A Dive Into The Deep End With Pool Kids

Photo By David Williams

The art of being a showstopper is not something that is easily quantifiable. There’s no math equation or magic formula you can use to determine when an artist attains this mythical status, but you probably know it when you see it. In a world where inflation has hit concert ticket prices harder than a Mike Tyson hook to the ribcage, fans have to pick and choose which shows they attend now more than ever. People are looking for a reason to leave their house, and when they do, they want to have an experience. That’s where the showstopper comes in, giving the audience an uncompromising performance that’s unmatched by their peers. The audience wants something memorable that they can tell their friends about — something they didn’t know they needed, maybe something they didn’t even know was possible. 

That’s where Christine Goodwyne, Caden Clinton, Andy Anaya, and Nicolette Alvarez enter the conversation. The quartet hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, make up the rock band Pool Kids. I had my head blown off seeing them perform their latest record, Easier Said Than Done, on their headlining tour this past fall. I can confirm that a song like “Leona Street,” with its pop-flair chorus, hits just as hard in person as it does on the record. In comparison to their first two albums, which leaned into the group’s mathy emo tendencies, I get the sense that Pool Kids allowed themselves more freedom on Easier Said Than Done, which also means they had new avenues to go absolutely batshit on stage.

Photo By David Williams

In concert, the band elevates their music in the best way possible, bringing an unlimited amount of energy to the stage and demanding it in return from the crowd. This was a throwback type of performance from a band that is clearly a master of their craft and fan engagement. Goodwyne had the fans in the palm of her hand as she crowd surfed and made her way to the middle of the room, essentially singing in the eye of the storm. All the while, Anaya was gesturing to his ears for more noise from the fans, like he was mid-80s Hulk Hogan hyping up the crowd.

Even with their fierce and precise instrumentation, there’s an unpredictability with Pool Kids that makes them worth the price of admission. At the show I went to, Christine Goodwyne got engaged on stage with her now-fiancé. If that isn’t unpredictable, then I don’t know what is. 

Last fall, before their sold-out show at Lincoln Hall in Chicago, I got a chance to have a photoshoot around the venue with Pool Kids. Christine Goodwyne responded to my questions via email about everything from their approach to live shows to dream bands to tour with and getting engaged on stage. 

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Photo By David Williams

SWIM: What's the last show you saw that lit a competitive spirit and made you want to practice harder for the next time you went to the studio? 

GOODWYNE: I don't know that I feel “competitive” in those situations; I see it more as feeling inspired. I love it when I go to a show and find myself feeling inspired and motivated to get home and work. I definitely felt that way watching Foxing at Thalia Hall, which was literally the last show we played. I always say that I feel inspired by so many of the bands we play with, but I really do mean it in a literal sense. I see other people’s ideas and the way they do things then it makes me feel excited to go back home and work on ways to make our show better. 

SWIM: Is how you approach creating music today different than how you approached your debut record in 2018? 

GOODWYNE: Definitely. For our debut record, I was trying to finish it as quickly as possible and didn't really know how to pick a song apart or experiment with structure and presentation. I would just kind of write random guitar parts and smash them together, which I think gave that record a more math-rock feel that some people like. I also wrote most of the vocals after figuring out the guitars. Now I figure out vocals as I’m fleshing out the guitar and general structure. I also tinker with the songs a lot more before deciding on what to bring to the band, and then we have fun tinkering even more as a full band. But yeah, the biggest difference is definitely that it’s not just Caden and me anymore, so there’s a lot more insight and input and exploration with all four of us once we get in a room together.

SWIM: Easier Said Than Done has countless fun, sing-along choruses, with the standout for me being "Leona Street." Are there any bands you listened to growing up that influenced how you create a fun pop song? 

GOODWYNE: I didn’t really start getting into pop music until my adult life, I would say, a few years after starting the band. I had a lot of catching up to do, I got really into Charli XCX and Lady Gaga, and now I can appreciate a lot of Taylor Swift, too. But when I started getting into that kind of music, that’s definitely when I started to pay more attention to song structure and writing an actual chorus, and what makes a chorus or a hook “catchy.”

SWIM: Can you tell me about your vision going into making Easier Said Than Done: the topics you wanted to approach and how you wanted the songs to sound sonically?

GOODWYNE: I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down before writing a record and decided ahead of time what topics I want to approach. I feel like I’m just always slowly writing songs, and whichever ones aren’t ready in time for the studio on the current record just get carried over to the next. As far as subject matter, not to get all Rick Rubin or spiritual about it, but I sort of feel like I don’t have much of a choice in what ideas come to me. I’m kind of just at the mercy of whatever lyric ideas pop into my head, and then I just have to take that and run with it. I never in a million years would have planned to write a song like “Dani,” which is about a childhood friend’s trauma, but the lyrics just started coming to me, so I was like “welp, here we go I guess.”

SWIM: Your live show is an incredibly fun experience worth the price of admission alone. In this day and age, shows are about stage presence and keeping the fans engaged, which you all seem to be students of the game in that regard. How did you all develop your stage presence? Is it something that happened naturally, or did it take time to develop? 

GOODWYNE: That’s a great question. We actually used to be super stiff on stage, and I remember the moment where that really changed. We were going on one of our first tours with Mom Jeans, and a friend who had also toured with them was like, “You just have to go absolutely crazy on stage to keep their attention. They see you as a barrier standing in between them and who they really want to see, so you just have to go absolutely crazy.” We all sort of looked at each other before going on stage and were like, “fuck it, who cares if we look stupid, let’s just go fucking crazy.” Andy already had a great stage presence at that point because he had been touring for a long time before that, but I remember that show being sort of a breakthrough for Nicolette and I. We realized how much better it made the show, and we just started doing that every time. 

Photo By David Williams

SWIM: Who is on your dream list of bands you would love to tour with in the future? 

GOODWYNE: I’ll spare you the list of 100 bands, but ones we’ve been talking about more recently have definitely been Wet Leg, Mannequin Pussy, HAIM, Amyl and the Sniffers, Japanese Breakfast, and Wednesday… there are so many more, though. 

SWIM: Biopics seem to be the latest rage recently from movies about Bob Dylan, Pavement and now Bruce Springsteen in the past year. What's your favorite music biopic film and why?

GOODWYNE: I sort of live under a rock and don’t think I’ve seen any true biopics, but we definitely love a good music doc. We LOVE Some Kind of Monster, as well as Mistaken for Strangers, both of which were shown to us by Andy.

SWIM: Lastly, congratulations to Christine on getting engaged at the Chicago show! What an amazing moment that must have been. Can you describe to me the emotions you were going through up there on stage while everything was happening? Did you have a heads-up that something was up, or were you totally in shock? 

