Philadelphia’s Ghösh combine punk with dance and heavy metal in a way that has not been earnestly attempted since the dawn of the present century. Combining the talents of maniacal maestro Zach and the steel-edged, chop-and-flow of singer Symphony, it is an alliance powerful enough to knock the dust right off the corroded gears of the rust belt.
Ghösh’s combination of sounds and aesthetics feels like a harbinger of the future of underground music. One that’s not afraid of brash experimentation, where the sounds of the past are raw clay in the hands of irreverent, modern masters of art and chaos. Tracks like “Blade of Steal” feel like the sonic equivalent of a wrecking-ball with the Wu-Tang logo spray-painted on it, crashing through the wall of an Ad-Rock hosted rave, and the recently released “LYAOF” is a digital hardcore punch up that sounds like a breakcore siren to announce a revolution in the making. If there was ever a band to watch, it’s Ghösh.
Primarily acting as a singles factory, Ghösh have been busily recording and dropping short, two-track albums since the beginning of the year. With a sound as ruthless and fluidly aggressive as theirs and cover art that suggests a sound system bumping away in a witch’s coven that operates out of the belly of a slaughterhouse’s boiler room, they are a band that hardly seem approachable. However, such assumptions are easily proven wrong. Zach and Symphony are incredibly kind people who graciously hopped on a line to answer questions for me post-election day last November.
Below is a transcript of an interview that was conducted over the phone on November 6, 2020. It has been edited slightly for the purposes of clarity and consistency.
So, how is your Friday going? Do you have anything special planned for Bandcamp? Friday?
Zach: Uh, no, not at the moment. Nothing new. We’re in the process of writing some new stuff, though. So, we’ve kind of be taking our time with that. We did a tour at the beginning of 2020. And then, you know, the plague happened. But yeah, nothing new for Bandcamp Friday.
We still had a couple of sales, which is cool. People have been really supportive throughout this year, which is really awesome. Like, one of the Bandcamp Fridays in June, I think, we raised close to $2,000. It’s pretty amazing, and we’ve used that money to give back to our community and stuff.
What community organizations have you given back to in Philadelphia?
Zach: We donated to…
Symphony: The bail fund.
Zach: Yeah, the bail fund. We also give some money to the Black Lives Matter, Philadelphia chapter, and another … It’s like a…
Symphony: We did the Peace Garden.
Zach: Yes, yes. We gave some money to that. Yeah, we kind of spread it around a bit. It was really cool. When we first started doing it, we were like, ‘Oh, cool! Now, how much money can we actually raise?’ We also donated money that we made from previous sales. And, we donated our cut from our shirt sales and stuff like that, too. So, it was really nice and pretty humbling to be able to contribute … I think it was around $2,000. I’m sorry, I can’t remember the exact number. But we were pretty excited.
That’s huge for a DIY band. There’s more money than most bands make … period. [Laughs]
Zach: Yeah, we don’t really have albums, we were just doing kind of two-song singles. And you’d have some people spending $40 on two songs as a digital release. So, that was really cool and encouraging to see people wanting to help. It felt good at a time when things feel pretty stressful.
You have these moments where you’re like, ‘Wow! People are really responding well to our art.’ And it’s exciting, in contrast to, you know, the protests and the police killings, the fucked up government response to COVID, and stuff like that. There is just a lot going on. We have some mixed emotions. It’s bittersweet, I guess you could say …
How have things been in Philadelphia since the election?
Symphony: Surprisingly tame. There are definitely areas, like at the convention center, where they’re counting, and there is actively stuff going on there. But like, in our area, things are pretty okay. People seem to be feeling really hopeful.
Zach: Yeah, it’s also been really nice weather this week. Since Election Day, it’s been really sunny and 60 degrees. Perfect weather. I’ve just kind of been walking around. I think there’s a dance party happening right now at the convention center? It seems like more of a positive thing. I think there’s a couple of yahoos, though …
Symphony: Yeah, the Trump people. They’re there, but no one wants them there. [Laughs]
Zach: And it’s not like they’re armed to the teeth or anything. I think it’s pretty positive, as Symphony said.
Yeah, yeah, this has been a really interesting election in that respect in that people were expecting there to be more resistance to it from both sides than there actually has been, but everything seems to have leveled out and been kind of neutral.
