Band: Bleach
From: Portland, Oregon
Their formation story:
(Eily, vocals): "So knew Cole [drums] through a mutual friend we had. Cole has played in lots of pop-punk bands as guitarist and bassist, and had just started playing drums, and wanted to get into a hardcore band so that they could practice and get better and have more fun playing music. Toward the end of Grip breaking up [Eily’s last band], I wanted to start a side project that had a much different sound than Grip.
"Bradley, our bassist, I met through Brandon, the old bassist of Grip. They knew each other from work and Brandon got us in touch. We originally planned to have a guitarist as well, but that didn’t work out. Bradley has experience as a bassist being the only guitar in a band, so we decided to just be a three piece instead.
"We first started playing together sometime around the second half of 2023, maybe around September or October? And have been playing together since."
Their sound in their own words:
"We kind of call ourselves power violence, but we aren’t exactly power violence in the traditional sense, or really what you think of when you hear the genre term. Bleach is heavily influenced by power violence, but also by general hardcore and hardcore punk.
"When we were figuring out our sound, we put together a playlist full of stuff from Graf Orlock to Jivebomb, to Regional Justice Center, to Los Crudos, to Punch. That’s where I draw a lot of inspiration from when it comes to songwriting, both lyrically, and when we structure songs.
"I also get really inspired when I go to local hardcore shows and see what the rest of the scene is doing. I wanted to take my favorite parts of hardcore and mash them together to make something really different. As I mentioned before, Bradley has a bunch of experience as the only guitarist in bands, and specifically in math rock bands, so we have a lot of math influence in what we do/how he plays. His pedal setup is also really funky and makes for some wild tones– the way he uses pedals lends itself to the writing of music that’s really unique.
"Cole listens to a lot of jazz, blues, and 1950s pop when they’re writing for drums, rather than hardcore. While we each have our own parts of the band that we write, we work together to build song structure."
Latest release info:
"Our latest release is our 2024 demo. It’s a 3-song demo with a few songs we thought were a good representation of our sound. The art was done by Eily, and the demo was recorded by Joey Todd in Southeast Portland, and we sent the demo to Joe Anderson, who records and engineers for a lot of the local hardcore bands in Portland, for engineering and mastering.
'No Peace,' the first track, is a song about hating cops and seeking revenge for the brutality we and our community have faced and the lives that have been lost to police violence.
"I wrote 'Wage Slavery' when I was working a shitty restaurant job that really fucked my mental health up. The line 'take this job and shove it' is a rip from the Johnny Paycheck song that was later covered by the Dead Kennedys– I fantasized about telling my boss to fuck off and thus, wage slavery was born.
"The last track on the demo, 'Only One,' is a response to this proliferating idea that in order to be considered legitimate as a trans person, one must medically transition, or that one must conform to the gender binary by becoming the 'opposite' of the gender you were born, rather than seeing transness through the lens of gender abolition.
"It’s the idea that, as a trans person, I’m the only one who gets to decide how I live, how I present, and how do or don’t identify with gender, and refutes this idea that the MTF or FTM gender transition is the only legitimate or valid way to be trans."
Future plans:
"We’re working on writing new songs, and are planning to put together an EP sometime next year, hopefully just writing and playing shows, making art, and seeing what happens."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
"Bradley plays in another band called Viridian, and Cole plays in a shoegaze band called Dead Wheeler. Some of our favorite local bands to see and listen to include Impermanence, Dry Socket, Kill Cam, Prager Youth, Simian, Bohemian, Failure to Comply, Benchscraper, Spurr, Machine Country, Gossip, Badfast, Lab Rat, Mind Palace, Retirement, there are really too many amazing local hardcore bands in Portland, it would take an entirely second article to list them all (laughs)."
Pick up a copy of Bleach’s demo cassette here.
Bleach on social media: Instagram
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