A youthful troop from Las Vegas is already dominating its hardcore scene.
I'm not screamo's most devoted fan - despite it being a genre with endless depth, my surface-level exposure has been relegated to staples such as Jerome's Dream and Page Ninety-Nine. To my distaste, my memories of those bands revolve around vocals akin to a headless rooster running amok over vicious instrumentals that pillage my ears with impunity. So when I first listened to Crochet's debut album - aptly titled Birth Piece - on a whim, I had my misgivings.
That's not to say my predisposition was flawed - Birth Piece is just as frantic as any skramz-inspired exploits should be. However, just as their chosen band name suggests, Crochet’s approach differs with the precision of a needle, weaving spiraling guitar arpeggios and piercing vocal performances into a colorful patchwork where each instrument has its moment in the spotlight. Every minuscule detail jumps straight out of the turmoil with startling clarity, allowing my brain to fully digest its technicality without overwhelming my senses.
Earlier this week, I sat down with multi-instrumentalist and Crochet’s creative mastermind Zachary Tarzi, as well as their newest drummer, Gavin Skougard. They - along with vocalists Airon Gauff, Abigail Villaruz and Ellyse Cruz; bass player Jake Adelmund; and former drummer Mario Garfias - make up the informal band Crochet, whose membership is constantly in flux. Blessed by a stroke of good fortune (or more feasibly musical talent), Crochet has catapulted themselves into the Las Vegas limelight with Birth Piece, despite the project itself being written haphazardly and clocking in at less than twenty minutes in length.
1MD (1MillionDecibels): "How do you feel now that Birth Piece is out? Was the reception better than you thought? It seems like you've gotten a substantial amount which is great."
Zach: "I think something that people online might not know is that our local presence has been shockingly massive compared to other bands in the scene. And I say that not as a stroke of ego, but rather because we expected the opposite since we decided to make screamo. Across Las Vegas and the West Coast there's a very locally strong emo scene with all of these different live bands that are extremely popular right now and who are packing out venues constantly. And that's just a cultural wave that has happened simultaneously. When we started, it was a very low expectation sort of thing - we didn't expect more than six people to come to our shows."
1MD: “I’m not a big screamo fan in general so I’m pretty clueless. How would you characterize your music? Which screamo bands would you say are the closest to the sound you have chosen?”
Zach: “The concept that we kind of stuck with from the beginning was: what if we made a band with my guitar playing and had someone screaming over it? And the way we’ve aesthetically approached this has changed over time. In the beginning, my guitar influences came from TTNG…there’s some footage from our old shows - which we refuse to show to anyone - where the music has little to do with screamo despite having screamed vocals and it was very bizarre outsider art which didn’t make much sense, so overtime I’ve delved more into screamo and incorporated some of its aesthetics. To answer your question as to which band has the biggest influence on Birth Piece it would probably be Foxtails.”
At face value, Crochet is an idyllic snapshot of Las Vegas's screamo microcosm, but there is little allegiance to the band’s brand besides their like-minded interests. It seems each core member has their own ambitious enterprises: Gavin joined as the band drummer post-release of Birth Piece and leads his own genre-less band titled Pudgel; a previous rendition of Crochet, titled Body War, is concluding its final tour this year; Zach dreams of exploring pop music, confessing he no longer holds the same reverence for screamo as he once did. Crochet’s existence is contingent on the genre - not its members. In reality, the ideals of Crochet encompass a number of musical ventures, each with their own objectives.
Just like their music, Crochet’s expansion was built off of spur-of-the-moment decisions. An amusing story Zach recounted was his introduction to Abigail (the lead singer) simply based on her Instagram handle, 'Skramz000'. After a disappointing end to a backyard house production involving a pseudo-police officer, Zach messaged Abigail out of boredom and they ended up grabbing food at a local Denny's. Now, both Abigail and her friend Jake (the bass player) are just as fundamental to Crochet as Zach or Gavin. It’s this spontaneity that drives the rationale behind both their social lives and their music, ever evolving to soaring heights or new beginnings.
