City of Bend, meet four-piece shoegaze and noise-rock group, Dead Nettle. While the band is still fresh, the genre of shoegaze/noise has been around since the early '80s and is easily identified by its use of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and overwhelming pedal effects to create an ecstatic sounding wave of alternative rock.
Dead Nettle is anything but your typical band, composed of talented musicians that slowly formed a connection, with some members being obsessed with the genre and others being introduced to it through the group.
"I've always loved underground music," bassist Jordan Davis said before chameleonic drummer Morgan Mason admitted how enjoyable the learning curve has been for him. "It's been a blast to learn a new genre and I've actually really fallen in love with this genre," said Mason.
"I grew up in Philadelphia and most of the basement scene on the East Coast is a lot of shoegaze/punk rock and metal and a lot of people get experimental in that setting. I kind of just wanted to bring a little of that to Bend," explained guitarist and band-founder Charlemagne Albatross.
With a shared passion for the raw, unfiltered energy of noise-rock, the group has gone over the edge with its latest material. A powerful six-track demo titled, "DEMO(N) Tape," recently released near the end of January by Pleasure Tapes, comes in at just over a half-hour and delivers a thought-provoking cacophony-inspired symphony. From start to finish, each song bleeds into the next, taking listeners on a journey through a gamut of aggressive guitar riffs, a skeleton key rhythm section and expansive jam sections. Simply put, Dead Nettle's new EP is built with no-skips in mind.
Also, worth noting is the recording process the band embarked on.
"Analog recording, I personally feel, is just a warmer sound. You can tell sometimes when vocals are just too digital. People put too many processors and plug-ins and things on it," Albatross expressed. "When you do something analog it gets you down to the very basics of what it's supposed to sound like. We did one recording digitally and after that, we all decided we wanted to give analog a try. It's a bit more sentimental, a bit more intimate, 'Inti-mental,' if you would," he offered with a laugh.
Lead vocalist, the artist known as Cosmia, blasts her harmonies through the microphone and offers a healthy portion of anti-commercialism infused with the nuance of enjoying modern pleasures and pursuing authentic creative aesthetics.
"For me, I grew up in LA going to a lot of underground shows and those really inspired me to gravitate towards a more experimental sound," she said. "We enjoy pushing the boundaries on conventional lyrics — openly talking about mental health issues, so that such conversations might become less taboo and more normalized."
On songs like "Sex as Currency" and "Solipsism," the group tears through lyrics about overlooked talent and the shallow joy of pop culture eye candy. "With a lot of our guitar tones we were trying to create soundscapes," Cosmia explained. "It can go from being very light and airy to dark and heavy. At the same time, our vocals generally come from a more or less dark space. That could change in the future, but right now, we're just this culmination of dreaminess and the heavy weight of reality."
Modern music billboards and awards shows are filled with cookie-cutter pop songs and mumble rap, but Dead Nettle offers a sound that echoes the energy of rebellion and harnesses a contemporary edge that brings grunge influence into the 21st Century.
