Screeching feedback, ricocheting drums and grinding guitars collide like a car crash on “Red Circus,” the ominous lead-off track from I Hate Dave’s latest three-song EP.
Bearing the unambiguous, call-to-action title, Stop Loving Deviant Authoritarian Vampiric Eugenicists and Start Hating Them, the collection expands the sonic palette of Queen City Nerve’s selection for Best Rock Band of 2025 to include musique concrète and political punk.
“I’m watching your every move/ I know about everything you do…” singer-lyricist Ariel Fisher croons before launching a rapid-fire, banshee-shriek denunciation, “Hang you from the wall you built/ And let your gators eat you dead…”
I Hate Dave, comprising drummer Dennis Morency, guitarist Nathan Green and bassist-backing vocalist Taylor Wallace in addition to Fisher, embraces and playfully manipulates a mother lode of stylistic signposts, with tunes ranging from 2024’s swaggering, plutocrat takedown “Billionaires” to 2026’s taunting, dynamic “Guillotine.”
“A really cool part of I Hate Dave is that it’s a living, breathing thing that changes,” Fisher offers.
“We all have our own ideas and means of making music, and when we all get together … everyone pitches in,” Morency adds. “You have a series of skills that you pull from and it’s subconscious.”
He refrains from over-analyzing the music, insisting that I Hate Dave is simply “a four-piece rock band.”
Genre blending and multiple meanings seem to come easy to the eclectic crew, which draws its members from the Florida panhandle (Morency); Columbus, Ohio (Fisher); and Chicago suburb Joliet (Wallace); as well as Charlotte (Green).
The four future bandmates met while teaching music at a local school, where they hit it off and launched I Hate Dave. In 2024, the fledgling group dropped its self-titled debut EP.
A stand-out track on the collection is “Matador.” Over a rattlesnake Spanish tarantella on guitar, Fisher belts out an unbridled, impassioned vocal: “Sun bleached leather and a heather blue mood/ I can’t see in a world without you…”
Fisher says the song, an audience favorite, is her personal metaphor for unhealthy yet alluring relationships. Morency, however, gleans another interpretation, saying it depicts the struggle to give one’s life meaning.
“If you’re a matador and you kill the bull, then what’s left?” he asks.
For his part, Green welcomes more than one interpretation of the band’s songs.
“Once you release something into the world, it’s just not yours anymore,” he contends.
“Art is an incomplete circuit and it requires an audience to finish the circuit,” Morency sums up.
Philosophical debates on the meaning of their songs aside, Fisher says the band’s priority has always been its audience.
“Our goal is to enjoy ourselves and each other’s company and help people along the way,” she maintains.
The help she refers to includes playing several charity shows, which over the last year alone have included Fuck Columbus Fest, a fundraiser for Food Not Bombs in Columbus, South Carolina; Wilmington’s Save the Sharks Charity Festival for Marine Conservation; and Femme Fest at Snug Harbor.
Read more: Femme Fest Expands in Second Year at The Milestone (2025)
The band has also worked with nonprofit Musicians for Overdose Prevention, handing out free naloxone (Narcan) kits at the band’s merch table while on tour last fall.
I Hate Dave’s upcoming itinerary includes a house show in Concord on July 25, a relatively new experience that has become a more regular part of their repertoire after playing house gigs in Wilmington and Virginia.
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“It’s great, because people are opening up their doors to friends and strangers alike,” Morency says. “We’re all being social and enjoying music together, and it’s got a warm, cozy feeling.”
Fisher notes that house shows also mitigate Charlotte’s dearth of all-ages venues.
“We work with students of music and younger people,” she says. “House shows can give younger crowds safe spaces and perhaps inspire them to start their own bands.”
Regardless of whether I Hate Dave, or any band, plays a house show or a commercial venue, Morency takes heart in seeing people come out to gigs to interact with friends and find community.
With its unclassifiable, eclectic and compelling brand of rock music, I Hate Dave seems proud to bring people together to experience the fun, frisson and epiphanies triggered by live music — especially tunes lambasting the deviant bloodsucking authoritarians who smugly tyrannize us all.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source qcnerve.com ’
