Behind enemy lines with Histrionic and Secret Tunnel
- Andersen Beck
- Oct 25
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 26
Left: Histrionic - Right: Secret Tunnel
(or for mobile, top: Histrionic - Bottom: Secret Tunnel)
Last Saturday evening (Oct. 18), Histrionic and Secret Tunnel played at The Union, the famed bar venue in Athens, Ohio, beloved by the art-inclined students of Ohio University for generations. This show was the third in a four-stop tour, with the prior two nights of shows in State College and Morgantown. Playing alongside the Pittsburgh boys were two Ohio bands, Faucetmouth and The Tape Cassettes. The evening was lively, loud, and full of moshing. After their sets I interviewed Histrionic and Secret Tunnel in the back alley (a locational pattern I expect will persist for the length of my career).
~~Interpolation~~
"Mr. Beck what were you doing in Athens, Ohio? Isn't Bloodhound Magazine a Pittsburgh-based publication for serving Pittsburgh art and artists with your trademark witty and charismatic articles composed with the utmost journalistic integrity?"
How right you are, valued reader; Bloodhound Magazine is and shall remain as you described it, and to retain such integrity as you mentioned, I shall make this interpolation mercifully brief. As you might know from my self-introduction article, I survived nearly one year of minimum-effort college enrollment – this was at Ohio University for journalism. I dropped out in February and haven't been back since. I'm a fan of both Histrionic and Secret Tunnel, and their tour gave me a good reason to go back and see my pals. That's my explanation for such a treason as to cover music in a different locale; I hope you find it sufficient.
~~Interpolation End~~
Standing amongst the cracked bricks, dumpsters, rusty pipes, cigarette butts, and sporadically parceled-out piles of vomit that adorn most alleyways across the globe, Secret Tunnel's Nathan Cooper, Alex Restauri, Colin Tierney, and Isaac Winograd chatted with me about the tour, their releases, and how they make their music.
"State College was cold!" says Secret Tunnel rhythm guitarist and frontman Nathan. "It was a Thursday and it was freezing, but people still showed up, it was still a great set. Morgantown was great, the community in Morgantown was really really cool, we played a house show there. We played a house show in State College, really really cool crowds, cool people to meet there."
"Two scenes that are kind of on the up and up after being kind of beat down by COVID, so pretty cool to be a part of it," adds Alex, the bassist.
Secret Tunnel is very grateful to the people who helped along the way for this tour, from those who booked them to those who let them crash on their floors.
"Shoutout Jin – he made it happen short notice at The 8 Ball. The 8 Ball guys were awesome; they let us crash in their basement." says Isaac, the drummer.
"Shoutout to Jin man, he kicks ass," adds lead guitarist Colin.
"And in West Virginia, shoutout to Maddux from One Step Closer and If Kansas Had Trees for coming out and supporting us, and shoutout to Drown also who played a fucking mean set. They were fucking kick-ass – in a tiny ass basement, but the most pronounced thing in that basement – you can't see anything in that basement, except for the Palestine and American flag next to each other, which I thought was kick-ass." continues Isaac.
Between the three shows played until this point, the Union's dedicated and established venue status made for superior show production.
"This is the loudest we've played. This is the most we've been able to hear ourselves too, which is really cool. I could really hear Alex on the harmonies which is nice," says Nathan, to which Alex jokes, "Nice is a word."
Secret Tunnel has been practicing for the upcoming Post-Halloween Party at Mr. Smalls Funhouse on Nov. 1. Five bands will be doing full cover sets of another band of their choice – Secret Tunnel has elected to play from the legendary catalogue of Pixies. At the Union, they tossed a surprise cover of Here Comes Your Man into their setlist, which was riotously received by the crowd.
"We've been doing a different cover every day, which has been a lot of fun, and I feel like this one was a lot more dancey and poppy, which was fun for the people to get moving to," says Nathan.
Secret Tunnel sports a rapid, mathy, neo-emo alt rock sound, characterized by markedly clean overdrive leads and sardonic, witty lyricism. With their two EPs and handful of singles, they gracefully walk the line between an electric and acoustic-driven sound while retaining the same emo and math stylistics. An achievement and show of instrumental prowess undoubtedly.
"I really liked Equipment's newest EP," says Nathan on the band's influences, "They really influence a lot of our stuff. We really liked the kind of little harder direction they went, it was pretty cool… (a) classic is Origami Angel for us, some local Pittsburgh guys too. We've been following some good friends of ours. Valleyview have been a lot of fun."
"I've been into a lot of The Cure lately," says Alex, "I feel like that's been inspirational. Disintegration is a classic, 'Kiss Me' is so great… it's spooky, gets me right in the mood for Halloween. Every year around this time, it's a tone-setter."
For Colin, his favorite band at the moment is, "Nine Inch Nails. Shoutout to Trent Reznor, shoutout to Atticus (Ross), Trent especially as an artist and a human being has been incredibly inspirational to me lately. His journey, his sobriety, everything, it's very interesting to me, the artistic journey that he's had. I love the electronic stuff that he's been doing lately."
The band would like to personally thank two modern legends of Pittsburgh music culture, Jesse Farine and Rod Weatherford, for help hooking up shows along this weekend tour.
On July 5th, 2024, Secret Tunnel released two four-song EPs, Minerva and Atlas respectively. Minerva is fast, loud, and electric, whereas Atlas is more reserved and acoustic-based.
"A lot of the songs that were on Atlas I wrote," says Nate, "I wrote those songs when I was in college, and they (the other members of Secret Tunnel) helped me bring them to life, and then Minerva was more of a reflection of all of us working together and creating something new. We wanted to kind of have the old and who we used to be versus the new and who we want to become for Minerva and anything moving forward is a product of those two ideas coming together."
