Party stoppers
Never let it be said that Alcohol Party are anything but completely irreverent. When pressed for questioning, the band’s default response tends to be the best kind of punk snark, which challenges any real meaning. For example, about their sound and influences, singer/guitarist/noisemaker Zach Johnstone notes, “Judging by our practices, we’re really just a glorified Black Sabbath cover band, like most modern rock bands.”
This couldn’t be further from accurate.
Comprised of the aforementioned Johnstone, bassist Matt Watkins and drummer Jeff Komara, Alcohol Party are a power-trio whose accumulative sound leans toward the loud, rowdy and relatively complex, like prog-punk’s leaner, more pissed-off brother. You can certainly hear a metal influence, but you won’t confuse this with Ozzy anytime soon.
Johnstone explains about their formation, “We don’t like playing softball, so we discovered we had free time to fill on Wednesday and Sunday nights. Video games haven’t been very good lately, either. Also, we needed a place to sweat in public.”
Alcohol Party isn’t all snark, though. A pragmatic Johnstone explains their name like this: “It means what you think it means, though that meaning will hopefully vary from person to person.” He adds, “Just looking at our song titles, it’s fairly evident that we’re conscious of pop culture and politics. One of us is very interested in systems design, which is probably the only abstract thing that directly influences what we sound like.”
Ever productive, this year Alcohol Party have worked on two releases, the five-song EP The Casual Sex, recently released into the wilds of Bandcamp, and an impending split cassette release with kindred spirits Tropical Trash. Recorded by former Louisville native Nick Hennies, Johnstone explains, “The Casual Sex is a concept album about being a dude.”
At the moment, Alcohol Party are taking a breather to plan out their next step. Irreverent to the end, supposing this next step involves touring, Johnstone says that “since Virgin Galactic flight sales are a little low, we were recently contacted by Sir Richard Branson and have agreed to provide crucial sub-orbital riffage during the six minutes of weightlessness passengers experience.”
Choose your poison at facebook.com/AlcoholPartyMusic.
This article appears in June 18, 2013.