GOODWYNE: Me AND THE BAND both had no idea it was going to happen, haha. He didn’t want there to be any secrets in the van because he knew I would grill everyone if I sensed something was up, so he really kept it a secret. I did know to expect a proposal within the year or so, and I had even dropped hints about wanting an on-stage proposal… but for whatever reason, it just did NOT cross my mind to expect it that day. I was watching him sing and dance for the whole set, and then he disappeared for like the last three songs. I asked the crowd, “Where is Nick??!” and when he walked up onto the stage, I thought he was just showing me ‘here I am, babe!’ but right before he grabbed the mic, I saw that his facial expression was very focused instead of funny, and that’s when I realized what was happening haha. He nailed it. 

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David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

Ben Quad – Wisher | Album Review

Pure Noise Records

Ben Quad are back. Not only are they back, but they’re fucking huge. Or at least that's what it feels like for those of us in the emo world, anyway.

I first discovered Ben Quad because I was endeared by the idea of a new band using so many interesting tricks and flips from the same dust I grew up in. They’re one of several Oklahoma acts from the past several years to break out of their local scene to more renowned heights, alongside acts like CLIFFDIVER, Chat Pile, and Red Sun. What makes Oklahoma such an outpost for this style of music? I am not quite sure, but earlier this year, I was in Ben Quad’s home state for a couple of concerts. Both nights, I stood outside my hotel room, looking at the way the sky never ends there. If I grew up under that sky, I would try to absorb the world with my guitars, too. 

Wisher is technically Ben Quad’s sophomore album. But between 2022’s I'm Scared That’s All There Is and present day, the band has unleashed a steady flow of releases that tightened their sound and expanded their ambitions. First, they released “You’re Part of It,” a standalone screamo single that felt like an instant addition to the Emo Canon. Then there was Hand Signals, a tour split, and finally Ephemera, their 2024 post-hardcore EP where they cited groups like Underoath and Norma Jean as inspiration. Wisher elaborates on the Ben Quad that Ephemera left behind, offering something not quite as genre-hopping but upholding that harsher sonic twist with even more experimentation. 

Ben Quad have described their new album as “post-emo,” a kind of theoretical subgenre that I’ve heard described as “emo but better” or “not real” depending on who you ask. Whatever it is, it marks a departure from the rules of the original emo sound and a step further into the depths of rock.

Wisher is an album that spans the parking lots of Warped Tour metalcore, the terrain of midwest emo, and the highs of country lilts, all with dizzying guitar tapping, frenzied screaming, and a desperate demand for something better than this. The record is full of “what-ifs,” both sonically and lyrically. What if we dialed this amp to eleven? What if we added tooth-grinding bass here? What if I told them I’m sorry? What if they told me they’re sorry? Say you’re sorry, you’ve been so hard on me. You. You. You.

The album begins with a banjo’s twang on “What Fer,” floating over the atmosphere that Ben Quad are desperately trying to find the limits of. The instrument bends with the breeze before ripping into the sky with electric guitars playing so ferociously you worry they might summon a lightning strike. The energy they build here shocks everything directly into “Painless” where Sam Wegrzynski begs some faceless other to “please just tell me how you’re doing” while Edgar Viveros’ guitar arcs around the song.

It’s at this point that I realized this album is so big that I had to talk to them about it.

Swim Into The Sound: This album sounds massive. As a long-time Ben Quad listener, I have always appreciated how flexible y’all are in your sound, but this is the biggest the band has sounded yet. I know you spoke a bit about the expansive studio access inspiring some of the sound, but what about the scale? 

Edgar Viveros: A lot of that has to do with Jon Markson’s magic. We really wanted to go with someone who could have a major impact on the production of the record. We walked into that studio with the intention of writing bigger choruses, and he knew exactly how to make them sound massive. We had so many new direct influences on the record, too — country, electronic, pop-rock. We knew early on that we wanted to have songs that got as big as a Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls, or Killers track.

No matter whether the band was tapping out Midwest Emo, post-hardcore, or playing along to an Always Sunny clip, Viveros’ guitar playing has always been a beloved aspect of Ben Quad. His style is very distinct in this era of post-emo: irrevocably fast, intricate, and loud. During live shows, Viveros stands center stage, radiant, as the crowd screams at him to play forever. On Wisher, he does seem to play forever, each song demanding something new and exciting, like the ethereal reverberations of “Classic Case of Guy on the Ground” or the world-absorbing work on the closer, “I Hate Cursive and I Hate All of You.” 

SWIM: I personally hear a lot of the stuff I grew up with — third and fourth wave emo, 2010s metalcore. What music were you inspired by while recording this album? What was it like working with Jon Markson?

VIVEROS: This record was influenced by so many things that I know I’ll probably forget something. The 3rd and 4th wave influence is definitely there. We’re all big fans of stuff like Taking Back Sunday, The All-American Rejects, and Motion City Soundtrack, and I don’t think there’ll ever be a Ben Quad record where my guitar playing won’t be inspired by Algernon Cadwallader and CSTVT. Stuff like Brakence and Porter Robinson heavily inspired the glitched-up guitar samples that are all over the record. There’s a good amount of banjo and slide guitar that draws inspiration from country and folk music. Personally, the recent wave of alt-country, like MJ Lenderman, really inspired me to dive into that style of playing. Beyond that, there’s huge Third Eye Blind and late 90s/early 2000s pop-rock influence. 

When it comes down to it, a lot of this record was us channeling the sounds we loved growing up to make something new. Jon Markson helped out so much with making that vision come together. His perspective was such a valuable resource when we were finalizing songs, and I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone who has pushed me to be a better musician as much as he did. It was such a cool experience to wake up and record music all day with him for three weeks. That guy rules. I look forward to being isolated on a farm with him many, many more times.

Photo by Kamdyn Coker

There’s a chance that this album might launch a dozen tweets about Ben Quad not being emo anymore from whatever the remnants of DIY Twitter are posting these days, but know that there’s nothing people can say that Ben Quad doesn’t already know. They make this abundantly clear on “Did You Decide to Skip Arts and Crafts?” with Sam Canty from Treaty Oak Revival.

SWIM: I’ve always heard that Oklahoma sound in your music, but never as much as I hear it in “Did You Decide to Skip Arts and Crafts.” What inspired y’all to bring a country twang to such a loud emo song? Do you see a connection between country and emo?

