In case you haven’t picked up our last couple issues or aren’t following us online (which you should be!), Submerge turns 10 years old in 2018! Yes, time sure flies when you’re always on a deadline. It was way back on Feb. 4, 2008, when we distributed our first issue around the greater Sacramento area. To celebrate the past decade of our local music, art and culture coverage, we’re throwing a party on Saturday, Feb. 3 at Holy Diver, an all-ages music venue located at 1517 21st St. in Midtown Sacramento. It’s sure to be a good one, so keep on reading to get to know the artists playing the show, and please come on out.
SCREATURE
Genre: Dark Psych/Goth/Punk
Must Hear: Old Hand New Wave (2018, Ethel Scull Records)
Listen: Screature.bandcamp.com
Bow down. This is Screature’s world and we’re all just living in it. This local four-piece is a force to be reckoned with, and this is their moment—a dark, heavy, powerful moment. Having just seen them live in late 2017, I can say they must be experienced in person to be fully appreciated, as they are very well-rehearsed and firing on all cylinders right now. Their new album, Old Hand New Wave, was released just weeks ago on Jan. 19, and it is a fucking monster. Produced by Chris Woodhouse (known for his work with Oh Sees and Ty Segall, among many others), it is easily one of this local music geek’s favorite albums to come out of Sacramento in a long time.
“Whenever and wherever Sacramento’s Screature take the stage, they bring a 4 a.m. world of dread with them, embodying completely a dark strain of rock music that first sparked in the underground nearly 40 years ago … Play their music in a darkened bedroom, and things begin to crawl.”
— Submerge contributor Andrew Russell in his piece on Screature from issue #257. Click here to read more!
HORSENECK
Genre: Rock/Post Hardcore/Stoner Metal
Must Hear: Heavy Trip (2017, Self-released)
Listen: Horseneck.bandcamp.com
Get ready for a sweaty good time, because local headbangers Horseneck are back and ready to melt faces! Made up of members of notable Sacramento bands like Will Haven, Chelsea Wolfe, Eightfourseven and Red Host (just to name a few), Horseneck are veterans in the scene, yes; but they still rock like limber youngsters. Guitar strings might be broken, drum heads will likely be smashed, there may even be a little blood and ear plugs will most definitely be necessary. Horseneck hasn’t played a local show in many, many months, due in part to their badass drummer Jess Gowrie being out on tour for much of 2017 with the aforementioned Wolfe, so don’t miss them at our party!
“Existing somewhere within the sonic field of Murder City Devils and Red Fang, Heavy Trip sounds like a band unafraid to push the coveted tenets of heavy music to more nuanced volumes.”
— Submerge assistant editor Ryan J. Prado in his piece on Horseneck from issue #232. Click here to read more!
DESTROY BOYS
Genre: Punk/Rock
Must Hear: Sorry, Mom (2017, Uncool Records)
Listen: Destroyboys.bandcamp.com
One of the most exciting and promising young acts to come out of Sacramento in recent years, Destroy Boys are doing things the old fashioned way: playing lots of shows up and down the West Coast, winning over fans with their raw and infectious garage-punk sound, and having fun while giving zero shits. No marketing gimmicks here, folks; Destroy Boys are the real deal. Self-described as, “What would happen if Blondie stumbled into a Misfits recording session,” Destroy Boys even earned a mention in Rolling Stone by Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong in 2016, before the band’s two main members, Alexia Roditis and Vi Mayugba, had even graduated from high school! These days, they are playing as a four-piece, with Enzo from the band MT. EDDY on bass and a “very special guest playing drums.” Rumor has it Destroy Boys has been recently doing some recording in a Los Angeles studio, so we’re beyond excited to see what comes of that.
“Scrambled up, punk-ass garage rock—songs ranging from folky to full of angst and rage … Make no mistakes: The band, however wacky, loud and obnoxious, still wants to be taken seriously. They’re not just a bunch of fuckups.”
— Submerge contributor Josh Fernandez in his piece on Destroy Boys from issue #216. Click here to read more!
