Denver-based five-piece Destiny Bond—comprised of vocalist Cloe Madonna, guitarists Amos Helvey and Emily Armitage, bassist Rio Wolf, and drummer Adam Croft—released their debut full-length Be My Vengeance June 23 on Convulse Records. Featuring 10 songs in 19 minutes, it’s a fierce, passionate slab of in-your-face hardcore punk that available on all formats: vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital. Here, Cloe and Amos discuss the band, its origins, their tight-knit scene, the album, and what’s up next.
How did you start and when?
Cloe: We started in, I think we were having practices with me in July 2021. Amos and the other members had been in another band before. So, then they reformed, and I joined, and we’ve been hitting the ground running since that summer and had our first show that September, I think.
Amos: The roots of the band trace to 2019. Me, Adam the drummer, and Rio the bass player, had a previous band with a different vocalist who moved during the pandemic. So, when we came back we had to kind of restart.
And did you put the word out to find a vocalist or did you all know each other?
Amos: We’ve known each other for a long time from playing in bands together. Adam and Cloe have played in bands together previously.
Cloe: Yeah, and we’d all been in scenes around, most of us aren’t from Denver, but scenes around Denver and cities up and down the interstate for, I guess, eight years now. So, Adam just gave me the call saying they were looking for somebody, and I joined in. And everybody who was already in the band was already really good friends. And then Emily, who is our other guitarist, joined later that fall, and she had been around at the same shows and doing all the same stuff with us, so I like to think of it as we all finally got together after kind of working separately being in the same scenes. This was all of us unifying forces.
You kind of figured out early on you wanted a second guitarist?
Cloe: Kind of. Emily and Adam are actually dating, and she’s played guitar for years, and she expressed interest in joining the band and asked Amos and Adam if that would be OK. And she just kind of hopped right in. It was her first band ever, so that was really, really cool.
Amos: Yeah. We weren’t exactly looking necessarily for a second guitarist. We thought about it, but we didn’t have anyone in mind. But Emily asked to be in the band. And since she hadn’t played in another band before, me and Adam were both thinking we could send her the tracks and she could work on them and see how it went and maybe she’d be able to join the band at a later time. But she just practiced really hard and learned all the songs and played our second show with us.
Cloe: Yeah, she nailed it. It was really exciting.
So, this is your first full-length.
Cloe: Yeah, we had done six songs on a demo the first fall we were together in 2021, and then we put out a promo last year that was part of a demo session for this full-length, and we actually recorded this full-length over last summer. We toured out to California and had some days with Jack Shirley in the Bay Area, and halfway through, I got COVID and then so did Emily and Rio after I tested positive, so we just had to drive home, and we finished recording in Denver the following couple of weeks.
Wow. But you have some of these songs like you mentioned, you had the demo. I love the title of the record, Be My Vengeance, a line from “The Glow,” and that’s such a great song. Was it hard to put a title to the album?
Cloe: No, it kind of came easily. Adam just picked that line out because we were all really, really obsessing with “The Glow,” and it was on that promo, and Adam was like, “That’s it.” At least that’s what I remember; he just kinda came out with it and it just fell into place. Personally, I think of “The Glow” as kind of our theme song almost. It’s really indicative of what we want to be about and our influences and stuff, so it just worked perfectly that Adam just nailed it down as that.
Amos: I think we also might give a little credit to Karim Newble from the band Island of Love ‘cause he did the artwork, and it was originally supposed to be a shirt design, but we just thought it was so good that we wanted to use it as album artwork. He does a lot of shirts that highlight a lyric from a song with an image, so I think that was the initial idea, and then we all agreed immediately that we wanted to use it as the image for the album and the title.
I was going to ask how you got with Convulse, but Adam owns it?
