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A band whose name comes from a role-playing game seems like an easy target for scorn. After all, it's not too tough to come up with "Dungeon Master" or "Dragon Slayer" jokes. But Umberhulk isn't one of those groups that prattles on about gnomes and trolls and rolls of the 20-sided die. No way. These guys are too cool for such silliness. There are instruments to be played and gut-wrenching noise to be made. Got it? Let's back up a bit. This trio of lads--Josh Zialy (bass), Shawn Bozzler (guitar) and Sean Roberts (drums, vocals)--were once normal kids playing in rock bands of varying success. One of them even got signed to a major label, released an acclaimed album, and ran off to join the Lollapalooza tour. But the glitz and glamour of the rock-star lifestyle couldn't counteract the fact that Roberts was happier playing Monday nights at Satyricon with his friends Zialy and Bozzler from Voice Motor On than jet-setting around the world as the bassist in Thirty Ought Six. By the summer of '96, after a series of spontaneous jam sessions, the signs became clear: Umberhulk was their way to the future. Zialy and Bozzler were freed when Voice Motor On disbanded; Roberts quit Thirty Ought Six, switched from bass to drums, and the beast was born. The early identity crises that all newborns experience--who'll sing? how do we fuse our random creative eruptions into cohesive songs with character?--were eventually outgrown, and now a fully developed Umberhulk stands before Portland, ready to roar. But exactly what identity did it decide upon? This is a band that can clobber the listener with its meaty riffs and soaring, anguished shouts, but it's also nimble, deft, almost delicate at times. "I think Umberhulk is poppish," Bozzler remarks. "But it's subtle. It's an organic process. There's a really great relationship between my guitar and his voice; some great melodies come out." "And they're almost Top 40, some of 'em," Roberts interjects. "Well, we don't see it as a disservice calling it 'pop.'" "Yeah, I'm not saying we're a 'pop band,'" Bozzler adds, "but I think there's pop in the mix as much as, you know, trippy drug music." To use another corny, comic-book-store metaphor, think of Voltron, the robot composed of several independent personalities. The same can be said of this trio, three elements that, separately, can do their fair share of damage. But when they unite, a much more dangerous foe is formed, a sonic force to be reckoned with. The listener must stand back, both to preserve eardrums and to try and fathom exactly what he's facing. "There's so much [going on] that sometimes it takes people a couple times of seeing us to climb into it," Zialy observes. Later, Bozzler says with finality, "We're just a rock 'n' roll band. We're rock 'n' roll like My Bloody Valentine was rock 'n' roll. Or Black Sabbath. Or Sonic Youth. I think all these genres...
they're rather useless." OK, so what about the lyrics? Roberts' red-faced howling is undeniably intense, though where Thirty Ought Six represented his personal purging, the first-person pronoun is noticeably missing in Umberhulk (so whatever you do, don't call it "emo"). "There's a lot of demonic imagery," Roberts admits. "I got a lot of problems, so I try to exorcise those. We use some goofy imagery, but there's a metaphor behind them.... Although it's pretty obvious, I try to write so you can extrapolate any number of different meanings, but they're all essentially in the same vein." Now our portrait of Umberhulk is finally starting to come into focus. There's still the toughest question to answer, however: What about tomorrow? As the world prepares for the next millennium, what awaits Umberhulk as it rumbles toward the new dawn? "We want to make a kickass record to document the fullest extent of what we can do," Bozzler says. "We want to work with people that'll give us a lot of freedom--and a lot of money--to do what we want to do. We're not one of those bands that say, 'No major labels, only indie.'" Roberts, the major-label veteran, concurs. "Money is a means to an end," he says. "The end is to make the absolute best possible record we can, the best representation of the songs for the benefit of the listener. It's the only thing you can control.... I want to continue to make music just like this when I'm 40, and I'm gonna need state-of-the-art medical treatment to be able to do that. And that takes a lot of money." Well put. Now feed the beast. |