SAM I JAM (LE TWIST)
Genre: Electronic/Indie/Dance
Listen: Soundcloud.com/sam_i_jam
Sam I Jam is a local DJ and event curator known for his Le Twist parties inside LowBrau. Through Le Twist, he has introduced Sacramento showgoers to numerous cutting-edge touring bands that it might not have otherwise had the pleasure of being able to see, along with guest DJs and local bands. Whether it’s music, art, fashion, food, whatever, the man has exquisite taste, and we’re beyond stoked he’s on board to play some jams at our party. He’ll be downstairs setting the vibe along with special guests popping in throughout the night.
Come see all these artists and some special guests on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018, at Holy Diver for our 10-Year Anniversary Party! Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and all ages are welcome. While technically a free show, we are asking for a $5 to $10 donation at the door to raise money for a cancer charity in honor of our dearly missed assistant editor Mandy, who passed away in December 2015 after losing her battle with cancer. So please, bring some donations in Mandy’s honor! Follow us @SubmergeMag on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter for more.
Whenever and wherever Sacramento’s Screature take the stage, they bring a 4 a.m. world of dread with them, embodying completely a dark strain of rock music that first sparked in the underground nearly 40 years ago. They are the bony gait of Famine’s horse, Alice’s final rabbit-hole descent into Hades. They are the harbinger, the massacre and the holy ghost to gloat above all—play their music in a darkened bedroom, and things begin to crawl.
Formed seven years ago, partially out of a shared interest in cultish music and UFO literature, Screature has released two full-length works: their self-titled debut (2013) and Four Columns (2015). The combined effect when listened to both without interruption amounts to a monolithic, rising wail, a dance along the precipice of sanity. The lineup is so well integrated (Liz Mahoney’s foreboding wail, Chris Orr’s jagged guitar stabs, Sarah Scherer’s murky, bass-register organ and Miranda Vera’s unrelenting drumwork) that the result is a single ritualistic howl, each element overlaying the next. When combined with the right visuals, it’s hypnotic and uncanny. Just scope their video for the single “100 Lines” off of Four Columns, a disturbing transgression captured in reverse, confirming the feeling one gets zoning out to their music that time is being demolished. Whether we get the chance to unmake our evil—or merely run the risk of getting snared by it once again—is left up to question.
In the two years since their last aural/spiritual onslaught, Screature has used the live setting as a laboratory for their forthcoming release, Old Hand New Wave. In the throng of a dark venue, the power of shared presence cannot be denied, and their most powerful statements come to life here. I was lucky enough to catch them at Ace of Spades in late 2017 in a perfect trifecta of spectral aggression with Youth Code and Chelsea Wolfe (with whom Chris Orr recorded the track “Scrape” for her latest album). Although their recordings have become ever more sophisticated, Screature is first and foremost an event, in need of living conduits to spread its doom.
But if Screature’s brand of lightning can be bottled, it is under the aegis of producer Chris Woodhouse (Oh Sees, Ty Segall) who has worked with them in the past. On OHNW, he succeeds in adding a deeper sense of fury to their output.
Standout cuts like “Induction” and “North of Order” verge on industrial metal, and provoke compulsive re-listening and wild subjective imagery—a volcano erupting beneath a cemetery, say, or a colony of vampires succumbing to bacchanalian abandon before being incinerated by the sunrise. For me, the winner is the closing track, “Another Mask,” which comes charged with a maddening, insectile guitar drone that drags the listener closer to imminent possession. Though clearly a contemporary work, it could easily be a rediscovered classic from Joy Division’s Closer or an early Christian Death record. It leaves us with the troubling conviction that there is no such thing as finality, no clear delineation between descent and ascent, that one has screamed into the void only to be answered back, “Do what thou wilt.”
Below we share a brief encounter with two of the mad geniuses behind the curtain of Screature, Mahoney and Orr.
The first two singles off of Old Hand New Wave sound heavier, more doom-laden, more intense. Would you agree with that, and is there something that pushed you in this direction?