VIVEROS: I demoed out the instrumentals for that song in the summer of 2024 and really didn’t know where to take it. I kind of just wrote the song structure to be a mixture of big, anthemic Wonder Years choruses and some of the twangier moments in the Beths’ catalogue. It really came together when we invited our friend Sam Canty to hop on the track. That’s when I think we decided to really lean on the arena country-rock sound. I specifically love how Rocklahoma-coded the bridge sounds. Sam Canty’s feature fits so perfectly. I think the link between the two is a lot closer than people think. Sonically, both genres incorporate sparkly single coil guitars, and they both get pretty sad. Country is just farm emo.

I agree with all of the above: the connection between country and emo is storied, they’re both wrought, misunderstood genres that come from the middle of our nation. The aforementioned track starts with a phone call from Canty, playing a detractor of Ben Quad’s ever-evolving sound, telling them that they “ain’t the same anymore.” The song kicks in, and eventually Ben Quad gets him to change his mind and his sound too. Isaac Young clears a space in his drumming for Canty to return to the song to yell too, his Texas accent curving around an exasperated, “I guess it never made a fuckin’ difference to you.”

It’s impossible to discuss this album without acknowledging just how many people are on it; in addition to the Treaty Oak Revival frontman’s appearance, Zayna Youssef from Sweet Pill joins Wegrzynski and Henry Shields to kick your teeth in on “You Wanted Us, You Got Us.” Later on, “West of West” features Nate Hardy of Microwave, who contributes what might be the heaviest moment on the entire LP. It all starts to feel like a totally deserved victory lap, a testament to how big emo (or post-emo) has grown over the past few years, and a reminder of how much Ben Quad has grown since they met each other on a Craigslist post over their love of Microwave and Modern Baseball. 

SWIM: Y’all have called this album a kind of evolution for Ben Quad. How would you describe Ben Quad’s evolution since I’m Scared That’s All There Is, sonically? Since that album, y’all have also toured pretty nonstop (I think I’ve seen you guys three or four times on different tours over the past few years) – How would you describe Ben Quad’s evolution since your debut beyond the sound? Any ideas on what’s next after Wisher?

VIVEROS: I’m Scared That’s All There Is was cool because it was basically us doing emo revival worship with a little bit of a modern twist. Since then, we’ve just been throwing more and more influences into the kettle. I love that you can trace through our discography and see us gradually adding influences of screamo and post-hardcore. This new stuff has country, electronic, pop, and so much more thrown into the mix, and I’m just excited to keep growing that sound moving forward. 

Beyond sound though, I think we’ve grown in a lot of ways since the ISTATI days. We’re way more road-worn. When we released ISTATI, we hadn’t actually done a proper tour. Now, we’re releasing this new record on like our sixth full US tour. That alone has given us so much perspective on the world and many chances to meet a lot of talented and insightful people. I’d say our biggest area of progression has been in the confidence of our songwriting abilities. We’ve put out a handful of releases at this point, so sitting down and writing songs just feels so natural now. We’ve learned to just go with our gut when it comes to making music. I think any writing roadblock we encountered during the recording process was sheerly because we were afraid of sounding too honest or vulnerable. 

At the end of the day, if we think it sounds good, then that’s all that matters. As far as what’s next after Wisher, I have no idea. Maybe we’ll make a real butt-rock record. Some real Breaking Benjamin type shit.

Anything is possible when it comes to Ben Quad. At its heart, that’s what Wisher is about: testing how far post-emo can stretch, showing off the possibilities of the sounds they can craft, and clearing a path for what’s next. On Wisher, Ben Quad ain’t the fucking same anymore, but who would want them to be?

Around this time, three years ago, Ben Quad released “You’re Part of It,” where they chanted endlessly and heart-wrenchingly about how they were just waiting for all of this to fall apart. Unfortunately, with Wisher, they’re just going to have to keep waiting, because this album is universe-engulfing and none of this is falling apart.

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Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

The Timeline-Altering Shoegaze of Total Wife

Photo by Sean Booz

Shopping for vintage clothes is a hobby that I treat more like a sport. Whenever I find myself researching the best places to find garments of the past, I feel like a star quarterback studying game tape. It’s both about the thrill of the hunt and that feeling of discovering a diamond in the rough that’s been repeatedly passed over by onlookers who didn’t realize what they were missing.

Today, shoegaze bands are a lot like going vintage shopping. There are so many different iterations and variations of homogeneous items from the past, but by being patient and dedicated, you will come across that timeless piece if you know exactly where to look. Insert the band Total Wife.

The Nashville experimental shoegaze duo is centered around the creative partnership between Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, though when they play live, their ranks expand to include a bassist, a second guitarist, and a drummer. The group is signed to Julia’s War Recordings, the Philadelphia-based record label founded by Doug Dulgarian of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, which is pushing the genre forward with some of the most exciting music in the underground from Her New Knife, Joyer, Bedridden, and now Total Wife. What makes Total Wife an unmistakable hit is their fearlessness. Both Kupper and Richter create art that feels like it could only have come from them and them alone. Their new record, come back down, has a DIY aesthetic both musically and visually that feels fresh, exciting, and unique to everything else that’s out there today.

Total Wife craft songs that would not only fit in on the radio in 1991, but also feel future-proofed for 3001.  Let’s start at that first extreme with tracks like “peaches” and “second spring,” which are good enough to make any My Bloody Valentine devotee blush with excitement. It’s a wet dream for any fans of that style of music; both Kupper and Richter are true students of the game, as evidenced by the way they’re able to slather on countless waves of distorted guitar tones that mend and mold depending on the mood of each song. There’s a sharpness and respect to their craft in how they are able to achieve such a specific sound while also molding their guitar tones into their own entity. It’s an impressive feat considering a shit ton (for the record, I consider a “shit ton” to be the unofficial highest measure of the metric system) of bands that are currently trying to achieve the same sound.

Elsewhere on the same record, we get a taste of what I imagine music will sound like eighty years from now. Songs like “ofersi3” and “internetsupermagazine” are sharp left turns into a combination of breakbeats, hyperpop, and hard techno that inspire Jersey Shore-levels of fist pumping where the speed gets turned up to infinity. The decision to veer into this type of rapid-fire sub-genre expedition feels so fresh, vital, and needed in today’s shoegaze landscape. The result is something I imagine people might listen to while flying to work on their jetpack.

I love it when bands try to test the limits of what musical lengths they can achieve. Total Wife’s reverence for the past while creating music that feels so future-forward makes them one of the most exciting projects I have heard all year. The most exciting part is that the music on come back down has constructed an endless number of doors, each offering different possibilities of where the band could take their sonic excursions next.

