Elm City Punk Explosion Lights Up State House

Artist and musician Bill Saunders, of New Cardiff Giants, was beaming from the stage of the State House Friday night, looking over the good-sized crowd who had assembled there. He marveled at the health of the New Haven music scene, the emergence of new bands, the persistence of older bands. ​“It seems like everyone’s coming out with their own form of self-expression,” he said. Then he introduced the first band by saying he got to announce something he’d wanted to be able to say for a long time: ​“The Queen is dead! God save Qween Kong!”

The announcement kicked off a show billed as the Elm City Punk Explosion, and it was that, as across the span of an evening no fewer than six bands delivered short, sharp, raging sets of loud, gnarly punk rock. But the show, organized by Saunders, also showcased the range of the New Haven punk scene, as veterans shared the bill with two bands who were making their stage debuts. More experienced bands showed how the underlying tenets of the music were alive and well, and newer bands showed off the sonic directions punk could be taken in. It all added up to a statement on the strength of the punk scene, in many ways as vibrant as ever decades after it began.

Qween Kong — Cara DeLucia on vocals and bass, Gillian Basilicato on vocals and guitar, and Dylan Royka on drums — started off the evening by setting the bar eye. ​“We’re Qween Kong and this is our very first show,” DeLucia said with a twinkle in her eye. ​“We have a rousing set for you.” She turned to her bandmates. ​“Are my associates ready?”

It may have been better to ask that of the audience, as Qween Kong hit hard from its first song and kept hitting. DeLucia’s thundering bass and Basilicato’s squalling guitar created the edges of the band’s aggressive, expansive sound, propelled by Royka’s drums. The band excelled at songs that stopped and started in zigs and zags, and flipped from ominous quiet to cyclonic howl in a second flat. DeLucia’s and Basilicato’s voices cut through it all, mixing anger and sarcastic humor in equal doses to create a set that was meaningful, full of heart, and tons of fun.

Corpse Flower — Grace Yukich on vocals and guitar, Sarah Dunn on bass and vocals, and Kelly Kancyr on drums and vocals — were ready to play almost as soon as Qween Kong finished. Also making its debut as a band, Corpse Flower unleashed a darker, deeper sound. Kancyr laid down heavy grooves and Yukich and Dunn dug into the lower registers of their instruments, which gave ample space for Yukich’s keening vocals. 

The real innovation in the group, however, was in its songwriting. It was surprising and at times unsettling in the best sense, a highlight being a moment when the singing and playing dissolved into a collective, orchestrated moaning that was disorienting and disruptive in the way punk should be.

To introduce the Cadavers — Larry Loud on vocals and guitar, Teo Baldwin on vocals and bass, and Chris Carson on drums — Saunders took the audience on a short trip through New Haven punk history. He recalled his early adulthood, trekking to New Haven from New Milford because ​“New Haven was the beacon” for live music, ​“and there was a club called The Grotto. How many people were there for the last night?” Several people cheered.

“Welcome to old-school New Haven!” Saunders yelled. The Cadavers then charged through a set of originals during which the band members seemed to gather energy and speed with each passing song. McDonough hit the drums harder and harder. Baldwin’s went from swaying to jumping as he rolled out his riffs. And Loud’s solos got more and more energetic, ranging more fully across the instrument with each pass. There was a sense of the years melting away, dissolving into the present.

“We’re not dead yet!” Saunders declared as the crowd howled at the end of the Cadavers’ set.

Vertico — Kurt Trembeczki on vocals and guitar, Alex McCloskey on vocals and bass, and Dylan Royka on drums — then gave a sense of one of the directions the sound of punk might be headed in, as they ripped through a set of jolting, angular originals that whipped the crowd, a multigenerational stew, into a moshing frenzy. McCloskey and Royka were a tight, ferocious rhythm section, and both McCloskey and Trembeczki wrenched jarring, arresting sounds out of their instruments that made Vertico’s music true to its name.

The band members married their roaring sound to a ridiculous sense of humor, as they goaded one another into increasingly absurd territory. ​“This next song is about the time I got chlamydia,” Royka said slyly halfway through the band’s set.

“It’s called ​‘Free Bird 2,’ ” Trembeczki added, as if by way of explanation.

“Do not ask me about that time,” Royka continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. ​“I will not tell you and I will be very upset.” The crowd, by the end of Vertico’s set, was the opposite of upset; four bands in, the audience seemed as though they were just getting started.

The Problem with Kids Today — Tate Brooks on vocals and guitar, Silas Lang on vocals and bass, and Reena Yu on drums — then gave the State House a set of now-trademark raging, sloppy, and unexpected punk rock, with short bursts of frenetic songs mixed with absurd banter and hijinks between Brooks and the audience.

“This is the greatest match of Quidditch we’ve ever had!” Brooks shouted triumphantly from the stage. ​“This is the worst we’ve ever played!” The floorboards shook as the audience moshed to the band’s musical outbursts (“This one’s about having sex on a plane!” ​“This one’s about your stupid boss getting in your face!”) and successfully egged Brooks into eating an entire piece of paper midway through a song. Lang took vocal duties while Brooks chewed, punctuating the song’s ending by spitting the whole wad out. In short, it was The Problem with Kids Today.

New Cardiff Giants — Bill Saunders on vocals and guitar, John Wentworth on guitar and trumpet, Steve Gambini on bass, and Kelly Filush on drums — finished off the evening with a set that combined a sense of prophecy with gritty realism. It began with the band’s sound. Most of the other bands of the night had built their songs around the interplay among the instruments. New Cardiff Giants, more like Corpse Flower, created their sound by blending all the instruments together. In the Giants’ case, the twin guitars and bass united into one enormous cacophony, with Filiush’s drums serving as engine. Saunders’s jagged voice became the guide. 

“Enough of the soothsaying,” Saunders said at the end of the first song. ​“Everything we sing about from here on in is going to be viciously true.” As the band worked through a series of original songs, ranging from the war in Ukraine to the state of America, Saunders’s statement turned out to be accurate. The band’s wide-open vision, musically and lyrically, summed up the whole evening, conjuring the roots of punk in garage rock, noise, and experiments of decades past, and peering into the future with a keen sense of irreverent, weary hope.