Spend a few hours with Die Spitz and you’ll realize a bit of chaos follows the band wherever they go. Not that it’s a bad thing. In three years since releasing their debut EP, this ad hoc group of 22-year-old friends and sometimes roommates who meld punk, metal, hardcore, ’90s alt rock (and melody when they feel like it) has inked their status as one of the most riotous new live bands on the planet.
Although Eleanor Livingston, Kate Halter, Chloe De St. Aubin, and Ava Schrobilgen might sound like the names of high-class debutantes, just give the quartet an hour and they will have crowds barking like dogs, feverishly jumping on stage, and throwing around “we’re not worthy” hands. If Livingston isn’t gripping microphones like a butcher grips a knife, she’s hurling her body around while crowd surfing … in kitten heels. De St. Aubin bears a haunting visage with expert makeup that may look like kabuki, Betty Boop, or a sad clown, depending on the day. Schrobilgen growls like she’s eternally stuck in Dante’s inferno. And Halter (2023 winner of Best Bassist in the Austin Music Awards) barrels down on her instrument while never breaking from a covert smile-sneer that makes you wonder if she may actually want to kill you. Besides Halter, the other three constantly trade off vocals, guitars, and drums, making it hard to even give them an official “title” in the band.
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As I said … chaos.
On the day we meet up in Chicago in late May, the bedlam is at a fever pitch. Just a few minutes prior to our meetup at the concert hall Schubas, the band unknowingly almost crashed the pivotal father-daughter dance at a wedding held in the adjacent restaurant while trying to get backstage. Livingston sits in a corner of the green room talking to a doctor who’s injecting steroids into her arm to help coax out her voice. She nearly lost it a few days prior, during a previous stop on the band’s first-ever, sold-out headline tour. Tonight is their fourth show in a row … they think. Ever since getting signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records in March, working on their just-about-to-be-released LP Something To Consume and nonstop tours opening for Amyl and the Sniffers, OFF!, and Sleater-Kinney, things have been an understandable blur.
But all they can think about when we sit down to talk is keeping a personal best record going. “We haven’t had a night without a mosh pit yet on this tour,” says Schrobilgen.
“Better not be tonight,” adds Livingston after getting bandaged up.
(Credit: Anatheme)
The night did not disappoint. By the third song in, the vociferous “Chug,” with its commanding refrain of “right now!” it was mission accomplished. Having gone to many a show at Schubas for more than 20 years, I can safely say this was a first for the intimate listening room. And the venue was not exactly ready for it, either. Security kept wanting a word with Die Spitz’s tour manager, Kyra, so she had to resort to putting a message on her phone to flash at them when they came for her. It simply said, “I’m sorry!”
The band’s fans, collective smorgasbord of music lovers who wanted to witness the buzzed-about act, or had seen them as tour support and came back for the main attraction, started lining up hours before showtime. Some were wearing Gouge Away shirts, others in Bjork tees, or Bad Brains hoodies. In the mix were college kids from nearby DePaul University, skaters, goths, preppies, even some fans the age of some of the other fans’ parents. As Livingston likes to sum up the eclectic crowds, the night offered the epitome of “hot young girls, hot old men.” Halter adds there’s also been some children at recent dates. “We had a 9-year-old boy crowd surf once. … I’m glad that they’re experiencing something like this.”
It’s easy to forget that the women of Die Spitz were just youngins themselves not too long ago. Schrobilgen and Livingston met as preschoolers—their parents were friends in Austin, and now they are friends for the long haul. Halter entered the picture in middle school, when the three became a unit, a “little stupid shithead trio,” she says. By high school, the friends were hellbent on forming a band, inspired after watching the Mötley Crüe biographical dramedy The Dirt and bonding over growing obsessions with Ozzy Osbourne, Meat Puppets, Nirvana, Black Sabbath, Mudhoney, and Pixies, thanks to random CDs they picked up at Goodwill and gateway introductions from Livingston’s father, a guitarist in the Austin-based rock/soul/funk act Relentless Jones. “He’s the coolest dude, and he introduced us to a lot of music because we would live at Ellie’s house all the time,” says Schrobilgen.
Soon enough, a name was unearthed one night after a Fireball bender turned into a brainstorming session. Before they went to bed, they settled on either Die Spitz (a feminine word in German meaning the pointed or the sharp) or Pig Pen (which would end up as Matty Matheson’s band name anyway). Die Spitz picked up speed during the pandemic as the three friends used it as an excuse to hang out during isolation. “We were like, mom, dad we’re just practicing. We’ll social distance. And we were, like, hugging each other and cuddling, just so happy to see each other,” recalls Schrobilgen in between bites of spring rolls as showtime creeps closer.
