Everyone that filed into Starlite Lounge on May 12 was originally ready to hear Moving Units, the 15-year-old dance punk band, do their best Joy Division impression in the second story venue. Judging by the band’s recorded covers of post-punk staples like “Transmission” and “Digital,” Starlite was going to be a beautiful, sweaty swarm of moving bodies. Then something happened that is a little unclear and wholly disheartening.

Creux Lies lead singer Ean Clevenger addressed the notable absence during his band’s set.

“You’ll hear about it soon,” Clevenger said. That’s all he would say about Moving Units’ absence.

As of this writing, Moving Units has yet to make any statement regarding why their West Coast tour was canceled, and so it’s uncertain what happened with the band.

Most bands would be discouraged by their slot to open for a touring band change into a headlining show just three days before the set date, but Creux Lies powered through for one hell of a set.

Creux Lies | Photo by Dillon Flowers

The band, formerly known as NMBRSTTN, is a dark, brooding synthwave and post-punk outfit of the highest caliber. Their near hour-long set was made up of entirely new tracks that will eventually be a full-length to be released later this year. The five-piece glided through each song with vigor and precision. The drums hit hard, the synth-driven melodies were nothing short of infectious and the vocals were dynamic.

The whole band was brimming with nervous energy that moved over the crowd quickly. If the songs had been well-known, the room would have been a certified goth dance party.

Clevenger had some personal words to say during the Creux Lies set. He spoke about the need to end rape culture and misogyny in the punk scene and society as a whole.

“We are here to make sure that women are treated fairly and equally,” Clevenger said. “[Rape culture] is too much of a problem still.”

Creux Lies will release their debut album later this year and it’s bound to be one of the local scene’s highlights.

It’s entirely respectable that Creux Lies not only kept the show going, but were able to swiftly find a couple of acts to fill out the night with even more synths and what can only be described as a goth Batman mask.

Killer Couture | Photo by Dillon Flowers

Local duo Killer Couture opened the late night with screams, an Apple computer and a masked percussionist using a literal hunk of metal as their drum kit. The band calls themselves “electronic junk punk,” and it’s no secret as to why. Lead singer Seth Draven painted his face like he was celebrating Dia de los Muertos and wore a shirt that read, “I’m a fuckin maniac,” that came off during the first song. Everything they did was in vein of the chaos that is gladly accepted in the Sacramento punk scene.

The band even covered Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” in which they paused the song to recite the infamous Donald Trump “Grab ‘em by the pussy” tape and end the speech with a Nazi salute.

Killer Couture | Photo by Dillon Flowers

Once Killer Couture was done shocking the audience like a live dada art piece—they even said, “We’re going to make you feel real uncomfortable” at one point—Oakland post-punks Tremor Low took the stage.

Tremor Low is unsigned according to the band’s Facebook page, and that’s just a travesty. Indie labels should be throwing their money behind the Bay Area synth-loving quartet. Their music is danceable, versatile and intricate. They are even working on creating the soundtrack to an indie video game.

Tremor Low knows how to use their music to fit an ambience. They don’t necessarily need to create one, they just need to be able to get the vibe of the room to create the right mix of their tracks to fit the night. Tremor Low gauges their surroundings and puts the music to the room, not the other way around.

Tremor Low | Photo by Dillon Flowers

Whatever went on with Moving Units could have easily ruined that Friday night at Starlite Lounge. The show could have been entirely canceled. Instead, Ean Clevenger and Creux persevered with this show. Thanks to them, it paid off. Everyone at Starlite was treated to Northern California goth punks going all out for the music they love and damn was it good.

**This review first appeared in print on page 29 of issue #240 (May 22 – June 5, 2017)**

Chaos Theory

You never realize how much you don’t like loud motorcycles until you are trying to listen to a recording of an interview you did through a phone speaker. You may find yourself resenting the fact that people need to drive vehicles that are so unnecessarily loud.