Secret Tunnel will be playing live on November 1st at Mr. Smalls Funhouse and on November 8th at a secret location. Find out where on Kame House's Instagram page. They're not a band you'd want to miss.
Directly prior to Secret Tunnel's set, an equally amazing alt-rock band played. The Pittsburgh trio Histrionic – made up of Jude Sweeney on bass, Simon Sweeney on guitar, and Isaac Winograd on drums – worked up the crowd at The Union from just a stray handful at their opening song to a roaring mass at their closer. They certainly gained many an Ohioan fan by the end of their set; in fact, while taking pictures from behind the crowd, I saw several individuals look their account up on Instagram between songs.
I caught the Sweeney brothers at the end of the whole show for a quick interview in the back alley, though, it should be noted that we could not locate Isaac for a second interview. Let it be known that I tried, but it was past midnight and I had a four-hour drive back to Pittsburgh (I survived, albeit barely). My conversation with the brothers was funny and filled with brotherly back-and-forth.
"It was good," says Simon on how their set went, "It filled in as it went on, some of our best stuff is at the end of the set, so that's good. Some of it's at the beginning of the set too," (laughing), "But it was good, it was fun. It was cool, the place."
The Sweeney brothers, roughly 2 years apart in age, grew up in Highland Park, the sons of a musician father. In an unrecorded conversation with Jude, he tells me he had been playing bass since he was nine years old in fourth grade, similar to his older brother Simon who switched from bass to guitar.
"I learned how to play bass at school when I was in fourth grade. Then I learned how to play guitar in like seventh grade? I'm 24, so I've been playing guitar for 12 years – maybe 11," says Simon.
Isaac Winograd has been friends with the Sweeney brothers since early childhood, as their fathers were good friends. The three went to the same elementary school. During high school, Simon and Isaac formed a band, or in Simon's words, "I hesitate to even call it a band, but I played bass in a 'band'. We never played a show… we just kinda sat around and played Green Day covers."
After some time, Simon switched over to guitar and Histrionic began to take shape.
"I was learning guitar, I was excited about that. I was writing a couple songs, then we were like, "I don't know who plays bass," and I was like, "Oh, Jude plays bass!" says Simon.
"I know how to play bass," Jude adds wryly.
Histrionic has one LP, Architect's Leap, released on May 9, 2025. Similar to Secret Tunnel's work, this album boasts some of the best instrumentation to come out of Pittsburgh. Recording it was something of an arduous endeavor.
"It took a long time, it was an involved process," says Simon, "It was kind of recorded when I could make time and when the guy who was our engineer – his name was Rick, he just had a home studio and he had a full-time job, and I had a full-time job – so it was pieced together from me going over there for like an hour, like once or twice a week, for the better part of a year."
With the band all being available at separate times, the first thing they did was play through the whole record live together and then rework it from there over time.
"Almost all the bass and drums on the record are from that session, so then it was just putting guitars and vocals and other shit on for a year," Simon explains.
"We didn't do a click either… so for us to need for an Isaac rerecord or a 'me' rerecord it could be a bit tricky without a click," adds Jude.
Architect's Leap contains songs that were written as early as three months before recording to songs written nearly a decade before recording.
"The oldest song (on the album) we played for the first time in 2016, Idiosyncrasy," says Jude.
"Yeah, there are songs in the record that are eight years old," says Simon.
One of the band's top inspirations for their sound and writing is the infamous and classic Minnesota 80's alt-rock band The Replacements (which I correctly predicted and identified because you can always tell when someone's a true 'Mats fan. There's just an air of coolness about them).
"One of our top three or four bands in the world. His (Paul Westerberg's) writing is unbelievable," says Jude.
"It's interesting because that's a band I model off of but honestly I didn't get fully into them until, I mean even in the past few years. Most of this record was written before I was like a full, die-hard Replacements fan," says Simon.
The boys are also fans of The Replacements' legendary rival band, Hüsker Dü, and the band that would later come from guitarist Bob Mould, Sugar.
"So the guitar player from Hüsker Dü had another band after Hüsker Dü broke up in the early 90s. They're called Sugar, and they're more like power-pop alt-rock – they actually sound a lot like us," says Simon
"Well, we sound a lot like them," Jude jokes.
"Yeah obviously," Simon laughs, "But yeah, Copper Blue is the album by them and then the Beaster EP are things I ripped off a lot of. The guitar, playing-wise, Bob Mould and like Peter Buck from R.E.M. are like huge (inspirations) for me. These like open strings and filling out, Bob Mould specifically in the three-piece, and using all these open chords in punk songs, and open strings; just filling as much audio space as possible with one guitar is a ton of how I play and how we sound," says Simon.
Histrionic played a few new singles at the show; some rapid and short punk songs they hope to record in the beginning of the coming year.
Histrionic will be playing live again back home on Halloween night at Bottlerocket, where they'll be doing a cover set of The Clash, alongside four other bands. They too will be on the same November 8 bill as Secret Tunnel as mentioned prior, alongside Valleyview and Colorado's Thrillrot. If everything you've just read has taught you anything, it's that this is going to be a show you are NOT going to want to miss. Clear your calendars folks, and start asking around about this new secret DIY venue. If it's something cool in Pittsburgh music, you know Bloodhound is already there.
Thank you SO much to all these fellas for being so generous and friendly in their interviews and giving me their time after what were surely tiring sets on a wearisome tour. Thanks as well for getting me into The Union for free and extending my streak of not paying to get into shows. ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
A bit of a longer read, I applaud you for finishing. You've proven you truly care about Pittsburgh art. Go forth and be blessed, readers and apostles.
-Andersen Beck Founder, Reporter