dane and gabbers damn it all

Zero’s newest video release delivers a familiar vibe that stays true to the roots of what made the brand an industry leader throughout the late-’90s and the noughties. It has a homespun feel – like being sucked through a skull-shaped portal to the heyday of heavy rail chomping stunts, quick-cut editing, with a classic rock and punk soundtrack, while captured on the trusty VX1000.

The Zero crew are certainly not trying to reinvent the wheel of skate videos. They deliver hard-out hammers the best way they know how. Dane Burman and Gabriel Summers close the film in sweet succession and do Australia bloody proud. I caught up with the two heroes of Zero for a chat about the heavy slog and body-breaking effort they went through for Zero’s eighth full-length flick. Read on or be damned if you don’t.

Yo Dane, where are you, and how have you been of late?

Hey Trent, I’m still living in California, down in San Diego again. Back to my Zero roots. I’ve been well. Finally feeling good after a bad knee injury and getting back to 100 per cent, trying to keep filming and skating.

You must feel relieved that Damn It All is done and dusted. Are you happy with your part?

I am relieved. Mainly because of my knee. The whole time filming, I was dealing with coming back from a torn PCL and patellar tendon. I just tried to skate through the pain and film what I could. It only really felt good over the past six months or so. I was stressed that I was going to let everyone down, but it’s all over now, and I got a few things that I feel saved [my part] a little. I’m just looking forward to working on something new now that I’m feeling good again.

Using Minor Threat’s “Straight Edge” in your part seems perfectly fitting for you. I suppose you and Ian MacKaye probably have a lot in common being straight-edge angry dudes who don’t mince words. Are you a big fan of Minor Threat and Fugazi?

I’ve always been a Fugazi fan and always been down for some Minor Threat. Obviously, it’s fun music to get down to. My roommate and team manager, Kurt Hodge, suggested the song and I was into it. I don’t really like calling myself straight edge. I think it’s weird that people need to associate themselves with a group of people to do what they want. But I get it, and I like the song. It worked out.

I thought your section was over after the first track, a Greco Misled Youth-length part, but I was more than pleased to hear the sweet sound of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ “The Singer” kick in as you eat shit on a heavy boardslide. Had you been planning on using “The Singer” for a while?

I’ve always wanted to skate to Nick Cave, just because his music has always had an impact on me, but it’s kind of hard to skate to because a lot of his songs are storytelling. You get lost in the story a lot, and not always the tune, which can be strange in a skate video. But in that song, “The Singer”, the story resonated with me, and it has a nice slow, heavier beat, so I think it works.

I remember your first Zero part in Strange World was a track picked by Jamie [Thomas], and you were off it, right?

I wasn’t off it. I just didn’t care too much about the song. It wasn’t really my type of music, and I had never heard the band. But I was the new guy and just let them do what they wanted and was happy to be there.

Have you had input in the editing process for your Zero parts since then?

Yeah, since that, I’ve always been around the editing and given input with my parts and the rest of the video.

JT called the premiere “a preview, not a premiere” at the prem and claimed the vid was only “half-baked”. It wasn’t a rendered version but played from an editing timeline, yeah? What went wrong?

Nothing really went wrong. It was finished, but needed some tidying up. We ran out of time editing