(EDITOR’S NOTES — Over the summer we were surfing social media when we came across a cool-looking duo called medium.chaos announcing the release of its single ‘canker sore.’ Intrigued, we checked out the song and were immediately blown away. So, we searched the streams to find all we could. Then, we came across the single ‘big dead old tree.’ Holy shit! We were hooked! It was as if the Pixies and Queens of the Stone Age had a baby and dropped it off on Buffalo’s doorstep. Comprised of Sean McNamara and Maria Angela, medium.chaos has a unique sound which they’ve dubbed ‘slumbergrunge.’ And today, the band has dropped its debut album titled ‘hysteria.catalysts,’ a record chock full of stellar guitar work by McNamara whose snarling riffs, catchy hooks and badass grooves are complemented by Maria's wide-ranging vocals which exude everything from urgency to vulnerability to sniveling punk angst. This a very compelling band. Please give ‘hysteria.catalysts’ a spin and check out our story on medium.chaos below. — Photos provided.)
1120 PRESS: Thank you for speaking with us and congrats on the new album! How are you guys feeling now that it’s dropped?
SEAN: I’m so thrilled! After banging my head on the wall for a few weeks and working through the whole “man, I could have done this, could have done that” I’ve accepted it, and I love it. I hope people enjoy it. Be careful: it’s great driving music, but we will NOT pay your speeding tickets if it makes you drive too fast!
MARIA: We are definitely really happy with the outcome and excited to put it out to the world finally. I've watched Sean really put in so much work these past couple months finalizing everything and making it perfect. When we sat down and listened to the final versions, I was blown away at how amazing everything sounded. I had no idea we were capable of what we produced and I am so proud of what we've got.
1120: In writing and recording this album, what did you guys set out to accomplish? Was there a particular sound you wanted or musical direction/subject matter you aimed to explore?
SEAN: I think we bonded over the idea of “grunge” as a style to be explored. It’s not really punk, it’s not metal, it’s a certain kind of riffy rock music that I’ve loved since I was young. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, that music is in my bones for life. It’s heavy, but there’s a certain sort of creepy harmonic content and a groovy, non-angular rhythmic nature to it that I think makes it special. I’m also a massive Josh Homme freak. He stumbled upon a harmonic language that jazz kids would identify as a “mode” of harmonic minor called lydian dominant. It’s the same set of notes that gives bop to the beloved altered scale! Toss in some bluesy sharp 9s and you’re off to the races. I think my geeky-nerdy side is showing. I like using my fragmented bits of music knowledge in a context like this. I’m not a genre purist in any regard. If you can mix disparate ingredients and bake something tasty, make sure you mix up enough to share!
As far as subject matter goes, some of that’s personal, some of it isn’t. Mania and depression permeate these and probably all of my artistic works, even if I didn’t realize that when I was younger. They’re two major poles of life that María and I discuss a lot. But some things are just silly. A song like ‘root canal’ is intentionally goofy. It’s a ridiculous dramatization of a dental procedure. But a song like ‘the garbage heap of history’ is more abstract. I think it’s one people should interpret for themselves. I know the exact “whens and wheres” of my lyrics, but I also like to evoke moods. I hope people who resonate with those moods can take what they need to take from my writings.
MARIA: I love that Sean can talk about the more technical reasons as to why we have the sound we have. It's harder for me to put into words. I just know what I hear, what I feel, what I want to hear, but he gets it. Grunge is a style of music we both love. A lot of my influences, especially vocally, come from similar places; Hole, 7 Year Bitch, Daisy Chainsaw...the like. Musically I feel constantly influenced by anything driving, fuzzed out. My core influences are definitely grunge, hardcore punk, garage rock acts. I knew I wanted to find a sound somewhere amongst all these different things. Sean's done the bulk of performing instruments, writing lyrics, but there's hours and hours of collaborating on how things are finally performed and completed. Along the way we found that we didn't want to necessarily have every song stick to the exact identical style, which is why you hear some different influences throughout. Somehow, though, it all managed to feel cohesively driving, powerful, riffy, yet euphonious.
We coined the term "slumbergrunge" to define our sound. As a newbie and a pro, it's so
cool that we were able to put our heads together and make this happen. So yeah, we definitely put out an album that is on the heavier, grungier side, and yeah, the crux of this album topically is exploring bipolar disorder, some trauma, darker parts of the human experience. Definitely all important things to the two of us. Both sharing the same mood disorder, we've found it so cathartic to bond over and write about. We even tried to design the final order of the tracks on hysteria.catalysts to feel a little like you're starting off at a manic point and then slumping down into the other end of the spectrum. It's funny what Sean says about "root canal." I remember initially hearing it and thinking it was a metaphor for a mood! I laughed when he revealed the meaning behind it, noting that it's written vaguely enough that a listener could interpret it otherwise. I kinda love that about Sean's writing style. When I write, I'm definitely a lot more literal but I'm also a painter and I've always presented my visual art in that way, letting the viewer make up their own mind as to what it means so that it feels important to them. Most of our lyrics are flexible and can resonate with all sorts of listeners, however they see fit. I love that.
1120: Can you tell us about the band's origins and what you want people to know about medium.chaos?
