Portland’s strangest buzz band

The Portland music scene wouldn’t be anything without the Portland basement.

It is a staple of the city, like the rain or the bridges or the coffee or the vegans or the bicycles. Portland was built upon basements—quite literally. But how do a few kids in a Portland basement making music that sounds like a chainsaw being thrown into a rusty wood chipper make it onto MTV, sell out all their releases and have a legion of sweaty, pale-faced fans chomping at the bit?

Never underestimate the power of kids making noise in a basement.

“We’re just making the music we want to make,” says Scott Simmons, bassist for Eat Skull.

The music that they want to make has been christened with many names, including but not limited to: punk, thrash, noise pop and fuzzed-out synth rock. They have even been thrown into the insanely named category of “shit-core” and “shit-gaze” along with Siltbreeze label mates Times New Viking (now on Matador), Psychedelic Horseshit and Pink Reason.

They recently said of a reviewer in one of their blogs: “His lyric quotes are 75 percent wrong. It’s cool how song lyrics get personalized to the listener when you don’t make a lyric sheet.”

The same is true of Eat Skull’s sound. With so much noise going on at one time, two people could be standing next to each other listening to Eat Skull and be having a totally different experience. Call it “shit-core” or “shit-gaze,” call it “Turtle Turd Country Bop” for all anyone cares, but their shit is happening in a big way.

“After leaving [former band] The Hospitals, Rob was decided on for vocal, guitar and keyboard duty and Rod [Meyer] also landed on the guitar. Scott [Simmon] was handed the bass. Kyle fell into the drums,” says frontman Robert Enbom of the beginnings of Eat Skull.

“We like to record ourselves so we don’t have to deal with a studio and doing things at a certain time, we only have cheap equipment and we like to record to tape,” adds Simmon. “Our first album was supposed to sound blasted. Now we have some more stuff to use so our next one sounds a lot cleaner and the vibe of the tunes was right for that. It’s about ambience I guess.”

Their current “blasted” sound is hard to come by outside of their live shows. With a few 7-inch releases now out of print, gobbled up by fans watering at the mouth, and some later selling on Ebay for upwards of $50, Eat Skull recently released a full-length LP called Sick to Death, and is talking about re-releasing some of the out-of-print 7-inches to quell the frenzy.

This may be part of the reason MTV sought them out.

“No one buys music anymore, so MTV still had to come down to the basement to hear us,” says Enbom of the MTV visit. “They were horrified, but the kitty still had to be fed.”

When asked by the Vanguard if the MTV coverage bothered them at all and if being sought out by MTV is “making it,” Enbom went on to say: “If they had just brought some money, we’d all be happy.”

The band is still unsure what the exposure may bring, if anything. Nonetheless, it is evident the MTV radar reaches far, wide and deep. Even into the basements of Portland.

Could Eat Skull become the next “buzz band” a la Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? Who knows, but as long as the band has another album on the horizon (they just started recording Wild and Inside, to be released sometime in the future) they will have all sorts lining up and waiting with open arms and open skulls.