Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Album: Stop the World, out 2023 via Wiretap Records
RIYL: Chance Meetings. Great Friends. Happy Endings.
NOT only came about because of a funeral. NOT does not sound like they would have at ALL. Indeed, this brand of Descendants/ALL homage is like a double dose of adrenaline, with a line of diet cocaine. Only the title track is out for the upcoming Stop the World, but goddamn is it so much fun. I’m reminded of another similarly-minded band from my childhood, MxPx at their best, which means killer guitar work, a frenetic rhythm section, and a hook that lingers for hours after you last heard it.
As vocalist Davey Warsop tells it, NOT is certainly an homage, not only to his favorite band ever, but “to a dear friend that is the reason the band exists in the first place.”
“In 2010, the manager of my old band, Beat Union, passed away suddenly. His name was Stewart Teggart, and he was somewhat of a legend around the SoCal punk scene, having worked with The Warped Tour, TSOL, Pennywise and Blink 182 to name a few. Stewart changed my life; he helped sign Beat Union, so that I could leave Birmingham, England and pursue my musical dreams in LA. Stewart also managed Mercy Union, and we (Brendan Scholz and Jarred Cooper) met at Stewart’s funeral. Soon after this I produced their record, and we became great friends.”
“Maybe a year or two later,” he continues, “I began writing and demoing some songs just as an experiment to see if I could match ALL or Descendants’ musical ability and intensity. That’s when I labeled the demos NOT, and the initial idea started I suppose. Since I was a teenager and became an avid fan, I’ve dreamed of making a band in that vein, but I never knew any players that wanted to do the same or that were truly capable of pulling it off musically. When covid started, it seemed like a good time to tie up loose creative projects. So I reconnected with [the other NOT members], and we co-wrote some more tracks and completed the album. Essentially, it was Stewart that brought us all together, so the record (and whole band) is dedicated to his memory.”