Chris Orr: I agree. This is the heaviest Screature has sounded. Part of that was Woodhouse’s heavy hand—the drums are doubled and effected, the organ’s got deeper teeth this time round. Both drums and organ are more present in the mix, which helps thicken it up. The guitars weigh a ton [with] feedback, wah, even my first guitar solo. Liz just brings the roof down on the whole affair. Her vocals are devastating on OHNW. Beware.
Liz Mahoney: I had just joined the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) when we started writing this album, so some of the lyrics reference this experience. I was initiated the day before we started recording, so that was very intense for me. I think the impact bled into my performance on the album.
How would you describe the new album title, Old Hand New Wave?
CO: It’s 1984 again; the new wave looks alot like the old wave. The title is pulled from the Hypothetical Prophets song “Person to Person.” We’re all in need of love and affection.
LM: A mask on a mask on a mask on a mask …ad infinitum. And I’m not talking about how popular cosmetic surgery is.
What were your first encounters with dark/new wave/post-punk music? Would you say you’ve been steeped in these genres your whole life?
CO: We’re all well-steeped in the genres you mention, though not exclusively, and some of us more than others. Some steeping you spend your whole life trying to shake.
LM: I definitely encountered it before I knew the terms for it. I was 5 years old when there were new wave hits playing on the radio and in all the movies I loved, but to me they were just popular music!
What drew the four of you together? Did you know each other before 2011? What were your interests when you started out?
CO: The women in our band have been friends since high school. Some of us are lovers, others are practically sisters. I’m a Louisiana transplant. But yes, all before 2011. When we started we were interested in overcoming creative blocks. Screature started as a book club/group therapy meeting once a week with drinks. We barely made it through Whitley Strieber’s Communion before we turned our focus on becoming a four-piece.
LM: I met Miranda when I was 11, Sarah when I was 13 and Christopher when I was 17. Miranda and I lived together as sisters from the first year we met until we graduated high school. We clocked a lot of hours at the Cattle Club and watching MTV. When we started, I had shifted my focus from running a live music venue, Fools Foundation, to wanting to perform.
What has been your experience performing with Chelsea Wolfe and Youth Code? What’s your method of trying out new songs live? Do you shape the songs by reading the crowd, or is there another way?
CO: Both bands seem to leave a bit of themselves on stage. The next night we witnessed them eager to get back up there and reclaim it, only to leave it behind again. That’s inspiring. I want to learn to live on stage.
LM: Such an amazing experience! We are so blessed to have such hardworking, magical people in our lives who support what we do. I am usually chomping at the bit to play a new song live, especially in the midst of still figuring it out.
You invite me over for a night of drinks, film-viewing and music listening: What is the lineup for our night in? How do you get across the ethos of Screature without using your music as reference?
CO: Hey pal, nice to see you. Tequila, soda, lemon? We’ve made one just for you. Yes, that’s Machine Gun Etiquette on the record player. Now sit on the floor, we’re watching Communion on mute!
LM: What he said!
Experience Screature live at the Submerge Mag 10 Year Anniversary Party on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2018, at Holy Diver (1517 21st St.). Also performing will be Horseneck and Destroy Boys. The show is free with a $10 suggested donation at the door, with a portion of the proceeds going to a cancer charity. All ages are welcome, doors open at 7:30 p.m. Old Hand New Wave comes out Jan. 19 on Ethel Scull Records. Learn more at Facebook.com/screaturesound or Screature.bandcamp.com.
**This interview first appeared in print on pages 22 – 23 of issue #257 (Jan. 15 – 29, 2018)**
Music is awesome, isn’t it? Whether intentional or not, music is a big part of everyone’s lives. It’s all around us: on TV, in ads, in our headphones and earbuds attached to our smart phones with streaming audio. Chances are if you’re reading Submerge, you love music too. Even though there is more great music being made than ever and access to it is becoming easier and easier, it’s still sometimes hard to know where to look to discover new tunes. Enter Submerge’s annual year-end best-of list! In 2013 there were so many amazing albums released that we actually expanded this story to feature the top 30 instead of the top 20. You’ll notice that a lot of this list, approximately 50 percent, is local. That’s not by mistake. That’s not because we tried to include local albums just to round out our list. No, we just have that much talent right here in our own city.