Prior to this, I sat down with Barry Crider and Ean Clevenger from NMBRSTTN (Number Station) at House of Hits, relishing in the quiet and climate-controlled environment. Luckily, our bands tend to practice on the same days, so finding them was only a matter of Counting Hallways to the Left.

Clevenger (vocals/keyboard) and Crider (guitar) are growing into the band as a new beast after a series of member changes over the past several years. Clevenger has been a mainstay in the Sacramento-area punk scene, touring and playing in bands for nigh on 20 years, most notably in local bands Dance for Destruction and Pipedown.

The band has been busy; just finishing a new music video, acquiring management and securing a spot in Eugene, Oregon-based label Flossless Audio’s catalog of releases. On the heels of releasing a new EP entitled Energy and Entropy, the band is embarking upon a West Coast tour this week.

This new release rides dark and heavy with definite nods in a dark-wave direction. Fans of Haunted Horses, Have a Nice Life and even earlier AFI may find something remarkable in Energy and Entropy. Clevenger tends to paint a dystopian lyrical-landscape over endlessly eerie, delay-drenched, fuzz-decayed guitar. The vocal melodies stand in stark, airy contrast to bass lines that rattle and clamor over steady-smashing snare hits and bright synth swells. The vocal melodies are catchy and memorable, something I wasn’t expecting really for a dark punk band. It is at once abrasive and pop-oriented.

Admittedly influenced by bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode, Energy and Entropy sits comfortably among other titles on your album shelf by bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.

The band has seen multiple members come and go, but the current lineup seems to instill confidence and signal a rebirth to both Clevenger and Crider. The new EP is a result of that union. The record was recorded in Rocklin at Earth Tone Studios by recording engineer Pat Hills, also of punk band Bastards of Young.

Ean, in terms of the lyrics, what do you tend to focus on?
Ean Clevenger: When I write the songs, I sort of hone in on the lyrical concept, kind of get a feel for the music, the idea, so it works together.
Barry Crider: Either Ean will come with riffs done or a general chord structure, and I’ll take that and kind of do it in my own way, where it’s using my playing sensibilities, or make it fit kind of like what I hear in my head, or I’ll come with my own riffs and see if we can patch something together, and see how it works with the previous structure we were working on.

Were there any bands specifically that influenced your writing for guitar for this EP?
BC: The big three ‘90s shoegaze bands. I got really into that, and like Catherine Wheel, and I was kind of looking at the way the more modern guys were playing shoegaze. I was listening to Whirr and Deafheaven, and how they use these features like blend and wash, and integrating these chordal structures from bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode with these new ways, for me at least, at playing guitar, that had a lot of influence at how I came at playing parts, but mostly Ean and I did it together.

So you guys, together, kind of create the song structures and bring it to the band?
EC: Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much how it goes … I would say both of us are on a mostly equal playing platforms.
BC: Yeah we’re still trying to work it out.
EC: However, lyrically, to go back and touch on what you said before, with every project that I do, just the way that I am, I always tend to write stuff that at least creates some sort of awareness whether it’s about ourselves or the way that ourself works its way into a societal variable, or to make people aware of their actions. I mean, this is a really ambiguous way to try to state that my lyrics are philosophical and politically intended. Most of what I’m writing about these days is sort of about making people aware of the effects of technology on our society today, and what negative consequences might come out of that over the next 40 years, 50 years, and how to be conscious how we’re being involved in these worlds where smartphones drive our intelligence rather than us as human beings that sort of deal with each other.

So your band kind of exists on the edge of having a disdain for technology and but definitely relying on its usefulness …
EC: Yeah, I’m not like a primitivist. I don’t think I ever expect us all to reject [technology] entirely … but I think that technology will backtrack. I mean, nature is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most powerful elite or the poorest person, nature is going to determine what happens to us.
I mean, the power elite, which is really in control of the technology, and how technology is brought into our culture and our society, from now until the future … Technology can be a positive, but we allow the elite to control the technology and input it into a culture in a way that is only profit-seeking; that’s the alarm bell; that’s the canary in the cave, you know? We need to watch out for that, because the rich are aware that nature is the great equalizer, and if they can help find a way for us to keep on ignoring it, they’ll find a way to master it and then master us.