I got to chat with Total Wife over Zoom, where we talked about Halloween costumes, first-ever concert experiences, and a sado-masochistic moment on stage in Pittsburgh that potentially left a fan lost in another dimension.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

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SWIM: You just finished touring for your latest record. How did it go? 

LUNA: Yeah, it was really fun! All the shows were fun, we love our friends, and there were some really late drives this time, but we made it out. We were doing a lot of late-night driving. 

SWIM: Do you have any fun playlists to keep you going when you’re driving at night?

ASH: It’s up to the driver. Whoever’s driving gets to choose.

LUNA: It gets a little manic at times. I feel like it’ll get into nightcore remixes and shit to keep us wired. 

SWIM: I read a lot of Stephen King, so whenever I hear the word “manic,” I’m instantly brought back to his work for whatever reason, which leads me to my next question: Are you all excited for Halloween this year?

LUNA: Yeah! We usually have some kind of Halloween show plans, but we don’t this time. There’s one like a couple of days after, but yeah, we have to figure it out. We were The Matrix last year, and that was great. 

SWIM: Was anyone Neo or Trinity? 

LUNA: We were more vague characters within the Matrix universe. Our own Matrix characters. 

SWIM: Do you guys remember your first Halloween costume? 

ASH: The first one that I remember was when I did The Wizard of Oz with my family. I was the Scarecrow.

LUNA: I was a pile of leaves. That’s like my first memory. Being a pile of leaves, just a suit with a bunch of leaves attached to me. [laughs]

SWIM: What was your first-ever concert memory?

ASH: I saw Van Halen in 2007 with my dad for my birthday. 

LUNA: My first show was in 2012, and I saw Connor Oberst at Carnegie Hall, which is a crazy first.

SWIM: Both of you have crazy fun first shows. Do you remember the first show you guys saw together? 

ASH: That’s a good question. I feel like it was the Flaming Lips. We’ve known each other for a really long time. But yeah, they were on tour with Tame Impala in 2013, I think, and The Flaming Lips were opening, so that was cool. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: I really love the guitar textures on come back down, they sound so lush and beautiful. Is that a style you guys developed over time, or is there a particular era of music that you were influenced by to achieve that type of sound? 

LUNA: We’ve always made dense, layered stuff, usually with guitars and synths. The guitar just became more natural and sounded more organic. Just adding more and more guitar layer textures until it was only that. I think it comes from listening to a lot of nineties music and early 2000s stuff over time. 

SWIM: I get a little My Bloody Valentine type of vibes, Loveless, which is my type of stuff. It was done so expertly, in my opinion.

I was watching an interview with Pete Davidson, and he was talking about how Adam Sandler is seven years ahead of everyone in fashion, and I thought it was really funny yet accurate. So, to bring it back to you both, I was listening to “ofersi3,” which sounds like it’s a hundred years ahead of where everyone else is right now. When I imagine what people in the year 3000 will be listening to, it’s exactly that. How did you come up with that song? 

LUNA: [Laughs] Thank you. The whole first half is just a couple classic breaks that I distorted to create different notes. It’s not any crazy processing other than chopping audio files super tiny to make them tonal. Over time in the song, each beat gets fragmented further and further until they’re tonal and then end up creating different sounds. Those sounds then get chopped up for the second half and mixed in with some of the vocal samples taken from an old Elliot Smith cover that we never finished.

SWIM: Was this a time-consuming process to create, or did it come fairly quickly to you? 

LUNA: It was pretty fast. It kind of had to happen all at once because of this one unfolding thought, and I felt like I had to see where it went in that moment or else it wouldn’t be true to itself.

SWIM: Both of your styles are so unique. Did that develop over time? Were you always outgoing and willing to express yourself, or did it mature over time?

ASH: I think it was always pretty unique. When we were younger, we were just trying really hard to be weird at the cost of something listenable.

I think being daring and bold has kind of always been in our repertoire of songwriting. 

LUNA: Yeah, but it feels like recently, with this album, and maybe for a couple of years, it felt like enough time had passed that we’ve been doing this, so as long as we stay true to ourselves, whatever we do would sound different. Also, not trying to sound like anyone else. For a while, you’re just inspired by other musicians and trying to learn how to sound like your favorite bands until you have your own mix of whatever you’re trying to do.

SWIM: Did it take a while for you to find your own voice, or was it a quick process?

ASH: I think we always were doing something that was our own voice, but our influences were just so solidly there. I felt like we had to learn how to write songs first before we could sound like ourselves. We’ve been focusing more on the songwriting and structure, then adding all the personality to something that’s already true to classic songwriting. 

SWIM: When you’re on stage, do you feel you’re able to get your personality across to the fans while performing? Do you feel you’re able to be your true, unfiltered self up there, or does it help to get in the mindset of a different character, similar to an actor?

LUNA: I’m curious to see what your response is going to be. [laughing while talking to Ash]

ASH: I try to lock into the songs themselves in my performance and really think about what I’m saying, ‘cause the majority of what I do on stage is just singing. Then I have like a few samples I play as well, which are leads.

So, to give my best performance, I usually focus really hard on how I felt when I wrote the words to the songs and try to embody the truest version of that me. 

LUNA: I had to learn how to be fully comfortable and myself on stage, ‘cause at first, I was pretty nervous about that stuff. We’ve been recording in a studio for so long, so I had to be the calmest version of myself, which at first was impossible, but I figured it out. So yeah, I feel comfortable with it.

SWIM: I have to ask about a recent show in Pittsburgh where you played an over twenty-minute extended noise jam at the end of the song “make it last.” I read an article Eli Enis wrote, which, I have to quote him here, saying that this instance “felt like a sado-masochistic ritual” and potentially left a 19-year-old man named Carl in another dimension after what he had just witnessed. Can you please describe whether this usually happens during your shows, or was this a one-off kind of thing?

LUNA: Yeah, we always do that. [laughs]

ASH: It’s not necessarily supposed to be sado-masochistic. [laughs]

LUNA: It’s funny to see everyone’s different reaction to that. It’s a thing that happens, and the audience gets to experience it however they want. 

ASH: The truth is that we’ve done it in so many different ways, and everybody has a completely different reaction to it. We’ve done it differently in different places, and sometimes it feels like that, I guess.

LUNA: It’s interesting ‘cause people will, I find it either very aggressive or very soothing, which, I think, we’re trying to go for soothing. It’s something I want to exist only in the time it exists, so it’s hard to talk about, but, yeah, it’s definitely supposed to create a oneness with everyone there. I hope it is meditative for some people, you know? 

SWIM: Do you have a favorite part of touring? 

