Spit’s 2017 demo tape had nine tracks on it and clocked in at just about 10 minutes. Fast forward two years, and the Tampa trio’s forthcoming debut album boasts twice as many cuts. The length of the effort?
“Just under 13 minutes.”
That’s Spit frontman and guitarist Tim Anderson. He’s outside of a home he rents with friends and explaining an album that’s been over a year in the making.
The sun is about to disappear over the Ybor Channel. Two dogs behind the chain link fence — one of them almost deaf — let out the occasional bark while a mid-’90s boombox plays tunes via cell phone connected by an aux cord. Anderson’s neighbors in this slice of Tampa’s Palmetto Beach neighborhood drive underneath the sign of the nearby Concord Baptist Church, looking and laughing at him. The 27-year-old and his bandmates — bassist Giani Martinez and drummer Dylan Colón — are less than one week away from releasing Peasant, and there could be a lot to unpack.
Which is why they’ve squeezed themselves, and one music writer, into a kiddie pool that’s about eight feet in diameter and approximately 10 inches deep. The liquid inside smells a little like diluted old beer from a photo shoot. A friend who was in the pool earlier refuses to get back in. The combination of that wet yeast smell and cool-ish hose water is strangely refreshing. The image of four grown men sitting in a kiddie pool is hilarious, and all of this is fitting when it comes getting acquainted with a band whose members came from different backgrounds, but agreed on a few simple items.
“We’re all inspired by different stuff, but we all came to a very common agreeance on a few things,” Colón, 27, says. “Powerviolence, grindcore, anything that’s blackened. Those are the bible, to me.”
Simply put, powerviolence is an extreme mutation of hardcore, punk and death metal. It’s a lot more complicated than that, however.
“Things got sillier and sillier from there,” Colón adds. He’s explaining some of the humor around the origins of powerviolence, which was born in the early-’80s and delivered to kids like Colón when bands like Spazz emerged out of California and refused to take themselves too seriously. Spazz even incorporated b-movie samples into its music.
“They’re literally making jokes all the time,” Colon adds. “In an era where Morbid Angel and Deicide are all ‘doom, gloom and Satan’ about literally everything, Spazz was putting out a song called ‘Let’s Fucking Go’ — it was them screaming, ‘Let’s fucking go’ in a million clips."
Spit doesn’t take itself too seriously, either, and its music bears the sonic qualities of Spazz and other influences like Man Is The Bastard, Nazi Dust, Failure Face and pioneering Massachusetts powerviolence outfit Siege. There are modern bands (read: Nails and Full of Hell) who purportedly play powerviolence, but Anderson and his bandmates — awkward kids who grew up on a lot of Sabbath, Judas Priest and then some indie and pop — would rather sound like an powerviolence bands from days gone by.
That preference is built around nuances in production styles. On Peasant, the band worked with Tampa producer Pat Brady to put the sound of trebly and fizzy guitars, plus sharp and grinding bass, to tape. Spit’s version of powerviolence would also never use double-bass pedal to deliver the big, pummelling drums that sit up front in the mix. And vocals? There are at least four different kinds in Spit; some of the sounds are mid-tone barking, but there’s also high yelling with growling underneath.
“It’s the high and mid just punching people at the same time,” Colón says. The music, simply put by Anderson, is primitive.
“For certain people, heavy music is therapeutic. For some people it’s very nauseating, or it makes them anxious,” Anderson explains. Listeners drawn to raw production and lo-fi sounds feel good when powerviolence hits them.
“Some people listen to hip-hop before they’re going out with their friends, it amps them up. For some other people it’s blast beats.”
Martinez adds that Spit’s music — short, sweet and to the point — isn’t necessarily the kind of thought-provoking music that has its own time and place.
“There’s no thinking about it,” Martinez, who joined the band after Spit’s fist drummer left the lineup, says. “It’s either hitting you or its not.”
Still, for all the sludgeiness and simple stupidity, Anderson has buried deeper messages into Peasant. Ostracization and rehabilitation are addressed. Celebrity archetypes and leadership styles get compared to the galaxy’s nebulae. Spit even managed to poke fun at kombucha hippie culture.
“When you see a kombucha tap show up at your bar, you know shit is going down” he jokes.
Anderson compares the vocal characters in Spit to the way masked hip-hop producer has different personas based on what the songs are trying to say. Colón cops to using the band’s live sets to work out some of his frustrations or pound away on the thoughts that distress him.
“Things that make all three of us upset,” Colón says, “things like gentrification, the inequity among people.”
Some of Spit’s lyrics do straight up address Tampa’s changing neighborhoods, and not far below Spit’s sheen of silliness is a deep commitment to retaining the character of a place like Palmetto Beach, which will surely to see an influx of new construction as the city continues to gain more “swagger.” Maybe it’s why the band asked its friends Shitstorm — one of grindcore’s foremost bands, featuring members of Torche — to join Spit at the band’s album release show happening at the unlikeliest of venues (Tampa City Boxing gym, in an industrial area near Tampa International Airport).
When the boys in Spit talk about the relationship between Miami and Tampa powerviolence scenes, they’re talking about identity and a commitment to a sound. Spit’s music just wants to retain a certain sonic quality, not unlike the way Anderson’s working class neighbors probably just want to retain a certain quality of life as everything changes around them.
When you look at it like that, it is a lot to unpack. But for as silly as they are, Anderson, Colón and Martinez are going to do just that — loud, fast and 13 minutes at a time.
Shitstorm w/Spit/Insolent Wretch. Sat. May 25, 9 p.m. $8. Tampa City Boxing. 4435 N. Lauber Way, Tampa. INFO.
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This article appears in May 23-30, 2019.