All together, Crochet represents a loosely-tied friendship circle of eccentric virtuosos, and while it's nigh impossible to keep track of all the moving parts, their sum is easily recognizable as a young, thriving ecosystem - though it remains consigned to a local scope due to live performances being the prevailing method of publicity. Luckily, the novelty of Las Vegas's screamo upheaval - only emerging with the pandemic in hindsight - means Birth Piece serves as a harbinger of the slew of imagination that is yet to come. For the past three years, Crochet has been honing their identity through live shows side-by-side dozens of comparable screamo outfits: they're simply the first to take their aspirations to the next level.
1MD: "You mentioned you perform live in Las Vegas often. Do you have a favorite venue or performance that you've given that has defined who you are as a band?"
Zach: "It would definitely be July 17th, 2022, at Cheba Hut, which is a weed themed sandwich shop. It's enormously cringe - you walk in and all of the sandwiches are named after weed or something. They do live shows in their little patio and despite the cringe it's a really great venue. It was a great performance because Cheba Hut was where I saw my first live show. Ever. It was a math rock band called Floral, and I was a big fan so I went outside for the first time and saw them, which was actually what made me pick up guitar and start a band. It was our breakout show as well - a lot of people came. It was our 4th show ever and we were headlining. It was a great time and people really liked it afterwards. It got our name out in the world."
Gavin: "That was my first time seeing a Crochet show as well, and I was hooked on them because I wasn’t in the band at the time, it was old members but that’s how I joined."
Zach doesn't consider Crochet to be his end-all career; he's a political science major and strives to begin a career in law. Therefore, he's indifferent to being the next big superstar - though he wouldn't refuse the position. Instead, intimate connection is cardinal to his motivation to continue composing. Growing up watching live tapes of Meryl Streaker / Nayru, where full audiences consisted of three disinterested drunkards with their arms crossed, he claims he would be satisfied with a similar number of patrons as long as he is able to breach their emotional firewall with his music - in any fashion.
To illustrate Zach’s carefree perspective, he is a devoted advocate of the 'whatever happens, happens' philosophy. For him, reading too much into genres such as screamo is a fallacy, ignorant of the intuitive power of chaos. The lyrics of Birth Piece have little logical continuity, scattering its themes of family, betrayal, and grief across the track list at impulse. Despite this, Zach believes that Birth Piece still has too much structure - his newest full-length project, which is already complete, was written in just two days.
Moving forward, Zach wishes to hash out one more album under the Crochet pseudonym before pursuing a more mature sound inspired by art rock bands such as The Smiths or Black Country New Road. In contrast, Gavin wishes to blaze his own trail emulating luminaries such as Black Midi or Zach Hill. Personally, I believe that no matter where the veterans of Crochet find themselves, they will excel - Birth Piece's triumph is far greater than the confines of a single genre. Regardless, screamo will always be their humble roots: something Zach doubts he will ever neglect.
1MD: "I think there's something there that you want to branch out into other genres, and not be constrained by the guidelines that are set for screamo bands, and that's part of what gives you an edge."
Zach: "Yeah we all have moved past screamo for our personal taste, but for me in particular, there's always this thing about it, you might call it morbid fascination or even just a lingering respect, with the ethos of the genre and what it represents...these people are just physically and mentally disenfranchised by most hardcore music - all of us are too feminine to go get punched in the mosh pits and too sensitive to go play chugging riffs so we are consigned to playing in bedrooms and screaming into the microphone on the floor and flailing around like a hysterical episode, and I find that to be absolutely beautiful in certain ways. It's definitely immature - you don’t see many people in their old age making screamo - but it's immature in a way that's too often derided. There's beauty in the inherent childhood of screamo. And looking at old Flowers Taped To Pens music videos where it’s filmed on some skateboarding fish-eye camera and they have little sock puppets doing some play and everything is made at home and there’s such a DIY edge to it mixed with a sensitivity that’s absent from DIY rock music at the moment. And that’s why I love screamo as a concept and probably always will - even if the music doesn’t speak to me often anymore."
To end this article, here are some shoutouts to bands that Zach and Gavin know and love:
TTNG - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Foxtails - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Nayru - Bandcamp
Floral - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Flowers Taped To Pens - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Taylor Swift - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Other Links:
Birth Piece - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Pudgel - Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal
Thank you for reading!