This story is featured in CityBeat's Sept. 6 print edition.
Heavy is a word thrown around nonchalantly in today’s music world. Anything with an amplified guitar and an angry frontperson seems to qualify and it has quickly become nothing more than a reductive description. It would be simple, and apt, to describe the Cincinnati-based quintet, Young Eyes, as heavy but doing so would ignore what makes the band so special. Why settle for heavy when chaotic, oppressive, frenetic, discordant, uneasy and, above all, vital can do the trick?
Young Eyes first formed in 2018 when Kevin McNair (bass) moved back to town and got in touch with former Banderas and Honeyspiders bandmate, Chris Harrison (guitar). The two longtime collaborators began working on demos, with Rick McCarty (drums) quickly coming aboard. The trio needed another guitar player to fill out their sound, so McCarty contacted his former Shivs bandmate, Casey Beagle, and the group continued writing what would be the tracks for their debut album, All These Steps Lead Us the Wrong Way. There was only one problem: they didn’t yet have a vocalist.
“We got to a point where we didn’t have a singer and we thought, ‘We’ve got to make a next step.’ It was either, get somebody to sing or… [I suggested] we go to the studio and record what we have, which is what we ended up doing.” McCarty expands. “So, we recorded all the basic tracks for the record in October of 2019.” When the group received the rough mixes the search for a vocalist began in earnest. Scot Torres, formerly of State Songs, eventually joined in January of 2020, just in time for COVID to halt the band’s plans.
“In hindsight, it did offer us a lot of latitude and it took a lot of pressure off Scot because he had time,” McCarty says. “We basically handed him this record and said, ‘Here’s what we have,’ which is not the easiest thing for anybody to do.”
Torres was put in a unique situation where the music was largely written when he joined and was therefore tasked with writing lyrics to fit a structure he had no say in.
“I picked one [song] and just tried to nail it down. I was the primary writer in all of my projects prior to this. So, I took one and deconstructed it, because I didn’t write it. I actually had to block it out on paper to figure out what they were doing because I wasn’t there,” Torres explains.
When it came to the lyrics, Torres tried to pull away from genre conventions. Elements like classic horror and the writings of Charles Bukowski flavored his output, with the real-life hazards of working in the medical field during COVID also playing a part. “I’m describing movies that play in my head but I’m trying to make them digestible and open-ended enough where anyone can get on board,” Torres says. “Things are a tinge darker but not hopeless.”
The band took advantage of the one thing COVID provided: time. Partnering with accomplished sound engineers Mike Montgomery and Steve Wethington at Candyland Studios, Young Eyes fleshed out the rough tracks with synth lines, atmospherics, layered guitar and feedback, and added Torres’ vocals.
“It really turned out to be a good thing to take that much time off because then, from the guitar standpoint, we got to write so much different stuff to go over these basic tracks,” Beagle says.” “[Torres is] very melodic so Casey was able to come up with a counter-melody, which opens it up even more,” Harrison expands. “We got even more experimental. We were able to perfect our craft when it came to writing.”
What began as rough tracks in October of 2019 were finalized in summer of 2022. All These Steps Lead Us the Wrong Way is a tight, eight-track album with layer upon layer to discover, decipher and dig into. On top is Torres’ vocal delivery: a pained wail that sounds like every word is ripping past broken glass on the way out of his throat. Behind him, his bandmates shift and morph their output on a dime.
In one section McNair’s subterranean rumble may be joined by Harrison’s throaty guitar chug. Others have Beagle and Harrison twist their guitar lines around one another in a warped tangle while McCarty and McNair shake the very foundation of the track together. The songs frequently slide and crash from one style to another with no time for the listener to settle in. This is largely due to their focus on organic songwriting rather than slavish devotion to a genre or influence.
McNair explains, “A lot of bands, when they write, they come up with an endgame of where they want to be. With us, we took the approach of, ‘That’s cool, let’s try that.’”
The endurance exhibited in the writing and recording process carried over to Young Eyes’ live performances. The band’s first show was at Iron Fest 2021 and the band has only played four other shows since then.
“We’ve turned down three or four times as many shows since that first Ironfest date,” McCarty says. “We’ve intentionally tried to be patient, not rush things. Now it feels like the right time; there was a lot of planning that went into how the record was going to be released.”
Every band member agreed that prior projects may have jumped the gun on album releases and were dead set on doing this one the right way and at the right time. This is likely due to the band not waiting four years to release their follow-up record. “We have another record basically written that we’re talking about when we’re going to record it. We’ve been writing and writing and writing constantly,” McCarty says.
The push-pull inherent in Young Eyes: from the car crash intensity followed by soft introspection to spending four years to craft a first album while having a second nearly ready for recording, has helped form a band and album that is perfectly balanced in its imbalance. Every decision was made to benefit the creative output of the members and no corner was cut along the journey. It is for this reason that All These Steps Lead Us the Wrong Way and Young Eyes are understandably heavy but also undeniably vital to Cincinnati music.
For more information about Young Eyes and their debut record, visit instagram.com/weareyoungeyes.
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