ASH: Honestly, getting to perform every night is my favorite part. Whenever we have a night off, I’m relieved in part, but also a little bummed. I really enjoy the experience where we’re basically just playing all these local bills with people who are active in their own scene. That is really cool to see how other scenes function because we’re so used to Nashville at this point. Yeah, it’s cool to be inspired by the different ways every scene uplifts itself and try to bring that home. 

SWIM: Do you guys like to explore the cities you visit on off days? 

ASH: Yeah. Sean, who plays drums in Total Wife, he’ll usually look up something on Atlas Obscura on an off day, and we’ll go to a cool cemetery or something.

LUNA: It’ll just show you oddities in whatever city you’re in. Just like weird, strange things that you can usually find for free, stuff that you wouldn’t find on Google or Apple Maps if you typed in ‘local attractions.’ 

I obviously love the music part of tour, but didn’t realize that touring so much meant that you’re just traveling all the time, which is really good for my brain in a way that I didn’t expect. The way it removes you from the cycle of your everyday life puts you outside of your head for a second, and then you can come back into it. It really does something crazy to my brain that I need. The road can definitely be soothing for different people, like just to travel and whatnot.

SWIM: You both have created a really distinct visual aesthetic —from the album cover art to the music videos —is that a collaborative effort between you two? 

ASH: I feel like we just have been making a lot of stuff for many years. For example, need-based flyers for shows. Art for promotion and stuff like that. When I was younger, I kind of overthought making art, and I thought if I’m not some classically trained artist, then what’s the point of making anything? But basically, I started using collage when I couldn’t draw what I wanted. I just had all these conceptual ideas and collages that really lend themselves well—combining concepts and just mashing up imagery together. 

A lot of the art is collaborative; we kind of just pass it back and forth. 

LUNA: Yeah. It’s a lot of passing back and forth with that stuff, or just making art alongside each other. Just snap reactions to this will be cool; that’ll be cool for that. Also, kind of accumulating different ideas and collages over the years, like Ash said. This project has always been both musical and visual. I think all of our output is just put into Total Wife. 

SWIM: How fulfilling is it to tag-team visual mediums, stuff other than music, together? 

ASH: Oh, yeah. It feels impossible to imagine not working together. Just because of how long it’s been, it’s such a long, growing process where we’ve worked through a lot of artistic disputes and refined the art we make, using each other as a sounding board. 

SWIM: Do you feel you operate creatively differently now than when you first met? 

LUNA: Totally. We were just trying to work out how we wanted to make stuff and had no end goal. We still kind of don’t, but it’s much easier to finish things now. 

ASH: I feel like we’re much more sure when we’re giving our opinions. We used to know what we didn’t want versus what we did. That helped because it helped us refine ourselves, but it took a while to sort out what exactly felt like us.

Neither of us started with any music theory knowledge or any real background in songwriting. I was in and out of bands, but I never learned to play guitar until last year. 

SWIM: Has your songwriting become easier for you now than it was 12 years ago? 

ASH: Definitely, yeah. It really started with recording just to have recordings, make songs, and have sounds. And then we were slowly making songs, which was kind of the reverse. 

Photo by Sean Booz

SWIM: What do you all have planned for the rest of the year? 

LUNA: We just have one more show planned. We’re doing so much touring and the album rollout. We’re both really excited to get back in the studio.

ASH: Yeah, so we’re just taking a little break from shows. 

LUNA: We have a bunch of songs written, and the next album has about like ten Pro Tools projects for new songs. That’s been in the sitting stage for so long because this was the first time we decided to do anything with the release other than just upload it the second we had the masters. 

SWIM: Is there gonna be a tonal shift with your next project?

LUNA: Honestly, not really. I would like to hear what people think, because in my mind, a lot of these songs could have been on this most recent album. 

Starting an album while the other one is being finished means each new record half sounds like the last one. So I think that’ll probably be the case with this one. It’ll be like half of the ideas I wanted to finish up on the last thing, half new stuff, and further trying to mesh everything and sound less disjointed.

SWIM: Is there anything else you all wanna talk about or bring up before we sign off?

LUNA: Nashville is awesome. There are a lot of cool bands here, and I'm just always trying to rep that. There are a lot of weird and fun bands out here, a lot of cool music that you wouldn’t expect.

SWIM: Who are some bands people should know about from Nashville? 

LUNA: The members of our band all have their own projects. Celltower and Make Yourself at Home. I play in another band called Melaina Kol. There’s just all these great bands. Sour Tooth, they’re amazing. 

SWIM: With you both living in Nashville, have either of you seen Haley Williams walking around?

LUNA: Yeah. She comes to the bagel shop I work at. 

SWIM: Oh, no way. 

ASH: I wanna meet her so bad. 

LUNA: She’s sweet, actually, which is nice to know. She’s a sweetheart. Thank goodness. 

SWIM: Thank you again for taking the time. I really appreciate it, and I hope you both have a wonderful day.

Luna and Ash in unison: Thank you! You too! 

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David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

Embracing The Chaos: An Interview With Laveda

Photo by Mars Alba

New York City is known as “The City of Dreams” for the hundreds of thousands that relocate there every year with grand aspirations in an even grander city. New York itself has enough main character energy for a whole coastline, making it the ideal setting for an artist. From the hustle and bustle of the people on the streets to the blinding glow of a subway car and the peeled-off paint of a tenement building, inspiration is abundant at all hours of the day. Falling in love with NYC is as easy as acquiring a late-night slice at Joe’s Pizza.

​Enter Laveda, a noisy rock band fronted by Ali Genevich (guitar, bass, synths, vocals) and Jacob Brooks (guitar, bass, synths, vocals). What started out as a project between the two of them in the winter of 2018 evolved into something bigger as they realized the momentum was building. In 2022, with hopes to solidify their sound, Laveda enlisted Dan Carr (bass, guitar) and Joe Taurone (drums) for assistance on their sophomore effort. The resulting album, A Place You Grew Up In, was full of lush, warm soundscapes which felt like an ode to their upstate New York, Albany roots.

The following year, Genevich and Brooks made the jump to migrate a couple of hours south to New York City. The ceaseless energy of their new home inspired their third studio record, Love, Darla. The two were influenced to create new music by the things they would hear on the streets: the clattering of subway cars, screeching of metal on construction sites, and distant sirens. There was never a dull moment in their world or their music.

The songs on Love, Darla have a scrappy chaos within them. The introductory “Care” starts with just a minute of guitar reverb that sounds like grinding metal, then morphs into a dissonant, energetic banger. “Cellphone” has a gentle, melodic, head-bobbing slacker rock appeal with rebellious kiss-off lyrics. The songs come with a real bite to them, but also have a melodic flow that makes them rewarding to revisit, just like Sonic Youth and countless New York bands of yore. Laveda is now about constant movement. Gone is the quiet, suburban life of northeast New York; in its place is the eruptive energy of the city that never sleeps.