Compiled by all of our contributing writers and staff, we hope this list will help you discover something new. And because all of our attention spans are so short nowadays (are you still with us?), we kept our reviews to 140 characters or less, because we all know that reading someone’s short, to-the-point Twitter post is a helluva lot better than reading someone’s four-paragraph-long Facebook rant. Now, set forth and discover some new jams! Who knows, your new favorite band/album may be waiting for you somewhere on this list.
30.
Danny Brown
Old
Fool’s Gold
What can you say about Danny Brown? He’s rap’s Jim Morrison, The Lizard King. Old has been on repeat since the day I got it. And will be.
29.
Run the Jewels
Run the Jewels
Fool’s Gold
As dope as promised, it gets no better than this. Killer Mike is at his best, and El-P provides the perfect sonic-scape for destruction.
28.
Biosexual
The Window Wants the Bedroom
Debacle
Fantastically produced debut album of avant-garde supergroup featuring the great Jocelyn of ALAK, brother Michael RJ Saalman and Zac Nelson.
27.
Paper Pistols
Deliver Us From Chemicals
Self-released
2 can do it all. Skinner & Lydell are all binary: beard/belle; drum/voice; age/youth; decadent/austere; beautiful/music.
26.
EGG
Overly Easy
Self-released
If Cake and Phish had a baby? Close, but doesn’t quite describe this amazing band. An infectious sound that makes you wanna get up and GO.
25.
M.I.A.
Matangi
N.E.E.T.
M.I.A. is pissed off, and still fresh as ever, rapping over aggressive beats and keeping the Sri Lankan sound alive.
24.
The Men
New Moon
Sacred Bones
Brooklyn noise punks retreat to a rural cabin, finding a balance between a Mudhoney dustup and a Grateful Dead peace-in.
23.
Gauntlet Hair
Stills
Dead Oceans
Gauntlet Hair dropped the dopest, weirdest album we’ve heard in a minute and then immediately broke up. Spacey, strange, with a dash of pop.
22.
Jacuzzi Boys
Jacuzzi Boys
Hardly Art
The Miami trio switched things up with a more polished than pure garage sound. Still playful and infectious, just adding new dimensions.
21.
Gap Dream
Shine Your Light
Burger
Mid-tempo sex appeal born of psychedelic melancholy and rock ‘n’ roll disco; drugs, dance, drugs, booze, dance, fuck.
20.
Miley Cyrus
Bangerz
RCA
Crying cats ftw! The most dissed/discussed AoY; w/ hits by Dr. Luke, Pharrell & Mike WiLL, twerk! This is Miley’s year.
19.
Chuuwee
Thrill
Self-released
With rap albums you usually either get bangin’ trap beats OR real lyricism. On Thrill you get both. One of Sac’s best in top form.
18.
Century Got Bars & Bru Lei
Midtown Marauders
Self-released
A flawless Tribe tribute and audible tour of this fair city’s nucleus. If you’ve spent more than five seconds in Midtown, you want this.
17.
David Bowie
The Next Day
RCA
Charming, confidently progressive with kick-ass guitar solos. It’s classic Bowie with a modern, enthusiastically suspended twist.
16.
Black Sabbath
13
Vertigo/Universal
Pure smokin’ stoner doom rock at its finest! Timeless lyrics and riffs. This album picks up where the band left off with Ozzy 30 years ago.
15.
Nails
Abandon All Life
Southern Lord
Yeah, it’s a light version of Unsilent Death (the most brutal album ever), but it’s still hard and evil enough to kill your grandma.
14.
Bombino
Nomad
Nonesuch
A perfect album for trekking the Sahara. Blues guitar, smooth Tuareg vox, steady rhythm. Produced by Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys).
13.
Meat Puppets
Rat Farm
Megaforce Records
Return to form for desert-baked Brothers Kirkwood. Simple, honest, catchy… Bare bones and poignant. May the Puppets live forever.