Zach: Yeah, there is a certain degree of like, you know, keeping people at a certain panic level.
Symphony: The sensationalism …
Zach: Yeah. I saw that there was a funny video, from like, Harrisburg or somewhere where everyone’s scared of the MAGA gun crowd, or, you know, the Proud Boys or whatever. But, all it was was this video of maybe eight MAGA people, and it just erupted into karaoke. It was a MAGA karaoke party. And there was like, eight people there, and one old guy with a sign. It was pretty pathetic and kind of funny in a cringe way.
Right, pretty hilarious stuff.
Zach: Yeah, I mean, not to make light of a situation where there are things that are very bad, but it feels like people are crying wolf all the time, and it’s hard to make sense through all the noise. Especially when it feels like you’re always being pulled into these fights by these insane poles, magnets of bad, all the time! It doesn’t really make it so that you see very clearly, but who knows, I don’t pretend to really know much …
Right. And all the polls have been wrong.
Zach: Right! I worked at a call center one time back in Montreal. And I can tell you from experience, I was just doing surveys for, like, casinos, or, like, grocery stores, and the people who answer pollsters are just people who like to take surveys! Maybe they’re lonely or whatever, or they think they’re engaging in some kind of civic duty, which isn’t too many people.
But the other thing about working in a call center, you have quotas. You have to get through so many calls in your shift. And, you know, I would fudge it. I would have to answer the questions for the people on the other line because they’re just gabbing on and on. And you have to try to get as many people as you can to do this survey because the company you are working for has to answer to the people that are paying to have the survey done.
And, on top of that, there are incentives to have surveys come out a certain way. So yeah, it doesn’t really make sense. The poles are a barometer of sorts, but, you know, it’s more of, like, a dowsing rod. The results aren’t tangible in a scientific way at all.
Yeah, it’s like you said, it’s more goal-oriented, then an empirical collection of data.
Zach: It’s pretty weird. It gives you a false sense of security. And they’re often used as a tool against you. Like, polls are just used to create a narrative; the data is cherry-picked, and you can get people to answer questions the way you want them to.
So, you’re not surprised that nobody saw this outcome coming, especially those poll watchers and people who pay attention to corporate news.
Zach: Yeah, I honestly believed in the polls, because that’s all you kind of fed, but at the end of day, I’m not surprised that they were wrong.
We’ve been talking about politics quite a bit. But, I read an interviews where you’ve said that you’re not a political band. Do you consciously try to limit how much social commentary goes into your songwriting? Or is it that you don’t necessarily want everything you’re doing to be examined through a particular political lens?
Symphony: I think to identify yourself as a political band has a certain connotation, and I don’t know if we want to be necessarily associated with that, like, we’re not Rage Against the Machine. But, we’re not opposed to being affiliated with certain political ideations, and we don’t consciously try and edit anything; our music is just what it is, as it comes out.
And, you know, I sort of believe the personal is political, especially coming from like an intersectional, feminist sort of way, where it’s like, no matter what I say, it’s going to be political. I think as a Black woman, there’s a certain expectation of the sort of music that I’m supposed to be making. In some ways, Ghösh is an act of resistance, but for it to be an act of resistance, it doesn’t have to be like, so on-the-nose, in-your-face about politics all the time. And I think that sort of makes it fun in that way. It’s a little bit less exhausting.
Zach: If the moment happens where we really want to do something political, then we have that option. But not every song has to be about an issue. It’s fluid, you know?
Right, and you don’t want everything that you’re doing to be sort of viewed exclusively through a certain lens. Like, “This is our position on issue X,” and to be responding in that way all of the time.
Zach: Yeah. Because sometimes we want to be silly, too. And that’s a part of who we are! We try to be pretty self-aware and have a sense of humor about everything. With everything that we do, there is a layer of humor to it. And we take our music seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
You guys are a fun band. I think that that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to chat with you guys. How you approach your performances and how you present your music is very aesthetically consistent and intriguing, as well. Do either of you have an art school background?
Symphony: I went to an arts high school in Connecticut. So, I studied visual arts in high school and was really into art throughout my childhood, but didn’t go to art school for college. But I worked at the Superchief galleries in Brooklyn, the first ones, and helped set those up.
So, I worked in galleries and art spaces for, I guess, like, the four years that I was in college. But I was more on the administrative end. But I have always identified as a visual artist in a way, and Ghösh is where that gets to play out.