I sat down with Ali Genevich and Jacob Brooks via Zoom to talk about moving to the city, getting inspired by live music, and Tim Burton. 

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Photo by Mars Alba

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

SWIM: I read that you moved from Albany to New York City in 2023. What inspired that move?

ALI: We had wanted to move to New York for a while, the timing just wasn’t right for us with COVID. Once things were opening back up again, we started doing a lot of gigging and touring. I feel like we were busy in the local scene, just trying to build up our presence as a band upstate. Eventually, I think we reached a point where it felt like we had sort of outgrown the scene there and wanted to surround ourselves with more like-minded musicians and a new community. The scene sort of died out with COVID and my college shutting down. Unfortunately, it took a big hit. Not to say we wanted to abandon it, but we also had always wanted to come to New York, so the timing just felt right when we made the move in 2023.

SWIM: Were you able to adapt quickly to New York City, or did it take some time to settle in?

ALI: I think it was a little of both. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of people we already knew when we first got here, so in some ways, it was easier for us to move here than a different city. If we were to move to somewhere that we’ve never been, like Texas, we just don’t know people in those cities, but we had a lot of friends who already lived in New York City, so it was really nice. It was just cool to have people to hang out with, bring you out to things, and show you the cool venues and bars and all that jazz.

SWIM: Is there a difference between creating music in Albany as opposed to New York? Can you feel a difference?

ALI: Yeah, definitely. I’m very inspired by my environment, and New York is a lot different than Albany or Troy, just much more industrial, and there’s so much more noise and energy, and people are surprising you every day. There’s always an interaction that you don’t expect you’re going to have, and it’s really awesome. I think Albany and Upstate are just so much slower-paced, and sometimes you can go about your day without really even talking to anyone at all. That’s interesting to me. I think a lot of the griminess of New York City has found its way into our music for sure, into this new record. It definitely contributed a lot to a sonic shift that was already happening in our sound – New York kind of drove the nail further into the coffin, I guess.

SWIM: I hear that griminess in “I Wish” and “Care,” and it reminds me of mid-to-late ‘80s Sonic Youth. Were they like an inspiration for you? What’s your relationship with them?

ALI: Yeah, I’ve always loved Sonic Youth, but I think I found a new appreciation for their music when we moved here because I just read Kim Gordon’s book, Girl in a Band. I picked it up at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, and I started reading it on tour. It was super relatable, and I was like, ‘Well this would be a good time to dive deeper into Sonic Youth’s music after we moved here,’ because I had just finished the book at that time. 

It took me, like, two years to read it because I put books down constantly and pick them back up again. But yeah, then I started listening to their first record, second record, third record, all that, just from the beginning, because Kim had referenced so many different eras in her life, you know? I wanted to have a better idea of what she was talking about, so I just got really into it and eventually was like, wait, these records are some of the best records. I’d only heard some of their more popular stuff, and now some of the random deeper cuts are some of my favorite tracks. They’re an incredible band.

SWIM: Do you have a favorite album from Sonic Youth? 

ALI: I think Sister is probably my favorite.

SWIM: Sister, that’s a good one. I love that album cover.

ALI: Yeah, it’s just, it’s got such a mood, and I’m a sucker for just feeling nostalgic all the time. It really does evoke that emotion in me. But they have a lot of great records. I mean, honestly, what am I forgetting? Goo, that’s it! I feel like that’s a more popular record, but also pretty undeniably awesome. 

SWIM: I read that you guys workshoped “Strawberry” and “Heaven” during live shows. I think that’s really cool. It reminds me of a comedian going to a club just to see what jokes work, trying to add them into their set. How did you decide to workshop these songs together at live shows?

JACOB: At the time, those were our only two new ones, really. I think we had started “Heaven” first. We also had “Tim Burton’s Tower” in our back pocket and “Cellphone” as well, but we weren’t really ready to flesh those out yet.

ALI: Yeah, I think we knew that those songs were too challenging. We just didn’t know what they were gonna sound like yet. We felt “Strawberry” and “Heaven” were just strong. They had really solid foundations, so it made sense to take those out, play them, and just sort of see how they evolved. 

I don’t think the songs fundamentally changed a lot, but it was more the energy that we had when we played them and the little nuances. Things like figuring out what pedals sound good for a certain section of the song and what buzz tone I wanted. For Joe, I feel like the drum part really solidified itself over the course of a month. He would try some new fills here and there just to experiment because we had the time to. I sang the song completely differently in the demo than I ended up singing it on the record. The end result is completely different. If you heard the demo, you’d be like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a very different voice and character.’ I think that also inspired a lot of the other songs and the singing on the rest of the record. Finding the right style of singing wasn’t challenging, but it definitely took some time to figure out.

SWIM: Did you notice a crowd reaction to a certain part of the song, like ‘oh, they seemed to be drawn to this, so maybe we should add this into the song’ or something like that?

ALI: Well, yeah, I feel “Strawberry” was really the Catalyst because people just liked the song in general, but they would always say ‘Oh, I really like when you scream’ and enough people said it to where I was like, ‘maybe I should just do that more.’ And because I like when I scream, I was like, great, you like it, I like it, sounds good, let’s just put it all over the place.

SWIM: You guys mentioned the song “Tim Burton’s Tower” earlier. I love his movies – is he an inspiration? Did you draw anything from him for the song title?

JACOB: I think it’s more of a Troy, New York thing.

ALI: Yeah, the lyrics of the song are loosely about someone who just wants to be a movie star, but the song was inspired by this old church that we could see from our apartment in Troy. It had this scary-looking tower, and we would always just call it the Tim Burton Tower. Troy has a lot of really old Gothic architecture and historical buildings from the 1800s, which is really cool. But yeah, and it’s the oldest song on the record, or at least the oldest idea. We were still living upstate when I wrote that, and I think it just stuck. I thought, 'Oh, since it’s a song called Tim Burton’s Tower, I’ll just make it about the movies.'

SWIM: Do you have any favorite Tim Burton movies? 

ALI: Well, we definitely love The Nightmare Before Christmas. I think Edward Scissorhands specifically was what I was picturing while we were writing that song. We actually had a VHS of Edward Scissorhands on in the background in LA while we were recording the song. That scene where he’s cutting the shrubs with his hand, it’s just, like, so crazy.

SWIM: Have you ever seen the movie Sleepy Hollow? Was that in Upstate New York, or am I imagining that? 