With the exception of your delay pedal, and guitar, what is one piece of gear that you can’t live without?
BC: I would say the fuzz is the most vital piece.

What kind of fuzz are you using?
BC: Right now I’m using this fuzz by Retro Mechanical Labs up in Portland. He’s just this builder that makes these cool fuzzes that look like they came out of the A-bomb era. They have VU meters, and it goes from totally like anywhere on the range from like Big Muff to like full on doom, destruction fuzz that sounds like your speakers are ripping out of your amp, so I picked that up and that’s been my most valuable pedal, that’s the one I touch the most.

What are you guys doing next as a band?
BC: I want to write.
EC: Yeah, full-length time.
BC: I feel like were accessing the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish with this EP, but I feel like with a full LP, we’ll have a chance to really breathe and flesh out what we’re trying to say musically and lyrically I think.
EC: I do too.
BC: It’ll give a chance to really explore, not only texture, and dynamics …
EC: And song compositions. I mean, it really is like we are a new band. Although we’ve been a band for three or four years, we’ve really just completely restarted the band, almost in a way, so we’re almost finding our identity again.

NMBRSTTN are playing an EP release show on July 13, 2015 with Seattle’s Nostalgist, Fifi and Color of Closure at The Press Club. This is a 21-and-over show and will start at 8 p.m. For more info, go to Facebook.com/thepressclub.

Local post-punk/hardcore band Number Station may be relatively new to the scene, but as the saying goes, this isn’t their first rodeo. Vocalist Ean Clevenger, formerly of Northern California hardcore punk band Pipedown, who were signed to A-F Records (Anti Flag’s label) and toured/played with bands like AFI, Thrice and The Bouncing Souls, started Number Station after he witnessed the local punk/hardcore scene “cave in on itself” while playing with his last band Dance for Destruction.

“It seemed bands, punk, hardcore, heavy, what have you, were beginning to be targeted for having too much heart and substance,” Clevenger recently told Submerge. “It was particularly hard to see the scene I was so closely connected to, one which I felt always had such a deep love for politics and meaning, drift toward a very provincial attitude.” So he said the hell with it, took some time to himself and started writing songs that were powerful and important to him regardless of what was cool at the moment. “When the energy was right, I sought out some of the best musicians I know, and luckily we were all on the same page.” Number Station is currently comprised of Clevenger and fellow seasoned musicians Theron Francis (guitar), Barry Crider (guitar/vocals), Pat Freeman (bass) and Jonathan Barklage (drums). They spent a fair amount of time working on material in the third story of a “fucked up art space” in downtown Sacramento and as Clevenger put it, “the magic seemed to happen.”

Number Station’s new five-song EP, recorded with Patrick Hills at EarthTone Studios, is sure to tickle the fancy of fans of Sacramento rock staples like Far (who they point out as a large influence) but it also will interest fans of, dare I say, screamo. Think The Used, Story of the Year, Hopesfall, bands in that vein—plenty of guitar riffage, melodic vocals with screaming mixed in, solid song structures and a mature use of dynamics. They might be one of my favorite new local bands, even if the style of music they are playing might not be the most hip thing in Sacramento at the moment. “Once the people get behind it, we can help break people out of their own fears about what is cool or approved by the status quo,” Clevenger says. “Its fucking music from the heart, we don’t care how cool we are, we just care how much we can help people be free.”

Number Station will have an EP release show on Saturday, June 1, 2013 at Assembly (1000 K Street). March Into Paris, Saint Solitaire and Goodbye Black Sky (featuring members of Will Haven) will also perform. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/numberstationtheband.