Road Eaters’ Opaque (Dust Cult) is an album born out of trauma—and the surprising feeling of liberation that may be a delayed byproduct. For band co-founders Megan March and John No, it’s been an eye-opening eight years since 2017’s The Envoy. That album solidified their outspoken post-punk aesthetic—one impressed by the likes of Gang Of 4 and Fugazi. Amid the COVID pandemic, the couple’s first youngster was delivered by emergency C-section in a critically understaffed hospital. Motherhood resurrected a truckload of emotional baggage for March, a veteran of the Bay Space queercore scene who grew up in a homophobic family. As outcome, a number of the lyrics on Opaque are about discovering your individual household when the organic model tosses you apart. Therefore the aforementioned feeling of liberation.
March went into extra element in a current chat with MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland.
Inform us extra concerning the main life occasions the contributed to the prolonged break between albums?
John and I had been on the highway for seven months in help of The Envoy, which was intense. After we got here again, we had been prepared for our subsequent chapter with the band. After enjoying a canopy of Gang Of 4’s “Love Like Anthrax” with Screaming Females’ Marissa Paternoster each evening for over a month, we determined to discover including a guitar participant. We performed a clutch of reveals with Steve Oriolo whereas additionally enjoying in our traditional two-piece type. In 2018, we launched Inhabitations Of Time, an instrumental sound-collage companion to The Envoy. By the point we launched the Easy Distractions EP in 2021, Joan Toledo had already come into the fold as our everlasting guitarist.
Someplace in there, I additionally had a child. Whereas the labor itself was harrowing, changing into a mom has been extraordinarily therapeutic and even enjoyable. All of the whereas, John and Joan and I had been writing, jamming, recording and enjoying reveals. One different large life change is that I shifted from my longstanding profession as a sound engineer to effective arts. I’m at the moment in my second 12 months of an MFA program with a mixed-media deal with sculpture and sound. So whereas it’s been some time since our final full-length LP, we’ve been continuously in movement.
It’s important to assume Opaque would’ve been a a lot totally different report if it had come out scorching on the heels of The Envoy. How did that eight years of dwelling play into the band’s newest evolution?
There’s been a number of private progress, which is why I used a confessional voice with the lyrics on this report. This represented a pivot from The Envoy, which was an idea report primarily based on two Ursula Okay. LeGuin books, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand Of Darkness. The brand new songs are the results of survival and a willpower to dwell. My youngster and I survived a medical system that betrayed and deserted us to the purpose of close to demise. Joan, John and I are trauma-bonded from the pandemic. Joan is continuous her gender-affirming transition in a rustic that’s making an attempt to legislate the trans neighborhood out of existence. John is an activist classroom instructor and launched his guide, Educating Resistance (PM Press), on radical pedagogy. And we’re all engaged on methods to successfully reply to the rise of fascism throughout our nation.
It needed to be a problem including a brand new band member to the fold throughout a pandemic. How did you make it work?
Fortunately, we’d already been enjoying with Joan in our different band, Tough, so we already knew her vibe. It was an apparent match, and all of us had been able to go. Then, the identical week we’d deliberate to play our first present with Joan, lockdown for the pandemic began. We completely wanted to maintain enjoying for our collective psychological well being, so we proceeded to cautiously follow at a distance, all masked, with Joan on the entrance porch and us in the lounge with follow amps, drum follow pads and the display screen door shut.
After 5 months and a few critical conversations, we determined to type a pod and return to the studio. That interval was about greater than the music. Joan was the one particular person exterior our home who we noticed persistently, and I believe that’s after we actually bonded as a selected household. Our return to the studio allowed us to hit the bottom working when enjoying reveals was secure once more. We launched the Easy Distractions EP throughout that isolating time with out enjoying any reveals to help it. We didn’t know what would occur, however by some means we offered out all of the copies in presale anyway—in order that was a reduction and fairly affirming.
What was the recording course of like for Opaque?
We had a number of time throughout COVID to put in writing and report, so we dove deep. I recorded about half of the songs in our studio, whereas the opposite half had been recorded at Atomic Backyard in Oakland with Jack Shirley. Jack blended all of the songs, giving the report a stable and constant sound. The report undoubtedly has a vibe.
You’ve talked about how the members of Road Eaters have grown nearer by means of the trauma you’ve endured. How is that bond mirrored in your newest music?
It’s a bit ethereal and dreamy but additionally noisy, percussive and euphorically darkish. All three of us have a shared, leftfield sense of aesthetic and function that’s perhaps greatest witnessed after we play dwell. We’re a band that connects past the music. We hang around, prepare dinner, watch horrible TV and share books. After we make noise collectively, we will learn one another’s minds on a cosmic stage. We’ve been by means of some shit collectively and emerged stronger. John and Joan are my ride-or-die—and making music and artwork with them is extraordinarily enjoyable and satisfying. The music displays this and speaks for itself.
See Road Eaters dwell.
