Cy*Burr // spring 2004

There is something at once obscure yet identifiable about the argued “Kent Sound” – a mix of furiously loud, distorted guitars, odd-timed drums and distorted, riff-heavy bass.

“Its definitely bizarre,” Cory Race says. “It’s avant-garde, but there seems to be a definite pop structure and a lot of riffs. You could call it angular. Or skronky.”

The similarity of styles in different bands may have been due to the fact that Kent is so small. “The scene was very tight and incestuous. Bands shared members, but it was always good.” Race says. “It was always something new. Kind of borrowed from the bigger underground scene, but brought to us backwoods hicks who didn’t necessarily have the Dischord discography.”

The bands seemed to have a snobbish quality because of their adept skills at ineptitude. “The music was almost too weird to leave Kent, to get attention.” Race says. “It was a weird, incestuous family of bands with weird music tastes. But we always seemed to have something on most bands.”

Even Race is confused by the unique style of Kent punk bands. “Its so weird considering where we’re from, it sort of fueled the music. Considering it’s a totally boring, small Midwestern town.”

The bands created sophisticated, forward-thinking music and record-cover art that could almost be called avant-garde. “The bands were really in tune with what was going at the time,” Derek Erdman of Kill City Babies says, “listening to a whole lot of Fugazi and sort of emulating that. The music they made grew out of that. It was even better than that stuff, in a way.”

The musical influences of Kent bands were often genres apart from each other. “We were influenced by bands like the Smiths, but also early hardcore.” Joel McAdams says. Perhaps the purposely-inept nature of the music was cause for their avant-garde nature. “We never quite did it correctly,” McAdams says, laughing, “It was always a little bit wrong.”

“The thing about all those bands was that they got things done,” says Erdman of his cronies, who worked fervently in their spare time to record and tour. “There was a lot less talk and a lot more doing.”

“It was the notion that we really liked the ‘do-it-yourself’ punk ideals but we didn’t want to play straightforward music,” McAdams says. “We were kind of just a bunch of arty nerds.”

Even nerds need to rock out, and the intense volume of the Kent bands’ live shows were proof of that. “You couldn’t hear anything at all,” Cory Race says. “It was so loud.” The aura of the house shows would cause members of the hipster audience to stand completely still. “It was ridiculous how loud the bands were. It was like the audience was standing there, looking at a piece of live art. They would be thinking too deeply about it when it was just archaic noise. It was ironic to see people so in control when it sounded so out of control.”

Of the different punk bands from Kent, many agree that their most unifying quality was the sheer avalanches of volume. “One thing about those bands is that they were always ridiculously loud,” Derek Erdman says. “Each member of Kill City Babies had two (amplifier) cabinets and at one point there were like, five basses in the band.”

Many of the bands broke up as members graduated from Kent State or moved out of town. But the noise the bands created is one thing that will not be forgotten. “It’s too loud to remember the last show,” McAdams says of his final days with Harriet the Spy, smiling. “We were all too loud.”