Hands of Spite

The EP’s title, Inchoate (pronounced IN-koh-ut) expresses the youth of the band, but not the skill level of the four musicians.

Hands of Spite is a young alt rock band from Boston, only about a year old. But they have dropped a five-track EP that comes straight at you at 120 miles per.

The EP’s title, Inchoate (pronounced IN-koh-ut) expresses the youth of the band, but not the skill level of the four musicians.

“”Inchoate’ means not fully formed, in its infancy,” said Sam Gelston, who with Austin Bullock, is a guitarist and vocalist.

“So, I feel like it was a good title for the EP. It's just the beginning for us, and we're still figuring everything out on our end, like how we work together and how we'll continue to move forward,” he said.

Sam’s background is punk and grunge, while Austin’s roots are in classic rock with lo-fi and garage rock blended in.

“The EP we just put out, the five songs on it, is really just a taste of all the good stuff we have coming out,” said Austin. “It covers the style that we have. We have a sense of humor, and we like to keep things heavy — a lot of really aggressive, fun, punk-based music, and there’s a lot more coming.”

Drummer Zac Stein and bassist Nate Belton both come from a hard rock and metal background, and all four mix their styles in a collaborative musical effort.

“It’s fun, feel-good punk rock and just good jams,” said Zac. “We bring the energy and we're just playing music from the depths of our souls, and just want to release that into everyone's ears. It's just great rock and roll that everyone needs to hear, and we have so much of it.”

The band has a full LP that they hope will be out in March. The music is done, said Sam, though the date and a title have not been decided.

They have said the five songs on Inchoate were developed during what they called an introspective time (Covid): “Teal” addresses coping with loneliness; “Lips” is “a demented love song;” “What Do You Say” is about questioning and understanding yourself; “Still Wonder Why,” they say, is a reflection piece about past and future.

All, of course, from a punk/grunge perspective. “Talk About It,” a song they describe as opening a conversation to needs and feelings, begins:

We don’t need to talk about it
We don’t need to speak at all
We don’t even joke about it
We just sort of laugh it off

The music features a wide variety in heavy, driving rock guitar and bass backed by a fast-paced, pounding drum rhythm. When they say “aggressive,” they mean it.

Nate, the bass player, couldn’t be at a recent interview, but Sam, Austin and Zac told how they met at a Boston music venue, the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain.

The band has been together just over a year, but Zac and Nate have known each other since middle school. But the genesis of the band was at the café, and Sam was the hub, said Zac.

“I was working there as a sound guy, and as the door guy,” said Sam. “I made a point not to listen to any of the bands, but I could be surprised, like this band kills it, or this band sucks. But I got to see Austin play his solo music, and I was just absolutely floored, and I was like, ‘I got to talk to this guy.’”

Another bartender and sound guy happened to know Zac, said Sam, and one night Zac came in for a beer.

At which point Zac finished this part of the story: “And I asked if you needed a drummer.”

“I said, ‘Iif you need a drummer, I’m that guy.’”

“Obviously, I love working with these guys,” said Zac. “They're my best friends, and there's nothing more rewarding than just creating music that feels good and that sounds good.”

“The music we're making right now is what we’ve made since we formed our songwriting style as a group,” said Austin. “We got comfortable playing with each other, practicing, hammering out songs over and over again, but also trying out new riffs and building stuff. From here on out, it's just going to keep building and changing as it goes. Everything we have coming out after this is going to be like a cool progression. We all come in with different perspectives, and we like how we write things together.”

Sam summed up where Hands of Spite is and where it’s going.

“We’re in a really prolific stage right now. Keep an eye on us. Keep an ear on us. I think we’re an amazing, up and coming band, and we’re just scratching the surface of our abilities.”

Keep an eye and an ear on Hands of Spite by connecting with them on the band’s website, and by following them on all platforms for new music, videos and social posts: - Kurt Beyers

Boston-based alternative rock band Hands of Spite is bringing the energy, creativity and quality of a prolific new band ready to make the world sing and build a powerful musical future.

Hands of Spite released its first EP, a five-track album called “Inchoate,” on Jan. 24, showing off a “thunderous rhythm section” of Zac Stein on drums and vocals and Nate Belton on bass, along with the creative song-writing forces of Austin Bullock and Sam Gelston, who both play the guitar and sing.

“We are a pretty fresh group, we’ve been in this formation for about a year so I think this album is a testament to what we have going for us as a group,” Stein said. “I think we’ve done a tremendous amount of work and we’ve made a lot of strides in that time just to be able to jive as people, musicians and artists.”

The word inchoate isn’t commonly used in the English language, but it means not fully formed or developed.

Sam Gelston said he chose that name because their band is new, and they believe, not fully formed.

“I felt like it was a really good first title because this is just the sampler,” Gelston said. “We’re still growing, still learning who we are as a band. Not individually as musicians as much, but we’re learning how we play as musicians together. I think it’s pretty fitting because this is just the tip of the iceberg, we have so much more to go.”

The four musicians in Hands of Spite were all connected in some way to a bar in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston called the Midway Cafe.

Sam Gelston was working there when he met Austin Bullock, who was playing at the club.

Gelston asked Bullock to help him start a band. Gelston then met the band’s drummer, Zac Stein, through a co-worker and Stein brought in Nate Belton, the bass player, who had been friends with Stein since middle school.

“I think all of us coming together from these kind of built-in roots have helped us click so quickly,” Gelston said. “I think especially because of the strength of our rhythm section that it’s made the rest of us better as songwriters. Just for myself as a guitar-player and singer, it’s made my job really easy. These guys are really on the same page, it doesn’t matter what riff we bring in, whatever it is, they’re good to go.”

The first single from the album to be released, a song called “What Do You Say,” was one of Bullock’s creations.

He said the song is question and an answer, with the question being in the title and the answer in the song.

“The chorus of it is meant to feel like things you can question things, you're not sure about things, but it also has almost like a keep things moving feeling to it,” Bullock said.

“What are we shooting for? Where are we moving? What’s happening with us” the song asks, inviting the listener to wonder the same.

While technically, Gelston and Bullock do most of the writing, all four band members are deeply involved in the creative process.

“We’ve definitely been finding our footing with the songwriting and in-progress is a good moniker for this EP because we’ve really been finding our footing on how we bounce off of each other, where each of us will fit in each of these songs,” Belton said. “You see the foundations of our sound in this EP, but there’s so much more to come. It’s evolved a lot already since then.”

Stein called the EP a “super-hearty care package of intense, good-sounding music.”

“I think it’s a really fun way to come out in full force,” Stein said. “We’ve been a band for about a year and we come out with a full-fledged good product. These songs sound good, they make you feel good and it’s just the beginning. It’s loud, it’s aggressive, it’s fun and I'm proud of it. I just hope people will like it and are ready for more because we’ve got more coming.” -