Fast, Loud, and Slightly Ironic: Meet Sonder Rage
Minutes after Sonder Rage was scheduled to perform their first gig — at a mostly empty dive bar — they were still driving around Paris in search of a drum kit.
“Everything went wrong from the beginning,” said Nana, the bassist and frontwoman, in a nearly invisible Japanese accent. “Someone even stole my phone.”
Her bandmates chuckled: Matteo, a mustachioed Texan drummer wearing a hammer-and-sickle tank top; and Nalla, a guitarist from Washington, D.C., with a looming presence and reserved voice.
We sat in a dusty basement practice studio in a northern Paris suburb, where there seemed to be more pavement than people.
Now, after releasing a full-length album and three EPs — including the recent “Budget Cuts” — Sonder Rage has managed to scrape together a growing fan base. These fans believe, as I do, that the band is an honest-to-God punk outfit with daggering satirical lyrics and an undeniable Bad Brains influence.
The first refreshing sign is that they aren’t eager to be pigeonholed as punk.
“If you wanna call that punk, you can call it punk, but I don’t know. I’m just playing what I’m playing,” Nalla said, with a frank and weary tone.
The group stumbled into genres from different musical worlds.
Nalla listened to jazz and underground Detroit rap. Matteo was drawn to “protest music,” from folk to John Lee Hooker. Nana described her new favorite artist succinctly: a Chinese singer who is “kind of techno-ish, but not really.”
“We’re all on our own musical journeys,” Matteo said. “But I think punk is where it kind of intersects for all of us.”
Sonder Rage went even further to bash what they call “contemporary punk” with their debut EP, I Hate Punk — though the quick-draw speed of chords and cymbals may fool you.
The distorted sound thrashes between volume and speed like a knob being cranked back and forth. Nana’s vocals yowl and squeak: “You can’t play fast / Try some jazz / Maybe better / God, I hate shitty punks.”
More a visceral state of frustration than lyrics, the song is simple, unkempt and honest. But behind the peeved wave of distortion, the lines are mockingly whimsical: “Hygiene is free / Get a life / Wash your hair.”
In the latest EP, Budget Cuts, the band continues to use irony as inspiration — as the title track “Guillotines Are Cheaper Than Rent” suggests.
“I was pissed off because I paid my rent, and I looked on Amazon and saw a full-size guillotine was actually the price of my fucking rent,” Matteo said, as the room filled with laughter.
Beyond the lyrics, the title track marks a departure from their well-honed loud-fast bangers. It begins with a hypnotic drumbeat Matteo calls “sludge”: washy cymbals and a restrained kick-drum thump that’s relaxed, methodic and powerful.
Nalla mimics the rhythmic pulse with a razor-sharp, distorted guitar in an ornery descending power chord riff that zaps your ears — if listened to at 11.
Nana lands atop the echoing splendor with a distorted, Jack White–style mousy scream: “Guillotines are cheaper than rent / Best paycheck I ever spent!”
Budget Cuts also includes the band’s first released ballad, “Bolshevik Baddie” — a welcome sonic plateau of fluttering, angelic arpeggios and crooning vocals. But the serenity is, of course, short-lived. It’s sped up and cranked into the group’s polished play-it-as-fast-as-possible routine.
The sweet ballad, yet again, is parodic — about unrequited love between a high schooler and a communist.
The true gem of the EP is the bonus track, “Behind Enemy Lines,” a buzzed, echo-laced reggae song about the two-faced realities of French idealism and discrimination as an immigrant in France. It’s also the only track sung by the guitarist.
Nala emotes in a theatrical snicker: “They claim égalité / But I ain’t never seen it / They want fi send away / Let’s see them come and try it.”
His voice erupts in the chorus with a gut-wrenching scream: “Behind enemy lines!”
The bass and drums snake through a continuous riff that deviates abruptly from dissonant major to unbalanced minor. The melody mystifies and crawls down your spine. The guitar climbs and dips like a fuzzed snake-charming flute. The wailing bends are calculated — never overindulging in mindless noodling.
The song wears its influences on its sleeves, with a direct nod to the Bad Brains reggae track “I and I” — which, in lesser hands, could come off as crass.
In the near future, Sonder Rage is gearing up for a European tour with veteran alternative rock group ODC and is working on a second album. The three friends are dismissive of mainstream success. They’ve watched their shows grow from friends to strangers to Saunderlings — the affectionate nickname for Sonder Rage enthusiasts.
And if you happen to catch them live, fear not: They’ll show up on time with the proper gear.
“They no longer organize their own concerts,” Matteo said. “Thank God.”