It only took a moment for Cole Kakimoto to fall in love with hardcore. One night, while still in middle school, he followed a friend to see her sister’s boyfriend’s band play a church on the eastside of San Jose.

“I was expecting like a concert or something, because I had never been to a show,” he says. “But once the music started and people started moshing—which, I’d never seen anything like that—I was like, ‘This is where I belong. This is what I’ve been looking for.’”

More or less since that day, Kakimoto has been a part of the South Bay hardcore scene, present at nearly every show, either in the audience or on stage, more often than not with friends Elliot Morrow and Sammy Ciaramitaro, his bandmates in Gulch—as well as a slew of previous groups.

This weekend, Gulch play one of their final six shows as a band. The breakup comes when the band are at their absolute height of popularity.

“We thought about not saying anything about breaking up and just having our last show be our last show, but then we thought, ‘People are probably going to want to know this is the last time we’re going to be in this area,’” Kakimoto says. “We didn’t want them to feel like the rug was swept out from under them.”

Ever since emerging in early 2017, Gulch have jackhammered a name for themselves in the pantheon of hardcore, and with them, the entire South Bay scene. It’s a scene that is currently thriving, despite largely taking place in DIY spaces, like the industrial parking lot that hosted last June’s massive “RBS.”

Even among a crowded field of heavy bands locally, Gulch managed to quickly define themselves with their endlessly evolving riffs, unrelenting intensity and firehose-blasts of emotion.

“I typically write with the intention of trying to create a sound of what I’m feeling inside,” Kakimoto says. “With my music mixed with Elliot’s lyrical content and vocals, it’s just naturally going to sound chaotic.”

From the very beginning, Gulch’s tightly controlled chaos caught like a spark. Off the strength of their three-song demo, they signed with Oakland label Creator Destructor Records. Their first EP, Burning Desire to Draw Last Breath, flew through three separate vinyl pressings. By the time they released their debut full length, Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress, in July 2020, the spark had become a burning flame. Already, six months earlier, fans had mobbed the band at a Florida airport, trying to buy their highly coveted bootleg Gulch/Sanrio hoodie.

Last September, with little fanfare, Gulch announced that they would be breaking up, posting online a flyer listing their last 11 shows. While a sudden ascent to worldwide renown might sound great to most bands, Kakimoto says Gulch had reached a critical point, one far from their humble beginnings in a Scotts Valley practice space.

“It feels almost like not hardcore anymore. It feels like we’re some bigger band or something,” he says. “It gets too weird, too involved with money and popularity. It was really off-putting and we thought, ‘Maybe we should just get off this ride before we start to hate it.’”

Musically, Gulch have continued to expand up until the very end. At four minutes, “Bolt Swallower,” from their 2021 split with scenemates Sunami, is easily the band’s longest song—almost an epic compared to their standard 1-2 minute blasts. A spacey, atmospheric outro hints towards new sonic directions for the band. Meanwhile, “Accelerator,” with its classic thrash drumbeat, would fit nicely in a setlist right alongside “Cries of Pleasure, Heavenly Pain” from Impenetrable Mental Fortress. Both clearly indicate why the band have become such a flashpoint in modern hardcore.

Yet, after this Sunday, there’s only five shows left for Gulch.

Even if they’re never heard from again, their time at the front of San Jose hardcore has been bright.

“Hopefully people will continue to like Gulch,” Kakimoto says. “If they do, cool. And if not, we were a band at the best time I can think of. I’ve never seen hardcore so strong. I’m just glad we existed in this era.”

Gulch
Sun, 7:30, $20
The X Bar, Cupertino

On Saturday, June 19, in a San Jose parking lot surrounded by car stereo garages and physical therapist businesses, over 2,000 people swarmed for the underground renegade show RBS—“Real Bay Shit.”

The event featured stars of the nationally renowned San Jose/Santa Cruz hardcore scene like Gulch, Sunami and Drain, along with similarly brutal acts from Southern California. Within a week, videos of the show went viral on YouTube, and media outlets ranging from KQED to Brooklyn Vegan picked up the story.

“It felt like being back home,” recalls Scowl guitarist Malachai Greene. “Our last show was the day before the lockdown. It’s just been so long, but the moment we hit the stage it was on.”

The first South Bay hardcore show since the lockdown, “RBS” went off according to true punk rock DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ethos. An impromptu stage was built, generators ran the power and sound was provided pro bono by East Bay Audio. Though the flyer was passed around online for weeks prior to the event, the location was only announced two hours before doors. Inside, local taco and burger vendors grilled sustenance for the hungry crowd.

