Courtesy Beneath The Leaves
Beneath The Leaves is a band so new they don’t even have a proper picture together yet.
Aside from a quick snapshot captured at a recent show, the four-piece isn’t focused on marketing and social-media clout, but instead making the most chaotic mathcore in the city.
“A lot of the stuff we do is, like, how dumb can we make this sound, in a good way?” says guitarist Jude McCall, who’s also in local outfit Disastry.
McCall teamed up with vocalist Estrella Serrano-Urroz last summer and put together single, “Estrogen Riot,” still the band’s only sonic sample to date, before recruiting drummer Will Gonzalez and bassist Rose Simpson to round out the lineup.
“Me and Jude really wanted to explore the heavier stuff, which is how Beneath The Leaves came up,” Serrano-Urroz says. “Listening to a lot of emo-violence, screamo, but we converged at the mathcore stuff.”
Now, Beneath The Leaves is ready for its live debut at the second annual Blood on the Land Fest on Saturday, June 27, at D3 Arts. The day-long DIY showcase features 15 bands, including Minnesota-based headliners Rakuyo and Falling with Scissors.
Just based off of “Estrogen Riot,” Beneath The Leaves use the traditional mathcore calculation from the early 2000s — think The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Red Chord — but have six new songs in the hopper for the upcoming set.
“‘Estrogen Riot’ is pretty different from what we’ve written since then as a full band,” McCall explains. “A lot more of the really fast, almost grindy stuff going into really slow, chuggy stuff with tapping riffs here and there.”
“‘Estrogen Riot’ has some elements of mathcore, we’ve just been working on honing in that sound,” Serrano-Urroz adds.
In showing their work, Simpson and Gonzales admit to pulling from everything between sludge and thrash on the latest unreleased material.
Courtesy Beneath The Leaves
“A lot of my bass playing is how can I make this sound as fat as possible and how slow can we make this before it stops sounding cool?” says Simpson, who’s also a guitarist in grind group GOD TOLD ME TO and Serrano-Urroz’s bandmate in Denver deathcore project Sword Saint.
“It’s more jazz for me. A bit of math rock and some old heavy metal bands from a long time ago,” Gonzales adds. “Rose might hate me for saying this, but it was also a little bit of mincecore.”
The moniker is a reference to a lyric from the song, “Porphyria’s Lover,” by obscure early 2000s English metalcore band Penknifelovelife, which is based off an 1836 gothic poem by Robert Browning. Serrano-Urroz doesn’t have to go that far back fom inspiration, though.
“I’m definitely tapping into how chaotic our world is for sure. That’s obviously present in everybody’s heads, but definitely a more fantastical spin on it and talking about resilience and getting through it together,” she explains. “I don’t think mathcore really talks about that, but I’m trying to do it in a very goofy way, which I think you’ll see once my lyrics actually come out.
“The beautiful thing about mathcore is you can have really joyous parts, but then you have really, really heavy, disturbing parts,” Serrano-Urroz continues. “I think that dynamic is very absurd, and the writing in itself has to follow that.”
Plans are in place to record a proper demo or EP this summer, along with booking more shows, but until then, the only way to hear what Beneath The Leaves is all about is catching them this weekend.
“I’m excited to perform for the people and give them the show they need,” Gonzales says.
“I’m excited just to go crazy,” Serrano-Urroz adds.
“We’re going to have a pretty unique sound when we go out,” McCall concludes. “I’m excited to add that to our scene.”
Blood on the Land Fest, 2 p.m. Saturday, June 27, D3 Arts, 3632 Morrison Road. Tickets are $25 at the door.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.westword.com ’
