Al Barile, SSD Guitarist and Straight Edge Icon, Dies at 63

Officially formed in Boston in the summer of 1981, SS Decontrol (short for Society System Decontrol) featured Barile on guitar alongside singer David “Springa” Spring, bassist Jamie Sciarappa, and drummer Chris Foley. Although Foley was the only member who previously knew how to play an instrument, the band barreled ahead, borrowing money from Barile’s parents to record their debut album, The Kids Will Have Their Say, in 1982. Barile started the record label Xclaim! to put out the LP, but Ian MacKaye was such a fan that he offered to co-release The Kids Will Have Their Say on Dischord, making it the first full-length album from a non-D.C. area band on the famous label.

Within three months, all 1,900 copies of The Kids Will Have Their Say sold out. Instead of reveling in that demand for their album or an abrupt rise in fame within the hardcore world, Barile repaid his parents for the money they loaned, SS Decontrol welcomed second guitarist Francois Levesque, and they started focusing on recording their follow-up record: 1983’s Get It Away EP. While Barile toiled away as a machinist building parts for jet engines during the day, he penned lyrics about about the importance of sticking together, the harm of smoking, and sobriety as a form of freedom during the night. Get It Away immediately became a landmark record in hardcore, and is still upheld as a classic to this day.

As the musical sound of the era began to change, so did SS Decontrol. The band shortened their name to SSD, started gravitating towards a heavy metal-leaning sound, and dabbled in unwieldy guitar solos. After signing to Modern Method in 1984, they released the How We Rock EP that year and followed it with 1985’s Break It Up. Come that November, SSD disbanded.

After SSD broke up, Barile attended Northeastern University full-time, earned a degree in mechanical engineering, and continued working at General Electric. He didn’t let the dust gather on his guitar, though; in 1993, Barile teamed up with friends to start Gage, a new alt-rock punk band. They went on to release three albums during their run: 1994’s He Will Come, 1996’s Scissor, and 1998’s Silent Movie Type.

When Gage opened for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the crowd gave a lukewarm response, however, Barile realized that the shadow of SSD would always follow him – a liberating, if potentially dispiriting, fact. “That was kind of a rude awakening: that I was in for a lot of work to get probably one-tenth the popularity of SSD,” he told Former Clarity. “This is exorcising a lot of these demons here. I realized that I could do anything, I could write the greatest album, five great albums, whatever it was, it wasn’t going to make a difference. I was Al from SSD.”