Earlier that day, a pop-up merch event was held at a separate location, featuring highly coveted clothing from Drain, Scowl and Gulch (who all share band members), all made by Print Head—a printing company owned and operated by Cole Kakimoto, guitarist for Gulch and drummer for Scowl.

“We made like 600 shirts,” Kakimoto says. “I can’t believe people waited in that line for hours in the 100 degree heat.”

And wait they did.

The line for merchandise wrapped around several nearby buildings, and stayed hundreds of people deep for hours. While the average music fan might have seen the line and left, the fashionable hardcore scene showed up and couldn’t have been happier. Online, Gulch merchandise can sell out in minutes.

One attendee who asked only to be identified by the name David had waited in line for over two hours, saying simply: “we’re here for the experience.”

San Jose’s hardcore scene began blowing up on a national level around 2019. That year, both Gulch and Drain played Philadelphia’s This Is Hardcore Fest and caught a lot of attention for their unrelenting energy. Combined, those sets now have hundreds of thousands of plays on YouTube.

“All of these bands were working towards 2020 to be the year for shows, record releases and big tours,” explains Bay Area promoter Nick Dill, an attendee at RBS. “I can’t even imagine how big the scene will be in 2021.”

Last year, Drain, Gulch and Sunami all released new music, most of it to wide acclaim. Gulch’s Impenetrable Mental Fortress landed a glowing review in Pitchfork, and Drain’s thrashy California Cursed quickly went through multiple repressings on vinyl. Rather than slow down the scene’s momentum, the lack of touring only propelled it into overdrive, fans hungry for more music and merch to get them through the global uncertainty of the last fifteen months.

“It’s thriving,” Dill says. “We have so much support, and so many resources at our disposal that allow it to prosper and grow.”

For instance, Sunami’s first show was in October 2019, just months before the pandemic. Today, video of the punishing seven-minute set has almost one hundred thousand views on YouTube.

Still, it was surprising at RBS when singer Josef Alfonso’s mic went out and the entire crowd began chanting along to fill the silence. In the past, it might not have seemed like such a big deal. But considering this was only the second time Sunami has ever played live—and the first time most of the audience had ever seen them—it was a testament to just how big San Jose hardcore has become.

“This is amazing,” says an attendee named Ess. Like many at RBS, it was her and her sister’s first hardcore show, but definitely not their last.

“I randomly wanted to go to local San Jose shows so I looked up ‘Hardcore San Jose’ and Sunami popped up. We’re already going to go to the next show, too.”

With the state now reopened, San Jose’s hardcore scene is well on its way to becoming bigger than ever.

“It already is,” says Scowl.

Correction: An earlier version of this story quoted Nick Dill under a name previously used as a show promoter.

Matt Tracy, drummer for San Jose post-hardcore band Roman Lions, admits his iTunes library looks like it belongs to an “insane person.”

“I kind of go all over the map,” Tracy says. “I still listen to tech and death metal stuff. I love the post-rock and shoegaze stuff pretty much equally. But I’ve been going through a lot of throwback stuff recently. I’ve been going back and listening to like Texas Is The Reason, like old-school emo stuff.”

It’s through this love of heavy music and older emo and screamo that Roman Lions was born. Tracy and his brother, Justin—both in their early 30s—grew up in Baltimore and were a part of the hardcore punk and metal scene there.

“For years, from my teens up into my late 20s, I was playing mostly aggressive metal stuff,” Tracy says.

When his brother started venturing into more singer-songwriter territory, the two grew apart musically for a time. But then, in 2010, life took the Tracy brothers from Baltimore to San Jose. It was here that their musical interests re-aligned, as they charted a path somewhere between shoegaze and hardcore.

The resulting fusion combines echoing leads and lush, reverb-soaked chord progressions, with throat-shredding screaming and pummeling drums.

The brothers first began writing songs as a duo, but quickly realized they would need a bassist and a drummer if they ever wanted to take their show on the road.

With the addition of John Ugalde—a killer bass player,” according to Tracy—and lead guitarist Robert Kinsella, the lineup was settled and the quartet wasted no time getting to work on their hard-hitting but melodic debut.

On Roman Lions’ three-song EP, The Lights Just Go Out, the band displays a command of music that is powerful, yet beautiful. Kinsella’s leads are bright and soaring, while Justin’s vocals are angry and tortured. Tracy’s raw drumming fuses with Ugalde’s bass lines to propel the band forward. Slow, driving tempos abound with slow-burning, melodic fury throughout.

