Band Spotlight: bugs, architecture, and Velvet Overkill
- Andersen Beck
- Sep 3
- 6 min read
This past Friday, local Pittsburgh alternative noise rock group Velvet Overkill played a set at the Government Center, alongside several other bands presented by Hammer House. Their dark grunge-gazey sound brought down the house (record store?) and earned them two sets of ovations. I was personally super excited to see this show specifically because of said sound; to my knowledge, no other band in this city has a grip on it like Velvet Overkill, and it's a treat to see it played live. I caught an interview with them in the alley outside before the show.
The story of Velvet Overkill's formation is pretty unique and a testament to Pittsburgh's DIY scene. Anusha, a resident and co-operator of Hammer House (for the uninitiated, Hammer House was one of the most notable DIY venues in Pittsburgh until its dissolution in July), met Joel, Ethan, and Jared when she had their bands on the same bill. They became friends and later started playing together as Velvet Overkill. She also met Dylan and Mitch from the band Dizzier, who aided in recording Velvet Overkill's 2 soon-to-be-released singles.
"These 2 singles will be our first thing out," says Anusha, "We have another single that's being mixed right now that will drop later this year. Probably not an album for a long time, maybe an EP next year."
The band shared their demos with me; personally I'm in love with the sound, so much so that I'd be tempted to leak them here if I weren't of such valiant character as I am. They capture a unique, dark shoegaze sound that I wish more bands around the city could make.
As anyone who's ever tried would know, to make killer shoegaze you need the right tech. I asked the band about what pedals, settings, and other devices they use when piecing together new songs.
"I'd say my personal favorite is my organizer," says Jared, "It was gifted to me originally, my roommate built me a clone of it. It ended up breaking so I'm borrowing Adam's right now, but any time I don't know what to do on the guitar, I just throw that on there and it just makes everything so much better. Ethan also has another pedal that sounds really similar to what that thing does. I feel like it's kind of, not a core of our sound, but it's something both guitars do."
Anusha responds, "My favorite pedal is the RAT. I have a 'Lil RAT' it's called, and I always get comments on it because it's a guitar pedal but I use it on the bass. It makes it sound so filthy, I love it. We also have a Roland that Ethan uses."
"Yeah I use a Roland sampler occasionally," says Ethan, "Mainly for little beats between songs when we're tuning or whatever. We're trying to incorporate it more as almost like a synth. For one of the songs I think Jared chopped up a guitar part or something and we put it on the Roland, and then I play this chopped up weird guitar noise. That's pretty fun to do, I think we're going to try to use more.
A massively under-recognized part of creating music is an artist's non-music inspirations. Not just other media like movies, books, or games, but broad concepts, locations, routines and objects all influence our subconscious and pique our interests. Given what I heard in their demos, I was highly curious about what they were consuming that produced those songs.
"We like to get inspiration from weird stuff. One of the songs coming out, Plan Voisin, is about an architect that Anusha learned about in school," says Jared
"His name was 'Le Corbusier'," Anusha adds, "he had an architectural plan called Plan Voisin, it was kinda like an urban design idea for France I believe, and it was just terrible. It was like a horrible, horrible design that would have made so many people depressed. So we wrote a song just literally on that, but I learned about him in my architecture theory classes."
Anusha continues, "The first song we always play, Accepting Bug Life, that one was pretty inspired by that one Franz Kafka, what was it called, Metamorphosis. Yeah we were really into bugs at the time, it was the first song we wrote. We kind of pull from whatever we're like, stimming at the time, whether it's music or media."
I met Anusha and Jared in early May at a party being hosted at Hammer House. That was really my introduction to the DIY scene at large, I find the circuit and the way it works to be quite fascinating. Anusha gave interesting insight on what it's like to run a house venue.
"It's really fun and also kind of nerve-wracking, just because like, police. I did it for 3 years though and it was definitely a lot of fun and all my best friends I've made through that. I met all these guys because they played at my house at some point. It's really fun, very exhausting, and a lot of responsibility," she says.
For the last year, Velvet Overkill has populated show bills and event posters across the city. Catching one of their performances is an absolute must for any local shoegaze and noise rock appreciators. Preparing a show can pose a bit of an issue though for this band.
"We've just been playing it by ear honestly," says Anusha on future plans, "We were trying to plan a few weekenders but it's hard when the rest of these boys are in other bands. So we gotta plan around that, and yeah we're also just trying to lock in and write new stuff. We've been playing the same set for almost a year or so. And trying to get these three songs out. But we take shows with bands that we personally really like or like our friends. Other than that, nothing too big in the works."
I was surprised to hear that they've been using the same set list for so long, but interestingly it adds a sort of experimental quality to their shows. By running the same 'control group' setlist over a long period of time, you can collect data on how people receive it.
"I used to call it our weekday curse, whenever we played a show on a weekday we just played like crap," elaborates Anusha, "I feel like those days were just kinda like 'meh', but usually we get really good feedback. I feel like people don't necessarily hear what we play a lot, like from other people it's just very new. So we've heard like "Oh this is a really refreshing set of songs because it's really weird and fun.""
Jared adds, "I see a lot of people that I used to see frequent Hammer House a lot at our shows, so I figured the people that were interested in the music that was happening there generally are interested in what we're doing as well."
Anusha continues with that, "I feel like Hammer House, like I always booked a very specific crowd of bands. Unintentionally, that just generally what I… I just book what I listen to the most or something that I like. I feel like it worked out because like Jared said, that crowd of people who would attend Hammer House would generally like what we're doing as well."
Our conversation ends in dispute over the moral compasses of bugs.
Special thanks to Talia Schwartz for letting me use some of the great shots she got from the Government Center show, know that there is a special place in Local Scene Valhalla for those who aid the journalists.
Velvet Overkill will be releasing not one but TWO amazing songs in the near future, keep your ear to the ground and your eyes on Bloodhound Magazine's instagram story because I will promote the hell out of them when they drop. Thank you guys, you were super fun to talk to and amazing to see play on stage.
Peace be with you, readers and apostles.
-Andersen Beck Founder, Reporter
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