Cloe: Yeah, so Adam started it, and then me and Amos are also kind of his helpers. We have five people that are consistently volunteering. So, we’re kind of team Convulse. We put out the promo on Proper Crooks, which is an imprint from some of the people from Public Opinion, and then we just decided we wanted the record to come out on Convulse. It felt very on par with what Adam wanted to do with Convulse, so it worked out pretty well.
So, it’s going to be released on vinyl and digital?
Cloe: Yeah, vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital.
I like having all the formats available.
Cloe: I think it’s fun, too, because with each thing you get a little bit more with the packaging. I’m also doing the layouts for the record and the cassette and the CD, and there’s a little bit of difference. My thing I love buying from bands is getting a little bit of a different insert in the CD and a different insert in the cassette, so it’s a fun collectible thing at that point too.
Yeah, definitely. About the album, how long were you working on writing and recording? You had some songs out before, but…
Cloe: Amos, when did you start the demos? Because some of them were from the previous band.
Amos: Yeah. Most of the writing to solidify the songs—as finalized Destiny Bond songs— that began when Cloe joined the band. Some of the songs on the album are some of our first songs. And some of the songs on the album were, we did them instrumentally with the former band. They were the same riffs and everything, but with a different vocalist, with different lyrics, so they were totally different songs but with the same skeleton. And then in 2020 and part of 2021, when everyone was all locked down and everything, a lot of the songs I recorded my own little versions of at home, so we’d have some stuff ready when we got back together to jam. So, some of the songs are from 2019, some of them are from 2020/2021. And some of them are from last year, I guess.
Cloe: Yeah, the album is kind of a full encapsulation of the whole beginning and dropping us off to the current point of the band, which I really love. You can feel the beginning and the hints towards where we’re going. And Amos is a madman and already has seven or eight songs we’re getting ready to go for whatever we do next. So, it’s a fun time capsule in that regard.
About the track listing, do you guys get nerdy about that? Was it hard to choose the order of the songs?
Amos: The sequencing of one song into the next?
Yeah.
Amos: Yeah. We went back and forth. I don’t want to say arguing about it, but we all tend to have strong opinions, but when we first put “Chew” together, we kind of thought of that as an opener for the album early on. And then the song “Harmony,” having a really long outro and everything, it makes the most sense as the closing track. We tried a few different ways and listened to them in different orders to where we settled on what we ended up with.
Cloe: I think the reason our band works so well is we have a lot of conflicting ideas that we talk though until we get to the final result. And I feel like the album tracking is because of that because we just pushed and pulled until it fit for all of us. And now I love how it flows together. It was nice to have the pillars, the beginning and end already lined out for us.
Yeah, definitely “Harmony” is a great closer, and like you said how it’s more prolonged with the outro. Have you played that one live yet?
Amos: Yeah, we’ve played that one quite a few times, mostly last. But we’ve been putting it in the middle a little bit too.
Cloe: Yeah, it kind of has two versions that we’ve been doing because we closed the set for a while, especially on the way to record, we were pretty much playing everything that we thought was going to be on the record so we could test it out and get it practiced. So, we were ending with that, and it was funny because that long ending I don’t have a lot to do, as just the vocalist, so we kind of worked it out where I would just really get in the moment and rip my mic cable out and just walk off stage. And that’s how we were doing it for a while. It was really fun, and it let me get lost in it, but it was funny because there were so many times where people would come up to the merch table after and look at me, “Are you OK? What happened?!” (Laughs) “We’re really worried.” And so now we started doing the one in the middle where we actually do a much expedited ending and wrap it up quicker. It’s fun to have those different things. I love having the performance versus the recorded version of the song, too. If you notice those differences as a fan or as a person at the show, it’s a little bit extra.
And switch it up.
Cloe: Yeah.
And then also, like you mentioned, you have “Chew” starting it out and that’s the first single. And then you have “Headspin.” Was it hard to choose the singles?