Zach: Yeah, I don’t have an art background. But I did study music at university. But as for the visual aspect, especially, when we started, I just would get ideas, and I would make them happen with Photoshop. We don’t have a whole lot of money, so I would just try to approximate the idea in my head the best I could with whatever we had. I would doodle something or just try to construct something through collage.
With the visual aspect, it’s pretty low-level. I always remember from one of the early Batman movies from the ’90s, they had, like, a “neon gang” in it. And I just always thought it looked really cool, and now we’re trying to replicate the feel of some of those ’90s flicks with our style.
Symphony: There’s a Busta Rhymes video where there’s, like, a blacklight scene, too. That contributes to our looks as well.
Zach: Yeah. And I always liked corpse paint from Norwegian black metal music, and I just thought, ‘What if you made it more colorful?’ Instead of just black and white, we thought, ‘How can we fuck with this a little bit?’ And for our performances, we have smoke machines, and Symphony always takes a trip to the party store before we play so we got like sparklers, and …
Symphony: Yeah, and fake cobwebs, and silly string, and we just try and make it a party.
Zach: And we also have our third member, Kevin, who’s kind of like our co-producer, and he’s, like, our live sound guy well, he helps mix and record our stuff, he has his own PA. So, when we teamed up with him, where ever we go, we can bring the PA so we know we’ll have really good sound. We want to be making music with big a bass sound, and we want Symphony’s lyrics to really come across clearly.
We just really want to shock people when they first see us and be like, ‘Wow, this sounds and looks awesome! There’s nothing else like this!’ And Kevin’s a set designer by trade, so, for a couple of the livestreaming performances we’ve done, we’ve built backdrops and sets, and we’ve even made a cutout of our alien logo, who we call Keith.
We also started working with someone to make our singles covers look a little more professional. We have a friend of ours that is a graphic designer, and he helps us out. I would just pitch him really crazy ideas, like “a UFO cult,” just a bunch of weird ideas, and he would somehow interpret it and make a cool visual for us.
But the first step is all just Symphony and I come up with ideas. And my wife, Christina, she helps out as well. We like bands that have strong imagery, metal bands, like Iron Maiden, or a lot of punk and hardcore bands that have a very strong visual aesthetic as well.
Symphony: And ICP!
Zach: Yes, ICP. They have a very strong, visual presence. It’s a way of world-building a little bit. And we just thought it would be cool to create our own brand and logo and aesthetic language.
The ICP influence is very apparent. Do you think you would take up an offer to play at the Gathering of the Juggalos?
Zach: I think it’d be pretty cool to do that. Yeah.
Have either been before?
Symphony: No, this year was the year that I was planning on going. And then, when we were on tour, we sort of toyed around with the idea of going and just setting up and performing. Like, we would go from the campsite to the stage with a little wagon and be like, “You’re gonna listen to us no matter what!”
Zach: When we played Columbus, Ohio, there were some actual Juggalos in the audience.
Symphony: Yeah, I got a free Sailor Moon Juggalo airbrush shirt from a fan. And it was sick!
Wait, what? A Sailor Moon shirt?
Symphony: Yes! Sailor Moon as a Juggalo. And it’s airbrush by hand. This awesome person just gave it to me. She was like, “I think I need to give this to you.” And it was perfect!
That’s badass.
Zach: Yeah, it was a super fun show. And Symphony dropped the line “Down with the clown” a couple of times. And people really responded to that line in Columbus.
Symphony: I chipped my tooth; the mosh pit was so crazy.
Zach: But yeah, we really like ICP. And a lot of people miss the point, I think, in what they’re creating. The sophistication in their art is the same sort of world-building that they do. It’s really complex and multifaceted in a really dynamic way. You know, they have games and characters and wrestling and movies. And on top of that, they have music that has some sort of linear narrative.
Abstract in some ways, but it’s pretty impressive. It’s inspiring! Think about this, these high school dropouts get this idea to be rapping clowns and start a band around that idea. Most people would think, ‘These guys aren’t gonna make it anywhere.’ But you know, they defied the odds!
Symphony: So, I was born in Connecticut. Zach is Canadian. But if I was born in, like, fucking Oklahoma, my only option would be to be a Juggalo. And I’m so glad that like, they have presented that to, like, freaks in places that don’t accept freaks. And when we see Juggalos, they’re every kind of person because they really are welcoming. And, of course, there’s idiots because there are idiots in every subcategory, but their overall philosophy is very kind.
