Punk Rock in the Inland Empire is already a thing. With numerous weekend house parties, and bands and promoters making good use of available space at clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses, bands like Set Blasters from Upland, and their colleagues in the scene are getting attention and playing clubs in L.A. as well.
[pullquote]“We’ve been blessed to know the people we know in our scene to inspire and cultivate DIY mentalities, but it’s also a blessing to have the drive to do these things ourselves. I think the need for large corporate record companies is going away.” Mitchell Webber, Set Blasters[/pullquote]
Set Blasters offer powerful hard punk music with tight and fast playing along with pop elements amidst the hard guitars, crashing drums and thrashing speed and sound. With an average age of 21, and a frontman who’s only 19, the musicianship and songwriting are that of a much more mature band. Topics include songs about relationships and very timely social and political observations. The band and their recent release “Anger Hate Hell” feature the work of guitarist/vocalist Mitchell Webber, Andrew Padilla (AJ) on bass, Jon Gallardo on drums, and Andrew Herbst on guitar. Mitchell recruited the members of the band’s lineup from the punk scene around town, having been in an earlier band, The Sessions, with guitarist Herbst.
The D.I.Y. factor is powerful here. Webber explains: “I would say almost all of it is in the spirit of Punk D.I.Y. I have a small home recording studio and recorded the songs myself, we ordered the hard copies of the albums from an online store and even bought a UPC code for them. Andrew hand makes pins and patches, and most of the shows we play are in backyards thrown by people our age. We’ve been blessed to know the people we know in our scene to inspire and cultivate D.I.Y. mentalities, but it’s also a blessing to have the drive to do these things ourselves. I think the need for large corporate record companies is going away.”
The new album does a good job of capturing the energy and skills of the band, with songs that feature well-timed interplay between members of the group, and top notch songwriting. In a catchy upbeat tune that’s ready for radio (college radio and even KROQ),“All Upside Down,” Webber sings: “Don’t try to save me, I’ll just ride it out. The way I see the world’s all upside down.”
Another catchy tune, “Wings of The Same Bird” features a stance that’s an echo of one of Webber’s favorite authors, 19th-Century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, as the singer criticizes clergy who get wealthy. “The song itself is about how you can get just as easily lost in Christianity as you can going to high school parties, and if you want to stay yourself, or find yourself, you can’t lean too far one way. Driving a Mercedes isn’t Christian, just like getting wasted every weekend isn’t really a good time. It’s based off of firsthand experience by going through both those things myself, but also by seeing others go through it.”
When Webber came across the writings of Kierkegaard, the impact on his life was profound. “I was looking at philosophy books,” he says “and came across Practice in Christianity by Søren Kierkegaard in a book store, and felt led to buy it. And it related a lot with my situation and made me rethink Christianity completely. I feel like his stance works great with our modern age, and in my own life I feel in-between meaning and lack thereof. So Kierkegaard’s work has meant a lot to me, or what I’ve read so far of it.” That book, with its criticism of the clergy of Kierkegaard’s day, was written under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, because of its controversial nature.
[pullquote]”When I was first led to play music, punk impacted me the most because the message of individuality and how it’s a big f* you to people who try to control and mold us into something we aren’t. I just like how in your face punk can be, and how it inspires people to think for themselves. We all play other styles of music, but just not in this band.” Mitchell Webber [/pullquote]
Still, despite such weighty thoughts, or perhaps because of the freedom Webber derives from philosophy, he still manages to keep the Set Blasters a fun, energetic and (dare I say it) commercial band. The commercial factor of the music is due in part to some of Webber’s influences, which include hardcore bands but also some of the more popular punk bands including Blink 182, Green Day and Bad Religion. I asked Webber about the noticeable pop factor that’s evident in some of the chord changes, in the vocal melodies and in the catchy guitar riffs that appear in the music.
“All of us in the band have very diverse tastes in music,” he explains. “I would almost go as far as to say none of us listen to our style of hardcore punk as much as other genres. I enjoy a whole lot of pop artists, I think we all do.”
Still, it was the punk style that these artists gravitated to. Webber explains why he found the genre so appealing: “When I was first led to play music, punk impacted me the most because the message of individuality and how it’s a big f* you to people who try to control and mold us into something we aren’t. I just like how in your face punk can be, and how it inspires people to think for themselves. We all play other styles of music, but just not in this band. We will probably be mixing some more influences into our sound on our next album, we have a good deal of pop punk songs, and I’m working on a blues one currently. We’re open to all music, it’s just what we have seemed to enjoy playing the most in this time in our lives is punk rock.”
And with the punk genre comes a tendency, if not an obligation, to play the role of social critic and maybe change the world for the better. “I for sure set out to make a difference but back when I decided that, I wasn’t into politics at all,” Webber says. “ As I grew older I saw how many ways the government controls our lives, and how terrible war is, and started putting more of that into my lyrics. And there should be a lot more politically inspired lyrics on the next album.”
Another subculture is an influence here as well – skateboarding. Webber explains: “We all skate except our drummer. I just ride my board around town though, I don’t go to skate parks or do any tricks. It was just my most reliable form of transportation for a while. AJ and Andrew both do kick flips and s*, I was never able to catch onto that stuff though personally. But skating has been important in all of our lives, it really helped me get through a lot of stress and anxiety just riding around and feeling free for a while.”
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