The band’s influences—including the British post-metal group Rinoa, the Japanese post-hardcore outfit Envy, and older Hopesfall—can clearly be heard on The Lights, an album that also calls to mind the San Francisco-based Deafheaven or a slowed-down, less experimental version of Liturgy.

The brothers mostly composed the music on the three-song EP, which came out in 2013. But the band is fully collaborating on the music for an upcoming eight-song LP. With six songs in the bag, Tracy said the music is “more intense and more emotionally satisfying” than anything they’ve ever written before.

“The music we’re playing now is more in tune with how we feel about music and the emotional direction we want to push it,” he says.

Tracy says the band is very “deliberate” in their songwriting process. “Which means it takes us forever.” In fact, he notes, some have criticized the band for taking too long to write material.

“But we want to wind up with something that we’re happy with. We don’t want to just churn out a bunch of songs in order to give a full-length. We care very much about the songs.”

The band is also playing around with song structure, with some following a typical verse-chorus-verse format while others have no repeating parts.

Tracy says that his band will play some of their newer material at their upcoming Valentine’s Day show at the Caravan Lounge.

“It’s … an interesting date to have a show,” Tracy says. “Fortunately, all our girlfriends are very understanding. They know how serious and how passionate we are about playing. So they all gave us a hall pass for the show.”

It’s the band’s debut at Caravan and their first show in several months. As such, Tracy says he is excited to show off new material to a hometown crowd. There’s nothing better than seeing people connect with his band’s music for the first time, he says.

“The best part for me is playing a show, and even if there’s just one person in the room—having that one person lock on to the band and just kind of following the rhythm, just being in the moment with the band—that’s nothing short of magic.”

Roman Lions play Feb. 14 at 10pm at The Caravan Lounge. More info.

Beerijuana. Yes, you read that correctly, and if the name alone sent tingles down your spine that was the correct response. While some sources date the origins of the San Jose band to, “Before the dawn of time (Optimus Prime Voice),” a quick read through the Sumerian texts will reveal that boast as a possible fallacy. More accurately, the band started in 2007. Its four members are: Dr Crazyfingers, Paul the Prophet, Zack Hicks, and Frank Resina. Their music is a breed all its own. Sure, Death Metal, Crustpunk and Thrash come to mind; but, like most original bands, it’s tough to pin down the sound of Beerijuana.

It’s definitely not something you’d have playing in your car while on a blind date. By the same token, it’s probably something you’d enjoy blaring from your car speakers on your way home, or with good friends. That kind of intensity can be a dangerous thing to reveal to ones you don’t trust. The theme of “trust” seems to be a big focus for the band, and while countless artists croon about love and love lost, Beerijuana gets to the crux of human existence: trust, deceit, revenge and friendship.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paul’s vocal delivery is sometimes hard to understand, bordering on cryptic.

“Language is loaded with meaning, and can sometimes be limiting,” says guitarist Dr. Crazyfingers. “The definitions of the lexicon are built by consensus and it hampers how much space you have to express with them. But a perceived wordless sound lets the listener’s mind assign the proper values to it. On our latest recording (EP out this spring), he is a bit more audible, by design. We also try to include a lyric sheet for those who wish to decipher the written meanings as well. The lyrics provide Paul the rhythmic and amplitude keys he performs to.”

So, while Paul is belting out inhuman vocals, Dr. Crazyfingers utilizes his neck-thru Kramer (drop-tuned to Bb of course) as a polyphonic back up. The guitar work is so fast Bach would flip his wig. If that wasn’t enough, Zach’s drums create a salvo of percussive tones reminiscent of WWI trench warfare, and Frank’s 300Watt GK rig can probably set off seismic sensors.

When asked about the more “caring” side of Beerijuana, Frank provided deep insight into what drives him as an artist. While seemingly intense and lewd, his answer can be interpolated via the use of editorial parentheses. In all fairness, the answer he provided was by email, but we can only assume the true meaning was:

“Soft, caring side? No! My interests are pussy (rescuing feral felines), weed (the eradication of intrusive species, which suffocate native plants), alcohol (denatured, for the specific use as an antiseptic in lower Saharan conflict zones), and motorcycles (electric and/or bio-diesel), not necessarily in that order.”

That exercise in editing is, most likely, something Beerijuana does not appreciate. That’s the beauty of this band. They’re all thoughtful human beings who pride themselves on crafting music, which is as honest as they can bring it, no editorial excuses necessary. Whether you like that honesty or not, it is meticulously crafted, and it is meant to incite powerful emotions.

Beerijuana plays the Blank Club, March 16^th.