Zach: Yeah. And ultimately, they’re for the people. It is very political. I know there is some misogyny and some incredibly violent lyrics …
Symphony: But that’s society too. That’s just our society.
Zach: Yeah, overall they’re a group we take inspiration from.
And to a certain extent, you have to separate, like, the actual point of their music from the way they express it. What they advocate and how it comes across. Like, not every death metal band is actually pro-genocide. [Laughs]
Zach: Oh, yeah. It’s true.
When it comes to some of your nu-metal elements and rap-rock elements of your sound, as these become more broadly popular, are you starting to see some pushback from potential fans? Like, ‘Oh, you guys seem cool. But I can’t get down with rap-rock.’ That kind of thing?
Symphony: Oh, no. Not yet. [Laughs]
Zach: Most people seem pretty excited about what we’re doing. I think we’ve empowered some people to admit that they like those sort of things. [Laughs] I don’t know whether it’s just timing or whatever. I remember liking Limp Bizkit as a teenager, but when I went to college, and started interacting with other metal heads, it was like, ‘Nope, you can’t like Limp Bizkit ’cause they’re corny.’ But whatever. The grooves just spoke to me. I couldn’t help it. It was just as a teenager, and that stuff just sounded so good to me! I loved it!
And then, of course, I’ve run away from it a little bit, but you know, I was lying to myself the whole time. No one’s really pushed back, though. Rap-rock is kind of coming back in a weird way, in terms of fashion for sure. You know, like the big Jnco jeans and bucket hats and all the colors. That kind of rave fashion. I always kind of thought of nu-metal as the rave version of heavy metal.
Symphony: And I think what people critique about nu-metal and rap-rock is the misogyny and what they view as appropriation. But, since I’m doing the vocals, I think it confuses some potential critics. It’s like, everything that they thought they knew about nu-metal, we’re really turning on its head, and it forces them to consider what actually are the elements of nu-metal that they got problems with because when it’s presented in a new way, all of a sudden, they like it, and it’s fun.
Zach: Yeah, and merging those nu-metal elements with what I’ve always heard in that music. Like, I’ve always heard elements of, like, drum ‘n’ bass and big beat, especially in Slipknot, or Cold Chamber, and definitely in Korn songs. There are almost breakbeats in a lot of Korn songs. And these are all kind of aggressive forms of music. I just thought it made sense to kind of try to find a way to mesh those genres, or find a way to put them together.
When we first started jamming, we both knew that we liked nu-metal. But, when I brought in the beats, some drum ‘n’ bass music, that’s when it started to click. It’s such a natural collaboration.
I think that was one of the cooler aspects of Korn’s sound in particular, that they had that very strong, funk quality to their grooves. And, you know, their lead singer Jonathan Davis, the way he sings sometimes, it’s almost like rapping. Hardcore punk is a lot the same way; you have folks screaming into the mic, but what they’re doing is basically a kind of rap. So, I’m glad you are seeing that too, and are taking those elements and putting them together in fun ways. Making them your own.
Zach: Yeah, we want to kind of liberate people. Tastes are so tied to class, your education, and how you’re trying to present yourself. And, we all have sort of hang-ups, but I guess we’re trying to help people embrace what they like and be open to things and be cool. Forget your hang-ups and your ego.
Symphony: Right. Right. Right. We’re encouraging authentic truths!
Zach: Yeah, it’s gonna get real, but don’t take everything so seriously.
I like that you’re able to translate such big sounds into small, DIY settings. It seems like you have sort of a minimalist setup in terms of your gear. Do you have any plans to expand?
Zach: Yeah, we have a pretty simple setup. That was by design. This is a two-part answer, but anyway, we wanted to be able to, say, if we got an offer for a gig in L.A., they’d ask, ‘Can you do it,’ and we’d wanted to be able to say, ‘Heck, yeah!’ And then we just hop on a plane, and we don’t have to lug a whole bunch of stuff. I’ve played in bands before where we had to lug around guitars and amps, and it’s just sort of backbreaking.
