Hi there. I’m Steve, and this is my monthly column about Milwaukee’s metal scene.
I should note that while the subject matter is niche, I don’t want the writing or the readership to be that. To that end, I’m hoping this can be interesting and informative for metalheads and non-metalheads alike. As for what this column is gonna be, I’d like there to be different themes or focuses from month to month. Sometimes, like this month’s edition, it’ll be about upcoming shows that feature local bands. Other editions might cover new and/or upcoming releases. Maybe I’ll even do an in-depth interview with a single band or artist—closer to a profile-type thing. Who knows? This will probably evolve over time, so it’ll be a journey we’ll take together.
Thursday, September 25
Victim Of Fire + Mind Harvester, Sublet @ MKE Ultra
First up is a show for the hardcore kidz that’s presented by X-Ray Arcade. The headliner is Victim Of Fire, a blackened crust-punk outfit from Denver. Opening for VoF are two local bands. The first is Mind Harvester, who describe themselves as a “three piece crust/dark hardcore punk/metal whatever.” They put out an impressive split LP with Chicago’s Natural Abuse back in April. It’s definitely worth your time.
Earlier this month I sat down with the other local opener, a powerviolence act called Sublet. They’re a new band, with only an eight-minute demo under their belt. “We came together about a year ago,” explains vocalist Ty Larsen, who quickly becomes the band’s spokesperson. “We ended up kinda riffing around the idea of starting this powerviolence band. We were just like, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ It kinda started off a little more tongue-in-cheek, but it’s turned into something that I think we’re all deeply passionate about.”
When I ask the band—Larsen, guitarist Dominic Poulter, bassist Kory Brunette, and drummer Kevin Brunette—why they chose powerviolence over, say, death metal or something closer to what a purest would consider metal, they’re straightforward about it. “Death metal sucks,” deadpans Poulter.
Larsen laughs, then expands on that: “Yeah, that really is the narrative behind it—we just don’t really care for death metal. There’s enough metal out there currently, and none of us had any drive to make any sound like that.”
If the tone seems a bit casual for powerviolence—a belligerent strain of hardcore punk that, like grindcore, prizes intensity and chaos above all else—that’s because there’s an uplifting and compassionate vibe to Sublet. And while Larsen’s between-song banter—e.g., “Love your friends and care for them gingerly”—can initially scan as jokey or as schtick when compared to his lyrics—e.g., “Picking a side is worthless when neither of them value you / They need your money, and use your body as a vessel”—there’s nothing but kindness and honesty behind those words.
“As much as I’m a positive person, I’m not really shy or afraid to talk about what makes me upset or angry,” asserts Larsen. “Some of the things that make me mad are things that harm my friends or the people that I care about. In a broad sense, I may be yelling about something that makes me mad, and then after that song I have the sense of ‘I do appreciate and love these people that are impacted by these things negatively.’”
After the show at MKE Ultra, Larsen says that Sublet are planning on “taking the rest of the year slow, and next year we’ll see if we hop on some more shows.” There are also plans to make their debut full-length, as all of the songs are ready to go.
“I’m excited for our record to drop,” he says eagerly. “I get giddy thinking about it.” He then describes hearing the record as if describing their live show: “Before you know it, 14 minutes passed and you listened to 13 songs, and you just walk away feeling tired.”
Thursday, September 25
Conan + Mares Of Thrace, Lost Tribes Of The Moon @ X-Ray Arcade
Next up is a show for fans of slower and beefier music than the first. The headliner is the Liverpool-based Conan, who are about as burly as stoner metal bands come. Their music pairs well with bong rips. They’re joined by a messy and blackened doom-y duo from Calgary called Mares Of Thrace.
The other opener is the Milwaukee-based doom/prog-metal band Lost Tribes Of The Moon. I recently spoke with the band’s founder and guitarist, Jon Liedtke, in Bay View. He’s as friendly as he is loquacious. He’s also got a healthy amount of self-awareness, whether it’s me calling his music weird at times (“If you wanna use it, I’ll take it graciously,”) or his band being compared to Spinal Tap for burning through drummers (“I take that in stride. If we get compared to them, that’s a compliment.”)
The Encyclopedia Metallum—basically, the gold standard for information on all things metal—has an entry for LTotM, labeling them as doom metal and their lyrical themes as “occultism.” Part of their sound is doom, granted, but they’re just as much a progressive metal band. To be sure, their self-titled debut LP—which Milwaukee Record named the 21st best of 2018—is certainly closer to traditional doom.
So it should be unsurprising that when starting the band, Liedtke “felt inspired to reach back into the influences of [doom] bands” with “heavy, chord-driven music” like Black Sabbath and Saint Vitus. When I toss out Candlemass as another example, Liedtke agrees. “Yeah, and weirdly enough, on our first album we got a lot of comparisons to Candlemass. I was like, ‘I’ve always liked Candlemas, but I never listened to them as much as I listened to bands like Trouble and stuff like that.’ And in subsequent years, I’ve listened to them more and gone, ‘Huh, why didn’t I listen to more Candlemass? Pretty great band.’”
