Birth, Death and Time In The Sun: SUSTO’s Justin Osborne Finds new Dimesion

September 12, 2022

“There were ravines growing between me and people in my life,” Justin Osborne tells BandWagon. “And with COVID, everybody got pushed back together. Some of those changes had to be faced head on.”

Osborne is the commandant of North Carolina’s Susto and he’s just gone through some of the most intense years of his life.

“If humans are dimensional,” he says, “there’s a whole new dimension of myself that was awakened.”

Susto’s sound sits between Americana, psych-pop and the indie-rock church of rootsy folk. A mix of satire and earnestness adds a roughness; a raised eyebrow setting it apart from rural radio. Its dark, drug-influenced sentimentality and staunch idealism is, at its heart, just barefaced American songwriting.

“There were a lot of attempts at reconciliation – my own beliefs with how I was raised,” he says. “I’m trying not to disrespect,” he says, “but to participate in these big life events.”

Continue reading

Permission to Shine: Shinyribs’ Kevin Russell Goes Big

August 24, 2022

Kevin Russell was nearing age 40, and given the upheavals in his career, should have been facing the clichéd mid-life crisis. Instead, he gave himself permission to be himself.

He left a band he’d played with for nearly 20 years, to focus on Shinyribs.

“The odds were against me for sure,” Russell said in a phone interview with BandWagon, “But I felt like I had to do it. It was a now-or-never kind of feeling. It was a gamble. But it was so great. We are now an instant party – wherever we go.” 

Continue reading

OGT: To Re-Write a Legacy

June 15, 2022

Kodean IX doesn’t know where he would be without music, but he knows it wouldn’t be good.
He has been in and out of jail, and one of his cousins was in Greeley’s chapter of the infamous 18th Street gang. 

“He asked me why I was gang-banging,” Kodean recalled, “and I said, ‘Because I grew up here.’ – He told me to do something better. Break the legacy. And I did.”

Kodean and a grieving Keen OGT (who lost his sister to suicide) were rapping to help quell the pain they felt, and they began to call themselves OGT, or One Great Team.

Then the Moxi Theater gave OGT a chance, a big show, and Korean hasn’t forgotten it.

“I’d still be in a different life,” Kodean told BandWagon. “[The Moxi] gave me a chance to show what I could do.”

Continue reading

How The Arcadian Wild was Loved Into Being

June 9, 2022

The Arcadian Wild really listen. You can see it in their patience with fans, their gentleness with each other, and most of all in the cohesive interplay of each melodic line in their music. Like mycelium spreading nutrients throughout a forest, each individual is inseparable from the whole.

The band began in an impromptu post-choir-class jam session in 2013. The lineup has shifted so often over the years that founding member Lincoln Mick refers to the band as a “revolving door,” but he remembers the band’s five-or-so departed members with much more sweetness than bitterness.

“To take a turn of phrase from Fred Rogers, so many people have ‘loved this band into being’ over the years,” he told BandWagon.

Continue reading

Goatwhore: With a Vengeance

May 4, 2022

Even with a name like Goatwhore, there’s room for subtlety.

Yes, there are Satanic overtones in Goatwhore’s lyrics — duh — and their music reflects it, with the kind of hardcore black metal crunch you’d expect in the drums, guitars and, of course, the vocals (also duh). But the last record’s lyrics come from a concept album, Vengeful Ascension, which portray Lucifer as an underdog slighted by a God who was equally oppressive.

L. Ben Falgoust II, the band’s singer (and keeper of one of the best metal monikers in history), uses historical references to color the themes, but Zack Simmons, the drummer, likes to apply the lyrics to real life.

Continue reading