SEAN: Well, I’ve been playing live for a long time with lots of different people, but it’s almost exclusively been in “non-heavy” worlds of music. Ribbit Exhibit is probably the most energetic of my bands but I wouldn’t really call it heavy. I play lead guitar behind writers and singers I support. Jungle Steve, Cody Barcroft, Tyler Westcott. Hell, I play Allman Brothers music in Big Martha with Grace from Grosh. I’m a jammer which makes me laugh because genre-specific fans have a hard time getting their head around that level of versatility, but for me it’s all music and it’s all deeply related. I’ve been around, but medium.chaos is definitely new skin. It’s funny: I started my journey at 12 years old wanting to write songs that sounded like System of a Down. Tackling this level of heavy at this phase of my life is new and old all at once. It feels good.
I met María a few years ago and she jumpstarted me playing anything heavy-ish again. The first thing we made was a cover of ‘The Happening’ by Pixies, and after hearing her sing that in my kitchen I was like “hmm, she’s pretty good…” and my imagination got working in new ways. (The song) ‘big dead old tree” was the first grunge-ish desert-rock idea I showed María. I started that a few years ago. I think it was written in my head for maybe five or six years, but I didn’t feel right singing it and it definitely never fit with any of my existing projects. She can just sing really well and her voice has such a cool tone. Since I took on mixing this thing and because I’m an amateur it’s pretty crucial to like your singer’s voice; I’ve heard it more than you could imagine by now. We recorded at my house in less than ideal environments with less than ideal gear. We didn’t let that stop us! I think somehow being comfortable and devising our own method ended up working out. For the record, I know I’m not much of an engineer and I would love to see us work with better producers and engineers if they were into what we’re doing. But, hey, I still have to make rent, ya know?
MARIA: Sean definitely has a leg up on me when it comes to professional music experience. I've been singing since a very young age, at some points working with vocal coaches. I started playing guitar as a kid and stuck with it for many years. At a certain point as an adult, some health reasons prevented me from playing and I let it go. I felt like I never got to accomplish what I would have loved to with music. It was kind of on the back burner for me. Around the time I met Sean I had just gotten into playing guitar again to the best of my ability and was working with some folks on a hardcore punk project that never exactly came to fruition. I was trying to find a musical niche somewhere. I came to Sean about performing and recording the Pixies cover as a musical component to a visual art project I was completing. Just a one-time thing. I didn't necessarily think that it would be anything special, but we worked so well together and had so much fun doing it. I had never recorded my singing in this capacity before. Sean was so good at mixing and mastering the track. I was blown away at what we had just created and how amazing it sounded. Shortly after, he sent me his demo for "big dead old tree." I loved this track so much. I played it in my car constantly. Learned it, changed up the vocals a bit, showed Sean what I did with it. At this point, I was presenting Sean with this idea of working on something together, just messing around with recording. We agreed to at least just recording at first to get me used to things, as sort of a side project for Sean, too — the possibility of actually playing live coming much later.
The words "medium chaos" came from a conversation we had in the past joking around about our experience with a mood disorder. Eventually, that worked its way into the theming and direction of what we were writing. We finally got slowly started on tracks for the album almost a year ago. We weren't giving ourselves a deadline or pushing at first, just seeing what we could do. The more we worked, the more we WANTED to work and before we knew it, it was flowing so beautifully and we were diligently working on something almost every weekend. I personally like that Sean and I have total control over everything we create, at least for now. He does know my voice so well, and he's done an incredible job of mixing everything to perfection. As far as how we started off, I guess we sorta did things backwards and we're definitely approaching things unconventionally, but we always kinda wanted it this way. We work so well together doing things our own way. We joke around that we have the "same brain" in certain regards, like being able to finish each other's sentences, but sonically. It’s been such a cool fucking experience.
1120: What else is on the band's agenda for the near future?
SEAN: Well, after recording and mixing for about 10 months I’ve got to acknowledge
that we’re essentially giving the thing away for free. Streaming is an amazing technology that has totally undermined the value of recorded music, but hey, c’est la vie. There’s no un-opening Pandora’s box in this case. I want us to make some fun merch, cassettes, beanies, whatever people want. I also want us to do some shows! You’ve got to keep in mind, we’re not really a band, we’re a creative team of two. Maria has complete power over all things visual because she’s so good with all of that stuff. I played nearly all the instruments, for better or worse. David Adamczyk played some haunting violin on the bridge of ‘canker sore.’ Ryan Campbell played drums on ‘daddy’s in jail’ because there’s no one who could have done it better and he’s the best drummer in the galaxy. Maxwell Johnson played bass on ‘tyler’ (yes, we did a Toadies cover) and it came out so awesome because he plays bass like a guitar, really chunky and raw. So there’s people willing to help us deliver a live show and that makes me very happy.
MARIA: It's really exciting, and also a little scary, to know all of our hard work is just out there now for the world to hear. But, ultimately I'm so proud of what we've done. We definitely do have plans to play live, try to put together a lineup of musicians for that. It'll definitely be a different, more stripped down sound live. It'll also be my first time performing anywhere outside of the occasional open mic. I'm admittedly pretty nervous! But I'm down to take on the challenge. We do have some ideas for merch, we definitely want to get cassettes made, maybe get creative and hide some cool ‘lil Easter egg sounds on those. We also have plans to create a physical copy zine to go along with the album; different pieces of writing, info, visual art to accompany each track on the album. That's something I'm really excited to put together. And hey, we're not done making tunes either. There's more where that came from.
1120: Congrats again on the album and thank you for speaking with us. Is there anything else you want to add before we go?
SEAN & MARIA: Stay fuzzy, ‘lil aliens!
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