All that said, we did a tour with a PA, our own PA system, that had two subs. So, we didn’t exactly make our setup smaller. But, you know, that was because we were playing venues that didn’t necessarily have great sound systems. So, we really wanted to control the situation and make sure that we just were sounding good wherever we were. But you know, if we are sort of set up with a venue that has a decent sound system, we can just plug in and play really easily. It’s expensive to have a big van, and gear can break down a lot, so we just wanted to stream it.
I started incorporating live guitars into the performance a little bit as opposed to just sampling myself playing. So, that’s a little bit new. But right now, since there’s not really live shows on the horizon, we’re just focusing on writing stuff. So we’ll see how that translates to a live setting. We usually record everything in either our jam space, or in the attic of my house. But we are considering having some live drums on the next record and going to a studio and overdubbing some guitars, as opposed to just doing a DI on my computer.
So, yeah, I think we’re gonna try to expand it within reason. We’ve already bought a lot more plugins, and synths, and have expanded our sampling. It’s getting much more complex. But, we’ll see what happens when live shows become a thing again.
Yeah, that would be pretty cool to see you guys with a live drummer, especially with all the backing track stuff going on. MSI does that, and they sound great!
Zach: Yeah, it would be really cool to have a live drummer and more stage props. I mean, if there was a budget … Well, you know, hopefully someday … Maybe a live, UFO situation that the whole band would descend from. We have ideas. It just hasn’t worked out so far, in a lot of cases. But, we had the idea for a Beastie Boys cover set where we would do all the old stuff.
Symphony: Yeah, all the punk stuff.
Zach: We got a lot of ideas on the table.
I could see you guys doing like a Parliament type thing, too.
Symphony: I hope so. That’d be awesome.
Zach: Talk about world-building! What George Clinton has done with his band? Genius!
For sure, for sure. I’m looking through my notes and seeing if I have anything else that I wanted to ask you. I think it was Metal Riot that asked you if you got into a lot of trouble as teenagers. And, I recall that you both had very different answers. Do you see there being a social, or political, value to being mischievous and breaking the rules? And, if so, what is that value, and how does is it expressed through Ghösh?
Symphony: Well, I think first of all, what we consider rules are really dumb. We hold up a sort of standard of rules that aren’t even enforced but form a kind of status quo, and then people just sort of go along with it. And, like, just everything that we consider of value and significance is already questionable to start.
So, being mischievous can be a way of encouraging people to question authority because how we have constructed power thus far, is pretty fucked up. Like, y’all already know that it’s super fucked up the way that power has been established throughout all of human history. So, I think it’s important that mischievousness and curiosity are used to challenge the status quo. It’s something that we encourage and do by example.
Zach: Yeah, 100 percent agree with that. And I think the root of mischievous is the questioning of whatever it is that constitutes the authority that’s above you. It can manifest in a lot of different ways. But, I’m just thinking of the Pepe stuff or whatever, last election, and how that was sort of mischievousness, but in a form that was used for bad and racist ways. But mischief is a chaos element. It can be used for good or for bad. That energy is important, but how people use it is a bit of a roll of the die.
Symphony: But yeah, to achieve liberation, we have to question power. And that’s the goal.
Yeah, and it requires a little bit of mischief.
Zach: No one likes the hall monitor.
Symphony: Or cops!
[All laugh]
Is there an LP in the works for Ghösh? Or do you think you’re going go in a different direction? Maybe keep doing the singles thing? What’s next on the horizon?
Zach: We’ve kind of been toying with some ideas, but I think we will see once we have more of a picture of what the material we’re working on turns out. But really, we’ve kind of been leaning towards this idea of just continuing to releasing singles. We are going to be working with a label on some things, which is cool. But, we’re gonna keep doing with the singles for the time being.
Symphony: And, it also depends on what happens in the world. Because if we won’t be able to tour, I guess releasing music requires a different sort of engagement. And, we have to sort of feel it out as the situation arrives.
Zach: Yeah, we really like the singles thing that we were doing. It’s fun! Every month or so, we’ve dropped some new songs, and people are really excited while engaging with them. And the way things work now with albums … like, LPs are cool, and it’s just really freeing to be able to drop something quickly, and we like that kind of freedom. And, we like that constant engagement. Maybe everything will be summed up in a compilation someday. We’re still kind of figuring that out.
Well, whatever you do, I’m definitely along for the ride.
Photos courtesy of Ghösh.
Get Ghösh records and gear here.
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