As for the occult-esque lyricism, there’s truth to that. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is a touchstone, as are the works of Clive Barker. To wit, the band’s name is a reference to one of Barker’s works called Nightbreed. Originally a film, the graphic-novel adaptation contains the band’s namesake.
“The comic is the aftermath of the movie. [The Nightbreed] no longer have a Midian, and so they’re known as The Lost Tribes Of The Moon. I was like, ‘Well, that sounds like a cool band name,’” Liedtke says. “I checked on my phone to see if there was a band called that. There was Tribes Of The Moon, but no Lost Tribes Of The Moon. So I was like, ‘I think this is safe.’ I was already thinking of a doom band with progressive elements, and this was giving me visual inspiration for lyrical influence.”
Their second LP—Chapter II: Tales Of Strife, Destiny, And Despair, featured in the March 2022 roundup—is heavier and more ambitious than their debut; it features two 20-minute songs, partly because it was written during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“When I got to the second album, I was trying not to write everything so riff-based,” Liedtke says. “On Chapter II, I wanted to move in some different directions. By this point, I had started incorporating a different lineup that I felt could handle some of these grandiose ideas. Since we weren’t playing any shows, I didn’t have to worry about playing these songs live, so I doubled down on synthesizers. I was like, ‘I’m gonna get as progressive krautrock-y as I want to.’”
And while Liedtke is enthusiastic about the creative process and about his new material—which, to him, sounds “provocative enough to play in front of a live audience”—he’s just as enthusiastic, if not more so, to get back on stage. “Performing live is a very cathartic thing for me, and I always wanted this to be a band that could perform live on a semi-regular basis.”
Lost Tribes Of The Moon, then, will use their show on September 25 to display their current lineup—Liedtke, vocalist Kara Mlodik, guitarist and theremin player Daniel Kern, bassist Chris Valenti, and drummer Sam Wallman —who are open to improvisation and can play within “the comfort of unfamiliarity.” In other words, you’d be “seeing this new lineup gel in real time.” If you’re curious about seeing them, this would be the time to do it.
Saturday, September 27
Fox Lake + Kaonashi, Surfaced, Dark Deeds, Krooked @ X-Ray Arcade
The final show we’re talkin’ about is another one for all you hardcore and metalcore kidz. It’s a five-band bill, with Denver’s Fox Lake headlining. Check them out if you like hardcore with some hip-hop flourishes à la E-Town Concrete. Philly’s Kaonanshi (post-hardcore and metalcore gleefully smashed together) and Louisville’s Surfaced (beatdown hardcore) are the other out-of-towners tryna knock you on your ass.
Like the first show discussed, there are two hometown bands on this bill. There’s Dark Deeds, who do modernized deathcore, complete with eight-string guitars and concrete-thick production. Last year’s Death Keeps EP is some truly heavy shit.
The quartet—composed of guitarist/vocalist Ben Prendergast, vocalist Allan Barth III, bassist Shane Garski, and drummer Kevin Giersch—formed last year from the ashes of another Milwaukee band called West View. “[West View] played shows for five or so years, and then stopped during COVID,” explains Prendergast. “One of the guys moved, and then in the last couple years we decided we wanted to start doing something for fun again ’cause we kinda missed it. That’s all it really was. We just wanted to keep playing music together and have an excuse to meet up.” He laughs, then tacks on: “Not super-exciting stuff.”
It becomes clear within the opening minutes of our conversation that Prendergast is endearingly Midwestern. He uses “super-nice” three times during the 20-minute call, and was pleasantly surprised and thankful when I cite a few different clips of the band I found on Youtube (“Dude, I can’t believe you watched all this stuff. That’s super-cool. I appreciate it.”). At one point he even apologizes for “super-long-winded answers.” (They were just fine in terms of length.)
But make no mistake: given their lyrical subject matter, Dark Deeds is a well-chosen name. Deathcore, as a general rule, tends towards the misanthropic—cf. the entire catalog of longtime deathcore ambassadors Carnifex—and Dark Deeds are part of that continuum. The EP’s opener “Found Underneath A Cold Knife” features the lines “My head is littered with these questions / How many times have I been through this? / Too many nights / Spent waking up in a cold sweat.” “Leech” covers addiction and depression (“We surge to depths in grief / To gorge until the end / We surge to depths in grief / Unleashed unto the end”), while “Death Keeps” is the closest they come to black-metal despair (“Day in and day out / I sit and decay / My body, a prison / My soul is enslaved”).
Yet Prendergast is more than aware that “stuff about being unhappy with things in your life” isn’t exactly original. “We aren’t breaking any new ground,” he admits. “It’s what a lotta people write about.” I point out that common topics and clichés hit for a reason. “Yeah, there’s a reason why they’re common topics—’cause we all tend to relate to those things. [The band members] are all from Wisconsin, so we’re all suburban young-ish white dudes.” He chuckles, then continues: “So, those are the things that we tend to struggle with—mental illness, growing up religious, that sorta stuff.”