JACOB: No, you’re not imagining, there is. I saw it once. It’s good. It’s a crazy movie.

Photo by Julia Tarantino

SWIM: Was there a live band you all saw that was so good that it sparked a competitive fire for you to want to go practice harder and get better as musicians?

ALI: Oh, that’s a really cool question. Yes, I mean, I feel like I have two answers for this. 

I think maybe not in a competitive way, but more just in an inspirational way. We were on our way to record A Place You Grew Up In, out in California, so the whole band was driving across the country with our gear, and my aunt and uncle live just outside of Denver, so we crashed a couple of nights with them on our way to LA. It just so happened that Wilco was playing at Red Rocks, so we went to that. I was like, okay, we have to go to this, and the tickets were like 50 bucks a pop, so no brainer, let’s go. We just had the most amazing time, and we had never gone to a show just the four of us together, so that was really special. Wilco is just an incredible band, and Dan, our bass player, has always been a really big Wilco fan. After that show, I think we were all just like, 'Oh my God, wow, what a crazy, awesome experience.'

Another sort of band that I feel like really ticks this box is Robber Robber from Burlington, Vermont. They’re an amazing band, really sweet people, and friends of ours. We’ve played a show or two with them, but they’re an incredible live band. I remember Joe, after he saw Zack (from Robber Robber) play the drums for the first time, he literally went home and was like, ‘I need to practice more.’ Joe is already such an incredible drummer, so when he says something like that, you know he’s gotta be mind-blown. It was really cool to see how inspired he was by Zack’s playing, and we all love that band. They’re awesome. They put on a sick live show, so you should check them out if you haven’t.

SWIM: For me, music is a lot about scenery and vibes. If you listen to the right album at the right time, it can enhance your experience. Is there an ideal setting you would love for people to listen to your new album so that it might enhance their listening experience?

JACOB: I think it’s a subway record.

ALI: Yeah, I definitely think listening on the subway is really cool because the subway is kind of chaotic sometimes, but especially the above-ground trains, where you can see outside and you can just see everything moving fast and all these random people in the train car that are just on their daily commute or whatever. I do enjoy listening to it then. I think we've both said it can be really noisy when you’re listening with earpods, and you can still hear the sounds of the train and people and whatever else is going on.. It’s almost like the music blends in because it’s grimy and noisy already; it sort of just incorporates those sounds, so it’s like it doesn’t really matter if you have bleed from the outside world. But yeah, I haven’t really found a place that’s beat that experience for me with this record yet. 

JACOB: I think our previous records were made more for the car because we were upstate. Now we never drive.

ALI: Yeah, I don’t know if this is a car album.

JACOB: I don’t think it is.

SWIM: The album is so chaotic and up-tempo and has so much energy. It feels like it’s built for body movement: either you’re walking, you’re running, or you’re on the subway. I think that’s perfect for your guys’ record.

ALI: Yeah, yeah, walking is nice. Walking in any city, I think, would also be pretty nice. Just point A to point B type stuff.

SWIM: Thanks so much for taking the time! See you on tour soon.

ALI: Thank you. Have a great rest of your day.

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David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram @davidmwill89, Twitter @Cobretti24, or Medium @davidmwms.

Inside Porcupine’s Altar of Vapor: An interview with Chicago’s masters of Dark Hardcore

Photo by K.B. Imaging

“We didn’t sacrifice anything that makes us Porcupine. We’re still heavy. This is our most collaborative project to date as a band. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we take the band and the music itself very seriously. People should be keeping their eyes peeled for anything that we do.” 

Porcupine vocalist and lyricist Dawson Kiser sounds extremely proud and confident when he says this to me, his excitement about his band’s newest material completely shining through the Google Meet call we arranged. I have been closely watching the evolution of the Chicagoland and Pittsburgh hardcore outfit since their first proper releases in 2018, though they had been germinating deep in the Midwest suburbs for a couple of years already at that point. Since then, I’ve heard the band put out record after record of intense, chaotic, blistering hardcore music, and seen them perform with the likes of Harvest, Ignite, and Portrayal Of Guilt. 2024 was a crucial year for the band, with their debut full-length album All Is Vapor being unleashed in June — sharing a release date with Charli xcx’s unavoidable brat, a fact they jokingly feel set them back. “Our album is a challenging listen; it’s long and ruthless for a modern hardcore album,” guitarist Joey Hernandez reflects. “And it came out the same day as brat, so we got beef with Charli now.”

Porcupine’s music has nothing in common with the 365 party girl herself, as you might imagine. Their ferocious and unrelenting approach to hardcore and metal is one of the most impressive that the underground has to offer, evident by songs like “Funeral Grief” from 2021’s The Sybil EP, or “Army Of Martyrs” from All Is Vapor. Now, just over a year later, the band is back with the six-track EP Under The Altar, released via Chicago label New Morality Zine, the band’s longtime home. The 25-minute collection serves as a direct companion to last year’s album, with its only physical release being a CD that compiles the two – a further extension of the themes and imagery that began with The Sybil. Dawson Kiser breaks it all down: “There is a strong connection between those three records. I was still exploring different ideas, starting with The Sybil, but there’s been this consistent philosophical idea of dualism – the idea of having a body and a spirit, being drawn to material life and immaterial life – and what that means in a world full of suffering and depravity. That’s been across the board through our releases, but I think it’s gotten more precise on Under The Altar.”

Hernandez adds, “Some of the ideas for these new songs have been around for a while. Dawson wanted to do a sequel to ‘Holy Cowards’ from All Is Vapor, which sort of inspired us to do this follow-up EP. I pulled a lot of things that have been sitting on the shelf and recreated them to sound like something that Porcupine would make in 2025. I was really influenced by mewithoutYou, who put out a lot of sequels to other things across their discography. The next one we worked on redoing was ‘Close The Doors,’ since the album version is just acoustic. We wanted to work out a full band version for our live set, and Dawson added new lyrics to it. I think the sequel totally works as a tone setter for the EP before ‘Dull Blade’ comes in.”

Under The Altar’s title track is the band’s longest to date, clocking in at just under nine minutes. The group is no stranger to epic, sprawling songs on their releases, like “The Kingdom Of Heaven” from The Sibyl and “I Am Bound” from All Is Vapor. But this track’s inception also predates the other songs on the EP by quite some time, as the band explains. “It was originally called ‘I Wish You Peace,’ and it came out on the benefit compilation Artists For Black Lives Matter Vol. 1 back in 2020,” Kiser recalls about his original acoustic performance of the track. Hernandez follows, “I always had the idea to make that a Porcupine song because I thought the melody and riff were so sick. When I translated it to the band, I wanted it to be super calm in the beginning, because what Dawson is saying lyrically on the song is just so haunting and desperate, but I knew the second half would be a lot more intense.”