12.
Foals
Holy Fire
Transgressive
With Holy Fire, these British boys delivered their most focused (and heaviest) album to date, bringing a new meaning to “modern rock.”
11.
City of Vain
Back Against the Wall
Self-released
Sacto punkers bring forth one of the best punk rock records of the year, not just locally, but globally. Warm tones and classic style!
10.
Middle Class Rut
Pick Up Your Head
Bright Antenna
More fierce rock ‘n’ roll from Sac’s Dynamic Duo…and we <3 it! Grimy grooves and distorted chaos mark MC Rut’s best album to date.
09.
Horseneck
The Worst People Ever
Artery
Booze-fueled bone-breaking sludge metal with a sense of humor. This EP gives Sac’s heavy music fans something to smile about.
08.
Tel Cairo
Voice of Reason
Illicit Artists
Tel Cairo is the best kind of weird. If Kurt Cobain made hip-hop music in space it would sound like Tel Cairo’s Voice of Reason.
07.
Foxygen
We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic
Jagjaguwar
Flamboyantly lilting pop with occasional Jagger twists; creates proneness for nymph-like prancing, sometimes mincing.
06.
Death Grips
Government Plates
Self-released
A dizzying mix of poetry, yelling and other stuff people hate. But in the eloquent words of MC Ride, “Fuck your idols/ Suck my dick.”
05.
Screature
Screature
Ethel Scull
A solid debut by the Sacramento quartet. Guttural lyrical torrents coalesce with shadowy, rhythmic tones, blending into a dynamic framework of sound.
04.
!!!
THR!!!ER
Warp Records
Your favorite dance-punk band is back again with more rump shaking, baby making, all-night-party-inducing tunes. Instant classic!
03.
Cove
Candles
Self-released
It’s an insightful album. An emotional excavation replete with lyrical fluidity, melodic flirtations and a groovy aftertaste.
02.
Doombird
Cygnus
Eightmaps
Vivid percussive landscapes seen through a celestial-tinged lens. Spacey harmonies embedded within hypnotic textures and bright timbres.
01.
Chelsea Wolfe
Pain Is Beauty
Sargent House
A beautifully haunting album. Wolfe’s ghostly vocals, layered with cascading guitars, violins and synths, will put you in a trance.
Chelsea Wolfe’s music is a study in contrasts
I remember watching Chelsea Wolfe perform many years ago at a small café in Sacramento. The sound system was old and out of date, patrons talked too loud, blenders whirred maniacally and Wolfe had that look in her eye like she wanted to annihilate the world, one human being at a time. Her delicate face–deep set eyes and thick, pouty lips–is good for emoting, and ultimately bad at hiding emotion. Right when she began playing, the microphone cut out and then buzzed, snapped and failed again. Finally, after the sound crackled for the last time, she mumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like, “Fuck this,” threw down her guitar and walked off the stage. Perhaps it’s the sadist in me, but I love watching that kind of shit–artists in turmoil; the very real moment between creation and insanity; the instance of the gentle poetic soul breaking clean in two. While some say a tantrum is tedious and unprofessional, I say a good mental breakdown is simply part of the show–a bonus performance. This elegantly dramatic mental collapse is something Wolfe seems to have perfected over the years, but it’s not something that she’s exactly proud of.
“It used to be really bad,” Wolfe says of her stage frustration. “I would play two or three songs and have to leave the stage. I didn’t like playing in an atmosphere where I didn’t feel welcomed, either by the sound person or venue or crowd–or myself, even–so in the past I’d just say ‘fuck it,’ and be done.”
But over the years, and perhaps even despite herself, Wolfe has been mesmerizing audiences, first capturing our attention with her 2010 release, The Grime and the Glow, a collection of catchy but distorted and unsettling tracks, like “Moses,” which reaches Black Sabbath levels of fuzz cut in half by Wolfe’s starkly clean, yet heavily reverb-y vocals. A year later, Wolfe would release Apokalypsis (again on Pendu Sound Recordings), which continues the musician’s penchant for darkness, yet pays strict attention to texture, both sonically and emotionally–the music displays a certain amount of gloom, but isn’t necessarily gloomy, and it’s Biblically referential without being obvious.