Amos: Yeah, it was really hard. I think we mostly wanted to do “Chew.” Some of the other songs we thought would be good singles we already have used up a little bit by releasing them on previous releases. (Laughs) So we were locked out of using those. You don’t want to beat people over the head with the same song over and over. We argued about that one a lot before figuring “Headspin” was a good one to use and hopefully we made the right choice.
Cloe: It’s funny to hear Amos say “Headspin” was the good one because I think what happened was everyone was just so worn out and I just kept on beating everybody over the head with “I think it has to be ‘Headspin.’ I think it has to be this one.” So, I don’t know if they gave in or they eventually saw the light. But I don’t think we decided on that until maybe three weeks ago even. (Laughs)
What about how you go about writing? I know you said you had the music and then put the lyrics…
Cloe: Yeah, so Amos is writing the riffs and the song structure, and he’ll even program the drums.
Amos: I’ll record demo versions of a lot of the songs and then bring them to practice and we’ll learn how to play them together and change some things. Everyone gets to help imagine what the song can be. And then a lot of time Cloe sits there and writes lyrics to it while we’re doing that. Sometimes you come with some lyrics you’ve written down and try to fit them to the songs.
Cloe: Yeah, I haven’t really done just vocals in a hardcore punk band for, I think, nine years whenever I joined this band. I’ve been doing all kinds of different stuff. This is a return to my first touring band when I was in high school. So, I just really wanted to try something and make it an exercise each time I wrote lyrics for this, so I don’t try to edit them down too much or change them. I try to go with what comes to mind and I try to write them whenever I’m at practice with everybody because for me hardcore punk is live and energetic and everything to the wall. I feel like by doing more unedited, simple things that come to me in the moment when I’m hearing the songs for the first time, it makes it live better for me after, so I try to do that. And then someone made a joke that we’re writing completely different music now because on the demo I did more singing vocals but then on the promo I got a little bit more screamy, and now on the record, I’m doing a lot of screaming. I’ve been feeling out the direction and how it feels live versus recorded. It’s fun; I get to experiment the whole time and mess around. Amos gives me a lot of freedom and a lot of cool things to sing over.
Yeah, definitely one thing that comes through on the record is fast, urgent, hardcore punk. And the passion definitely comes through. Are there any particular vocalists that you’ve been influenced by?
Cloe: Yeah, I could go forever on my vocal journeys. I would say for this band, I’ve loved The Distillers and Brody Dalle forever. Punch, I can’t remember if they were Bay Area but they were California in the mid-2000s. I remember seeing them and the vocalist is just singing and going all the way and the sound is so there. Like you said, whenever you can hear the passion in it. A lot of hardcore throughout the ages. My high school band I was talking about, the first songs we covered were by Minor Threat, AFI, Lifetime, and Kid Dynamite. And I definitely take influence from all of those still, probably just from learning those covers so early on.
What about you Amos, with guitar? I know there are probably so many…
Amos: Yeah, there’s a lot. I’ve played a lot of different types of music over the years. When I was growing up, I didn’t really grow up with hardcore, when I was in high school I was into a lot of Pink Floyd and Jimmy Hendrix and then reggae and bluegrass. Then later, in high school, I got really into emo and DIY pop-punk and ska and stuff. And that led me into stuff that loosely—that is hardcore but isn’t really hardcore. I don’t know how you want to put that, but Rites of Spring, Embrace, those types of bands were some of my favorite bands in high school. But before this band, I’d taken a lot of influence from Dag Nasty, Brian Baker’s guitar playing in that. But also The Ramones, I’ve kind of gotten back into that. I just like to do fast, downstroke barre chords. So, my idea is to try and combine a late-’70s punk sound with more U.S. hardcore mostly from the early-to-mid-’80s. There’s always new influences, and I’m inspired by a lot of contemporary bands we play with too.
I saw you have a few dates scheduled for July. Do you have a record release show?
