

You’re not allowed to have your own ideas. If your ideas don’t fit in this box of a set of ideas that were curated by some people with their own agenda, you’re fucked up. So many people have this fascist attitude that supersedes politics. That’s narcissistic. If you don’t fucking believe what I believe, fuck you, man.” 

“Something I learned in life is that when there’s some kind of disagreement or argument, you have to decide if you wanna be right or if you wanna be happy, because rarely is it the same thing.”

Interestingly, you mentioned how things have been moving into this almost fascist realm on a global level. It feels like we haven’t learned from the past in a weird kind of way, and we continue to make the same mistakes again and again. The single tackles themes of divide and control, and this almost ties in with the title of the record, Divided We Fall, which echoes this sentiment. How much of this record reflects Biohazard’s view on society at the moment, being manipulated?

“All of it. It’s like a concept album about reaching inside yourself, finding your truth, and not marching to the beat of somebody else’s drum because it’s what everybody else is doing. Change comes from brave people being willing to be laughed at, ridiculed, and being on the receiving end of peer pressure.

This mob mentality exists. At the fucking racism in America. Fucking disgusting. It’s hard for me because me and Danny went to the same school as kids, and we grew up in a multiracial neighbourhood, and we remember the seventies and the eighties when people were overtly racist. Everybody was so proud of their racism. White and black people. We were kids who had friends that were black and Hispanic and Asian and Indian, and lived in fucking New York City as the melting pot of the world. People are so focused on whether you are like them. Are we the same? There’s this whole secret thing of like, ‘Hey, I’m Christian and you’re Christian. We share a set of ideas. I know I can trust you now,’ and it’s a step in the right direction because, really, we need to focus on our similarities, not our differences.

That’s the point. There’s this idea that everybody’s just looking for what’s wrong in the world. People walk into a room to assess the situation, and if it’s up to their expectations. This is the post-pandemic insanity that’s set in, where now, so many people start their sentences with, ‘I can’t believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’

Why? Why did you say that? Why can’t you believe this? What is it about the situation that you can’t believe, and what are you going to do about it? Are you going to choose to believe everything is what it is, or are you going to continue to live in disharmony with the world around you because you expected it to be another way? We expect something outside of our control to be the way we want it to be. Wow. We’re fucked up.”

V13 Cover Story #112 – Biohazard

Biohazard have always been quite outspoken on social and political issues, as you’ve already highlighted here. When you look back at songs from the past, like ‘Punishment’ and ‘Shades of Grey,’ do you feel the world has changed for the better or the worse since those messages hit?

“I don’t know. I think the technology has twisted us up. It’s hard, and my look is skewed. I’m looking at the younger generation trying to understand, it’s weird. I have a lot of young people around me. My son is 30, and he’s a really prolific artist. He’s making his album right now, and he also works for Biohazard. I see the way he and his friends operate. I run a big men’s program down here in Mexico that we do pop-up meetings all over the world where men sit and share our feelings, so I kind of know what goes on in the minds of men, and I feel like there’s a lot of us. I’ve gotten away from family and from friend groups that get together and do things, and everybody’s more like in a group text and overthinking what they’re gonna say because they wanna know how it’s gonna be received.

Everyone’s asking, does this sound like I’m a weak person? Does this sound like I’m needy? Does this sound like I’m not cool? The advent of social media and everybody accepting that everybody has an opinion about everything you say and do has made people overthink and become guarded. We get far away from our authentic selves. I think our authenticity is where that’s the truth of who we are as humans. I think we get very far away from that. We spend a lot of time on our phones. Spend a lot of time online escaping reality, so to answer your question, I think that the younger generations are kinder people.

I feel like people are getting better, but the way we interact has gotten worse. This is not a bleak picture. I’m a positive-minded person. I’m not just complaining about it. I’m asking, what do we do? I’m in the solution. The solution is to live in your truth and have a life that’s fulfilled because when you have a fulfilled life, you have a high vibration, and you lift the people around you, and you’re not a grumbling complainer. If everybody in the world could listen to themself for a whole day, me included, we might be fucking appalled at the things that come out of our mouths and the things we say.

“I think our authenticity is where that’s the truth of who we are as humans. I think we get very far away from that. ”

If we analyse it, we’d say, ‘Wow, you have a complete negative and poverty mindset. You’re only focused on what you don’t have, what you’re not getting. You have no gratitude for what you do have. You’re not happy, you’re dissatisfied with your own life, although you have a lot of things that you could be grateful for. Maybe the only thing you’re missing in your life is gratitude.’” 

I really dig that. In the bleakness of a lot of what goes on, that is really quite profound and actually quite uplifting. Getting back to the album, it’s the first Biohazard record in over a decade, and it’s with the original lineup as well, which is an even bigger gift for fans. What was the turning point that made you all come back together?

“Once again, talking about authenticity, we hadn’t spoken in years. I was off doing my own thing when the band broke up. I left the band. They continued for a year or two, and then they broke up and the band was on a hiatus for, I don’t know, ten years. If you haven’t evolved after ten to twelve years, something is wrong. We’re not always evolving if we’re not conscious. I needed to do my own growth and evolution and learning to let go of things in the past and look at the opportunity for what it is and how grateful I am for the chance to play with these amazing brothers and musicians who’re so talented that we get together and do something magical, and the timing just felt right.
 
I ran into Danny’s brother at the airport. Next thing I know, I’m on the phone with Danny, on the phone with Billy, with Bobby. I’m meeting up with Billy in LA in person, and we decide, let’s get together and jam and see what the vibe is. We did, and then the next thing we knew, we had a manager and we had an agent and we were getting presented offers for festivals.

We got out there and we were like, holy fuck, we’re better than we were before. This is really rare. A lot of people make a joke. It was like a time capsule. You buried it. You bring it up, and these guys are still in great shape. Make it still jump up and down and, fuck. I sing better now than I used to, and I play better now than I used to. I can say that about the other guys as well. We spent a decade honing our craft with musicians. We weren’t planning any of this. It just organically happened, came together like Voltron. 

I’m so hyped on the new album. My favourites change month by month. I’m really curious to see what happens when we play ‘Fight to Be Free’ live because it’s like such a chunky, mechanical song. It’s strong, it’s powerful. I believe that’s gonna move the people. That’s what we do. It was like being able to go back and make Urban Discipline over again now with the knowledge of how to touch the crowd, how to get people to feel something.”