“Now we have a one-touch-a-day policy,” De St. Aubin counters, in between bouts of applying white powder and thick black eyeliner for the night’s character look. “This is like fucking Black Swan, isn’t it?”
(Credit: Anatheme)
De St. Aubin was a curious late addition. “We met Chloe two weeks before our first show. It was a really quick click of friendship, and everything slid into place,” Halter shares, snickering. “We stole her.” At the time, De St. Aubin was drumming in another Austin band, Farmer’s Wife. That group’s singer, Molly, caught wind of Die Spitz like so many do—at a live show—and came back to tell the tale. Both groups are tight friends now, however, even if there was a bit of a stalker escapade to get De St. Aubin to join Die Spitz. “Ellie FaceTimed [Chloe] on Instagram, like 30 times,” Halter admits.
“It was like the boogeyman. I was like, who’s calling me? I didn’t even know how, Instagram calling worked, so I kept declining the calls,” recalls De St. Aubin, who fills her time on the road taking online classes from University of Texas towards a degree in psychology. “It was scaring me, and I finally answered. They were just absolutely insane … like how they are on stage but 40 times more.”
All together, Die Spitz has released two EPs, 2022’s punk powerhouse The Revenge of Evangeline and 2023’s gruesome Teeth, the latter of which took home the award for Album of the Year at the Austin Music Awards. While there’s been a lot of local love for the band since the early days, the appreciation society is now expanding. Fast.
A pivotal turning point came when Megan Loveless, a Third Man project manager and A&R rep, saw Die Spitz at an unofficial South by Southwest showcase at the Feels So Good warehouse parking lot in 2024. It was the same week SPIN booked the band for a festival showcase, afterwards forecasting, “Be there before all your cool friends talk your ear off about Die Spitz six months from now.” Loveless, too, knew she had to get on the bandwagon and sign the up-and-comers.
“I had listened to the Teeth EP a bit on streaming, but never seen them play so it was a real surprise,” Loveless admits of that initial showcase, calling them “the most entertaining live band I’ve ever seen.” She adds, “I was immediately drawn to them because it’s so refreshing to see only young women on stage. Kate was wearing this shirt that said ‘wanna raise some hell’ and had this Flying V-type bass. Ellie was wearing a metallic bikini top and had this raspy voice and was shredding on guitar. Ava had this growl that was so impressive. Chloe was one of the best drummers I’d ever seen. And the crowd was a huge mosh pit full of teenage girls going crazy, kicking up a massive cloud of dust over the crowd from this gravel parking lot. I had never really seen a mosh pit like that where young women felt so free. I immediately knew they were something special.” Loveless says Die Spitz was a perfect fit for Third Man, noting that the label “works hard to elevate younger punk bands,” and adding, “I wanted to show the world how cool they are.”
Ahead of prominent appearances at Bonnaroo and Governor’s Ball in New York City this summer, the quartet headed to Studio 4 in Philadelphia to work with producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Code Orange, Mannequin Pussy), putting together the pieces of their debut album for the label. The result is the hell-raising, genre-bending, age-defying opus Something To Consume, out September 12.
It opens with the sludgey “Pop Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay)” paying homage (in theory at least) to the early 2000s scene and then continues with the feverish acoustic soapbox “Voir Dire” (“to speak the truth”) that brings a topical political edge to the band’s current material. “Unless we’re part of the few in power, we’ll someday be victimized and regret that we didn’t act now,” De St. Aubin shared in press materials, adding, “Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t.” One of the heaviest songs on the album, the riff-exploding “Throw Yourself to the Sword” is another pearl clutcher that fits well next to the straightforward emotive rock of “Punishers” and the dreamy, near shoegaze of “Go Get Dressed.” All of it will be the centerpiece of the band’s headlining tour this fall as well as September dates with fellow rabble rousers Viagra Boys.
“We have some very different stuff on there,” says Schrobilgen of the new album. “We’ve recently been going kind of more of a metal route. And there’s also some hard-hitting punk. There’s also slow dramatic songs. There’s vibraphone and violin.”
“There really is something for everyone to consume,” Halter interjects, unabashedly emphasizing the pun.
Of all the songs on the album though, it’s the implied comradery on “Riding With My Girls” that best encapsulates the unmistakable journey that got Die Spitz to this point and hints at their desire to push for more women in heavy music.
“I just love feeding off other bad bitches,” Livingston says, laughing, while recalling the influence that touring with Amyl and the Sniffers in particular had on her. “[Amy] was inspirational in the sense of seeing a girl that was just as crazy as me and just fucking going nuts. I definitely take inspiration from her as a person.”
It’s a message she was all too happy to pay forward at Schubas, talking directly to the women in the crowd before inviting them onstage for one last bit of wild abandon: “Quit your job or don’t, become a rockstar. You can do anything you want in this life.” Die Spitz sure has.
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