Cloe: Our tour kickoff, which will be July 1 in Denver, is our release show. It’s at Seventh Circle, which is this DIY spot we volunteer at and run a lot of our shows out of. It’s kind of a huge part of Denver DIY history. I’ve been going to shows in the building since, like, 2010, and I think it was around well before that, before I was coming down. So, that’ll be special, and it’ll be with some of our closest friends and favorite bands in the scene. That’ll be really great, and then we do three weeks after that in support of the whole thing.
In the past, you’ve been all over the U.S.?
Amos: We haven’t hit where we will be hitting on this upcoming tour. We did the Southeast, but we haven’t gone to the Northeast. And there’s a lot of Midwest we haven’t done, but we’ve done the West Coast and we’ve done a lot of Midwest that’s closer to us.
Cloe: I think we’ve been out maybe six times since we started our first one, was it last year?
Amos: Yeah, and a lot of it has been short. We’ve done two West Coast tours, one of which got cut short due to illness, and then one full Southeast two-week tour, and then we’ve done a lot of four days, five days, quick things.
Hopefully having to stop short because of the coronavirus will have been over.
Cloe: It’s wild. It’s funny because “Chew,” that was the first thing I recorded on vocals for this, and it was whenever we got back to Denver, and I’d been testing negative for I think two weeks by that point. I recorded it, and my vocal chords were still—just got pretty much ruined by having Covid and Adam made a joke about, “Well, thank god we got that take because that take was more gritty” than anything else I did when I came back and was healthy. So I guess I don’t what that means. But it definitely had its moment on the record.
Wow. (Laughs) So, that’s the one on the record. That’s interesting to know.
Cloe: That was the take. It was like, “We gotta keep that; she did it.” I think I rerecorded every other song I did that day. That was the first couple of takes, I think.
Other than how the record does and touring plans, what are your hopes for the rest of the year?
Cloe: I’m really excited to find out what we’re going to do with all these songs that Amos has been writing. I think they’re going to be a really cool step—They feel like fully us. We’ve gotten through the shaking off not touring and not playing over the couple years there were lockdowns, and we got a full lineup, and we’ve spent a lot of time doing this thing and seeing how it’s going. I think the new stuff is really exciting, so I can’t wait to get home and work on that. And then we have a lot of really cool shows coming up.
Is there anything else you want to go over?
Amos: I echo the same things. It’ll be good to work on the new set of songs. I think what’s cool about this record is the same thing that is going to make it different than the next record, which is this record is representative of us searching for a sound, maybe, and I think what we do next will have honed in on it more. Although I think that gives this record a cool character as well. I don’t mean that to diss the record; I think that there’s many aspects of what we’re all into are represented on the songs on this record.
But also, one last thing. Cloe, you do all the lyric writing, then. What gives you the inspiration?
Cloe: A lot of things, for sure. I feel like the easiest one is “Blood Chokes.” I’m trans, and Rio is also trans, and the song I felt like I needed to write just to be straight up that we’re here for the people going through it right now just for being themselves. Just the current moment of that gives me a lot of inspiration. And just being part of the Denver scene and community and working with everybody and seeing the beauty that can come from it and the things that can keep people from letting themselves be part of it fully or for the right reasons.
So, a lot of it is just kind of I look back and I realize I’m subconsciously documenting our own ethos and booking shows and playing shows and running a label and running a band, everything we’ve been doing for years and years together. About build each other up, be there for each other. This is about community. There’s no ego in this, and you can do it. I don’t know, it’s kind of all the stuff, the things we’ve found out together and then the things I’ve found out for myself to kind of motivate me to keep chasing this thing that—I don’t know; it’s such a wild thing to be a part of, but it’s so worth it, and you can get so much out of it. Sorry, that was kind of a long rant, but it’s about living this moment in music and this moment in politics and this moment in my own identity.
You can order Be My Vengeance from Convulse Records. Follow Destiny Bond on Instagram to keep up with them.
Photo courtesy of Destiny Bond
