Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

event

The Vanguard and Bros. Houligan Present...

Big Business

with Tom Boil, Sun Vow, Plastic Psalms
Tue Aug, 20 8:00 pm ( Doors: 7:00 pm )
The Vanguard
All Ages
$14.00
Artists
Big Business
Big Business is a band. They play heavy rock. On that, we can all agree. Things get tricky when you try to
classify exactly where on the musical spectrum the dynamic duo’s racket falls. “I guess psychedelic heavy
metal punk rock? I don’t know. People always say ‘sludge rock,’ which I always found to be lazy and kind
of inaccurate," says drummer Coady Willis. "A lot of our songs are fast, and it’s not like we’re playing a
half-assed Black Sabbath riff over and over again. That’s been the struggle of the band. We’re a band
that doesn’t really fit into what everyone else is doing."
Willis comes from punk rockers The Murder City Devils. His co-conspirator, bassist/vocalist Jared Warren,
spent time in noise rock weirdos Karp. Together, they formed Big Business in 2004. The LA-based outfit’s
first three albums didn’t quite mesh with Hydra Head’s post-metal aesthetic, but their idiosyncrasies
caught the attention of another iconoclastic outfit: The Melvins. They recorded three albums, an EP, and
various songs between 2006 and 2016 with that iconic grunge/doom/experimental act, all while
maintaining their own identity as Big Business. Along the way, they picked up guitarists Toshi Kasai and
Scott Martin, but on 2016’s Command Your Weather, they returned to their core duo format. They remain
in that lineup on their sixth full-length, The Beast You Are.
“It’s just better. We work faster, and we know what we’re both going for. It gives us more room to be
weirder in certain aspects and try different things. It makes sense because that’s how we established
ourselves in the beginning and how we learned to write songs together, it was just the two of us. Coming
back to that lineup felt natural,” continues Willis. The two performed everything on the album, which was
recorded between the early November and early December of 2018 at El Studio in San Francisco by Phil
Becker (Pins of Light, Terry Gross). Willis, Warren, and Becker handled the mixing, with Carl Saff lending
his mastering expertise to the final product. Once more, Warren has hacked up some construction paper
for one of his unique cover art pieces.
With a new, dynamic demoing process leading to the creation of the most songs they’ve ever written for
an album, The Beast You Are delivers 13 doses of uncategorizably heavy rock music. From the ominous
death march of “The Moor You Know” to the soaring “Let Them Grind” to the delicate, ethereal “Under
Everest,” Big Business continues to defy listener’s expectations. No matter the context of their music,
however, one thing remains true: they are definitely still a band.
Tom Boil

Noise-gaze punk glaze out of TULSA

Sun Vow

Tulsa, OK

Plastic Psalms
we make music that donald trump would consider 'libel'