To be clear, Prendergast seems to be content and/or well-adjusted, and what the band does on stage is an outlet and/or escapist. “It feels like getting something off your chest, and at the same time it’s like reading a horror novel,” he clarifies. “In a way, it’s just kinda fun to write angry stuff that’s fun to play live. Some of the stuff is meaningful, and it does feel good to get that out, but on the other hand, some of it is just fun to play.”
They may not take their lyrical content fully seriously, but they sure do bring it when they play live—here’s video of them tearin’ it up at X-Ray from last November. (Note the opening clip from I Think You Should Leave.) You can experience this for yourself at the same venue at the end of the month. You can also catch them at Bremen Cafe on November 15.
Be on the lookout for new music Dark Deeds in the future, too. “We have a ton of music and are pretty close to finishing quite a few songs,” states Prendergast. “We’ll probably end up doing the same thing we did [with Death Keeps], where we’ll do a single or two, and then an EP with music videos. I don’t know when we’re gonna put it out, but the actual writing of stuff and most of the recording is done. I’m super-excited. It feels a little bit darker and heavier than before, which is exciting for me because that’s my favorite.”
Kicking the show off is the other Milwaukee-based band, Krooked. I chatted with the hardcore four-piece—vocalist Ryan Korsmo, guitarist Joey Draheim, bassist Adam Ries, and drummer Ryan Claxton—last week, and lemme tell ya, they are a fun hang.
Krooked began in earnest at the of 2023, and became a fully functioning unit in the summer of 2024. “Me and Joey started this as a little side project just to kill some time,” says Korsmo. Adds Draheim, “Yeah, we just started making music in my garage with a coupl’a cheap instruments.”
After recruiting Claxton, they started taking it more seriously. “When I joined officially, [Korsmo and Draheim] already had structured, bare-bone ideas—something to go off of,” explains Claxton. “And me being a drummer, I can mesh with pretty much any style of music. So once I started hearing [the material], I’m like, ‘I can definitely throw down on this. Lemme give it a shot.’ And then once I joined, I’m like, ‘Now this is becoming more real.’” Concludes Draheim, “Then we got a bass player, and the rest is history.”
Given that their EP—the aptly-named Public Display Of Aggression, released back in February—and the split with Chicago-based Keep—May’s Kreep Split—are the sound of veteran confidence, finding out that this is Korsmo’s and Draheim’s first project is kinda staggering. “This is the first time I’ve ever performed on stage before,” asserts Korsmo. “There was a bit of stage fright to get over.” Draheim then jumps in: “We’re just out here wingin’ it, man.”
The band lives, breathes, and plays old-school hardcore, meaning their music is intimidating and their appearance is imposing. In fact, the band’s tagline is “Milwaukee Heavy.” When we first met at the Lakefront Colectivo, they looked like they were in a hardcore band—especially the heavily tatted Korsmo and Draheim. But talk with them for any length of time and you’ll discover they’re sweethearted music nerds; during our conversation, they were all smiles and laughs.
They’re quick-witted, too. In early August, Krooked played a pretty bitchin’ show in the bowl of 4 Seasons Skatepark. When I ask how they got their gear down into the bowl, Ries responds, “Carefully,” with superb comedic timing and delivery. (In reality, someone just slides the gear down the side of the bowl, and someone else catches it. Seriously.)
Similarly, when it emerges that part of the band’s origin story is what Draheim calls “a very, very okay cover” of No Doubt’s “Spiderwebs,” Korsmo declares that “No one needs to hear it.” I then challenge that by arguing that the world does need to hear it because that fact is out there now, to which Claxton replies, “I guess we gotta revamp our set, then.”
But when they’re onstage—well, that’s a different story. As you may imagine, their shows are intense. Their crowds might be small now, but the energy is that of a sold-out show at the Rave Ballroom. Their brand of no-bullshit hardcore inspires the kind of lizard-brain (slam)dancing that is as off-putting for those on the outside as it is cathartic on the inside. “Every time we write, we’re like, ‘How is this gonna perform live?,’” says Draheim. “We just want everybody to have a good time. If everybody’s dancing, that’s how we know we’re having a good show.”
Speaking of: there are still multiple chances this year to catch the band live. There’s the aforementioned show at X-Ray on September 27, for starters. (Expect to hear new music at that show, and there are plans to release a single/music video and an EP in the near future.) Then they’re playing Zao MKE Church on October 3, back at X-Ray on October 20, and then Four Seasons on October 25. If you’re planning on attending, Draheim has some helpful advice. “Always go to the shows early,” he recommends. “I’ve found so many bands that way. That’s the big message: Go for the openers; they’re usually awesome.”
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