Kiser admits, “It’s a very exhausting song for me. My vocal approach was totally different; I’ve never sung that way on a Porcupine song before. I start really subdued, and then it goes into this painful scream where I’m trying to hold the note of the song. I was listening to a lot of Battle Of Mice and their vocalist, Julie Christmas, while writing the song. Her vocals really inspire me because they’re so terrifying and emotional all at once.”

Photo by @w0rms5

Hernandez and Kiser are the band’s co-founders and only consistent members, although Under The Altar was mixed by returning bassist Jordan Hermes, an element of the record they’re both excited about. “We love him being back, he’s been instrumental in making these songs sound like more than just demos. It feels so natural, and we’re so locked in whenever we practice. He’s been a huge part of us becoming a better band,” Hernandez says.

Between the thematic consistency of their 2020s catalog and the return of early band members, the conversation with the band led me to suggest the idea of the “Porcupine Cinematic Universe,” and it turns out I wasn’t far off. “Jordan said the same thing,” Hernandez says. “We all like to do different stuff that may not be directly related to Porcupine, but it’s all kind of connected. Dawson’s solo record that came out recently is like that.”

Released in May under his middle name, Micaiah Kaiser, Treachery Utterly Murders Our Respect, or TUMOR, is a deeply personal record about betrayal, heartbreak, and suffering. “It was still a collaboration with Joey,” Kiser notes. “We’ve been working on it for a long time, like five years…”

“That’s because I was procrastinating,” Hernandez admits.

“… that’s also true, but I wasn’t going to throw you under the bus,” Kiser laughs. He continues, “There are some sonic similarities to the band because it’s these same two guys working on it, but nothing sounds like a Porcupine song. It’s not remotely hardcore. I don’t really know what to call it. Joey is better at identifying genres than I am.”

Hernandez qualifies, “It’s like Giles Corey-core. Definitely something for fans of that or other artists on The Flenser record label. Bedroom recordings with some spacey and ambient beats.”

“Nick Cave is probably my most listened-to artist of all time,” Kiser says when asked about other musical artists that inform his writing. “I’m always listening to his stuff and am really influenced by the way he approaches dark themes with a sort of folklore style.”

The full band’s approach to what they call “dark hardcore” feels informed more at times by leftfield and experimental artists like Cave or King Woman than traditional hardcore bands, but Hernandez and Kiser haven’t lost any love for their anchoring genre, despite the sense that they’re navigating their way through it. “The thing about hardcore,” Hernandez confesses, “it’s kind of a sore subject for us. We’re totally doing our own thing, and it’s not the cool thing to do. I think that’s made us stand out, but it’s also made us go, ‘Oh, people don’t really understand what this is.’ We’re always thinking about that type of thing. I love bands like Candy and Vein because they’re so off-kilter and doing something interesting, but you can tell they’re all really talented dudes. Or a band like Code Orange, where you can tell they have hardcore roots, but they went in more of a rock and roll direction that was still really heavy.”

Kiser adds, “I still view us as a hardcore band, I don’t ever see us as not having an obvious hardcore influence. There are songs on Under The Altar that are just hardcore songs to me, and how I personally understand the genre. I still love listening to hardcore bands and going to shows and watching people going crazy, even if some of the more popular bands don’t generally line up with what Porcupine is doing. Even some of my favorite bands like All Else Failed, Converge, and Starkweather, that maybe lean more metal or something else entirely, they’re still hardcore bands to me.”

Photo by Max Glazer

Porcupine’s live performances are not to be missed — the quintet consistently delivers blistering and visceral shows at any venue they play, channeling the energy of some of extreme music’s tightest acts like Full Of Hell and Harm’s Way. They’ve just wrapped up a short touring run with close friends The Jackal – a new Ohio band featuring members of Griphook and Coop. On the tour, Hernandez says, “I’m excited to connect back up with them, just to hang out and get inspired. Every tour we do, we get inspired by the bands we play with. Like the band Prouns, who are just a three-piece, but they really know how to rock out. And the band Clot, they’re super professional and older than us, I almost felt like they were showing us up every night. And with The Jackal, this is the most impressed I’ve been with one of Zach Butcher’s bands.”

Porcupine continues their Summer tour dates next week with fellow Chicago-based band We Weren’t Invited, capped off by a hometown record release show on August 16th. Hernandez feels equally pumped for this run, giving his next tourmates accolades for being “so crazy, and they do whatever the fuck they want, it’s wild. I’m also excited to talk to people about the new record. We’ve been keeping it under wraps for a while, but I can’t wait to hear what people think of it. I love that our close friends love our music, and I don’t think their opinion doesn’t matter, but I really love listening to new people who are discovering Porcupine, even if they only like one song. It just makes me happy to know I did something cool like that.”

2026 will mark ten years since Porcupine formed, and Hernandez and Kiser have no plans to stop anytime soon. Reflecting on the milestone, Hernandez says, “I think we’re at a point now where we’re at our best, and we can make the best music we can with the best people.” Kiser agrees, “We’ve all grown up together, and the music is indicative of that. This current lineup is the best one that we’ve had. We all get along great.” I asked them exactly what “growing up” means to them as a band, not just the experience of doing so, but what they’re taking away from that experience.

Hernandez answers, “Even though I love a lot of what we did in the past, obviously I would do it a lot differently now. The first real thing I’m proud of is the Zomia record. I still listen back to that and go, ‘that’s crazy that I made that when I was 20.’ That was the first time I realized I could make something really interesting, and we got a nod from the Axe To Grind podcast, which I never thought could happen even back then. And then they premiered ‘Euphrosyne’ ahead of All Is Vapor coming out, which was so cool of them to do.

We just want to keep challenging ourselves with things that I don’t even know if they’re hardcore or not anymore, but then I’ll go write a 90-second straightforward hardcore song after that. I love how Smashing Pumpkins can mix together soft and heavy songs on the same album, like Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, which was the first record that made me think, ‘I want to sonically emulate this.’ We’ve ventured through a lot of sonic experimentation, a lot of different types of hardcore. We’ve grown our networking skills since our first tour in 2018. We’re a lot more mature now. I’m really happy with this EP. I wouldn’t change a thing about it, and I didn’t compromise anything that makes us Porcupine, but every new record we do, I feel like we have to reintroduce ourselves. So I hope this is going to foreshadow whatever comes next, because it’s going to be even better.”

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Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.