“I was religious during my formative years, so I think that sort of Biblical language permeated my way of thinking,” Wolfe explains. “Don’t read that as me having any sort of religious agenda, though. I am just fascinated by Biblical imagery, as well as Nordic and Greek mythologies. I’m into the ancient and the modern and constantly trying to reconcile them within myself and my songs.”
It’s “doom folk,” as some call it–a layered exploration of complexity caught somewhere in between PJ Harvey’s angelic call of the soothsayer and Gorgoroth’s wickedly dirty odes to Satan. In fact, Wolfe’s version of Norwegian black metal band Burzum’s “Black Spell of Destruction,” with unintelligible chanting and grating repetition, manages to sound less pop-y and a hundred times scarier than the original (if that’s at all possible). Wolfe’s fascination with the complexity of existence not only manifests in her eerie and beautiful music, but in pretty much everything she does.
“I’m inspired by a macro and micro view of the world…questioning everything from big to small. I like to explore contrasts: idealism and reality, physicality and spirituality, light and death,” she says. “Answers come in the form of epiphanies for me. Something about putting things into words and phrases, into a piece of work like a song or album, helps me to make sense of it. There was a perfect line in [Tom Robbins’ novel] Jitterbug Perfume: ‘The ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.’”
As for the reception of Wolfe’s music, it’s been overwhelmingly positive, from a glowing review by The Needle Drop’s feisty music nerd Anthony Fantano to an NPR review that literally left the writer scratching his head in blissful confusion (“When the slow-burning bummer that is Apokalypsis hits your misery nerve in clear focus, it hits hard,” wrote Lars Gotrich).
All-in-all, not bad for a Sacramento girl, right? Which then begs the next question: What’s the deal with artists living in Sacramento and then ditching it for Los Angeles? (Hear that, Trash Talk?)
“I took my time finding my voice and figuring out what the fuck I was doing with my music in Sacramento,” Wolfe says. “Sacramento is a great place to do that because there are very supportive folks there and a great community of musicians, but it was time for me to leave. I’ve always been an outcast musically anyway, so I don’t think it mattered where I lived; I just needed to be in a place where I was around people who were inclined to work and get things done in music and art.”
That said, Wolfe’s Sept. 5 return to Harlow’s in Sacramento (where she’ll play songs from both The Grime and the Glow and Apokalypsis, as well as new material, plus a few tracks from an upcoming acoustic album, Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, due Oct. 16, 2012) brings forth a bit of moody ambivalence.
“I don’t feel particularly excited or not excited for playing in my hometown, but I do look forward to seeing friends and playing music,” Wolfe says. “I only wanted to do the show if I could put together the bill, because I’ve been wanting to play with Screature for a while now and I really didn’t want to come play with bands I’ve never heard before.”
And that answer–full of truth, edge and hesitance–is precisely the angst-ridden Chelsea Wolfe that we have come to adore: the kind who uses (in her own words) “harsh, King James phrasing,” the kind who colors the world in the black paint of truth netted with a laced veil of brusque melodrama…that is the Chelsea Wolfe we’re paying to see, whether we admit it or not. But the stage antics–the nervous rage, the pissy demeanor, the throwing of the instrument in a tantrum of mental anguish–are things of the past; it’s all under control, she says.
“Over the years…I challenged myself to stick it out even if I wanted nothing more than to get off stage,” Wolfe assures. “Now I only get weirded out if there are technical problems, but I still force myself to keep going and lose myself into the music no matter what’s happening around me.”
Chelsea Wolfe will play Harlow’s on Sept. 5, 2012 with Screature and ESS. Tickets are $10 for this 21-and-over show that gets underway at 9:30 p.m. To preorder a copy of Unknown Rooms and check out a sample song, go to http://chelseawolfe.bandcamp.com/.
