Inoculous
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Inoculous

Chicago, Illinois, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2019 | SELF

Chicago, Illinois, United States | SELF
Established on Jan, 2019
Duo Rock Glitch

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"Chicago math post rocker INOCULOUS drops meticulous and complex EP"

Stepping onto the math scene with a bang, musical savant Demitri Wolfe’s virtuosic guitar lines sprint and tear through the captivating melodies pouring from his head on the newest EP from his project INOCULOUS. The mind-bending, brief, yet fiery EP meanders through his hypnotic visions of interweaving, bubbling, and bounding math rock tones set to catchy modern sensibilities. It retains twisted, progressive sensibilities, and the ear for independent radio play. Each and every note of “Innocuous Inoculant” lands with devastating precision and flows with energized passion. Dive into its wildly entertaining and joyous action and share!
“All these songs are tracks I’ve been sitting on for a while. I’m glad to be putting them out so that I can move on to the next project, a full-length LP.” – comments Demetri.

“I tried to do what I did on Creature Beach and record all the parts myself, but after demoing them out at first, I came to the sobering realization that I wasn’t able to play the drums the way I heard them in my head.”

When Demetri Wolfe wrote these songs, he was listening to a lot of Post-Kid A Radiohead and TTNG, which is where he pulled a lot of the vibes from, like melodically interesting and catchy riffs that carry a little melancholy within them. ““Blank” is honestly the newest song and it started as this guitar etude I wrote in standard tuning.” – he comments. “But I never really finished it until I put my guitar in this weird tuning (Gb Bb Eb F Bb Db), then it just wrote itself.”

Asked about his connection to his local music scene in Chicago, he offered: “I’m in the middle of feeling my way into the Chicago music scene. I just moved here about 3 months ago and with no real connections or shows, it has been hard to know where to start. My main priority would be to find a new drummer to write and record. But that of course would be when it’s safe to do so again.”

Lastly, we asked Demetri to give us some other bands tips and here’s what he got:

“If I could recommend any bands from this year, Floral just released a stellar debut LP that is ethereal from start to finish.

Standards is another great band who also just released their debut album Fruit Island full of catchy melodies that sounds like they are pulled straight from a dream.

I have also been listening to a lot of Mestis, which is Javier Reyes’ solo project and it’s all vibes and swag mixed with some virtuosic guitar playing. - IDIOTEQ


"Athens’ Inoculous Perfecting Chops With Numerous Live Performances"

Athens’s very own Inoculous will be performing this Thursday evening, September 12, at Casa Nueva. The up-and-coming math rock band has been taking Athens by storm, playing live shows nearly every week.

The group consists of three members, Demetri Wolfe on guitar, Bryan Sheets on Drums, and Jake Evans on bass. Their three-track EP, Creature Beach, was released earlier this year in March. “Creature Beach is a look inside someone’s life. Life is the beginning of the longest experience you will ever endure,” Wolfe said. “It’s an opportunity to take advantage of every possibility to optimize itself.”

... - Jessica Jones


"Q&A: Inoculous"

Q&A with bassist Jake Evans, drummer Bryan Sheets, and guitarist and creative force Demetri Wolfe of Athens math-rock trio Inoculous.
...
JK: Math rock is known for its relationship to music theory and virtuoso-type performances; are these things that you guys are processing when playing or writing?

JAKE: We don’t know what notes are!

DEMETRI: I’ve been studying music theory for a fair bit of time—I’ll say, over half of my life—and I’ve used it as more of a reflex than I have for, like, sitting down and thinking of what mode of the major scale is going to sound the best here. It’s kind of a reflex where it is like, I have a cool melody in my head, and how would that sound harmonized this way? How would it sound harmonized that way? A lot of experimentation doing that. I’ve been playing piano since I was three, and I moved to guitar. I actually moved to drums first, and I took guitar a year after that. I just loved guitar. Kirk Hammett from Metallica, definitely one of my favorites. I just wanted to do the all cool, crazy shit he was doing. Then I got really into shit like Animals As Leaders and Charlie Parker and I realized, “Hey! You can use the guitar as a solo instrument and do more shit than just shred!” I was like, “Oh, shit! That’d be cool.”

JK: So, would you say that your music theory background is more of the back layer of what you are doing, rather than sitting down to go, “I’ll use this specific thread?”

DEMETRI: Exactly. Specific threads, I would say, that’s what like polyrhythms and shit are for. - Jonah Krueger


"INOCULOUS DELIVER US FROM HOLIDAY GLOOM WITH FULLY ASTRAL VISUALIZER FOR ENTIRE SONDER EP"

The holiday dread is full on here, folks. The signs are outside, the neighbors’ parking lots are full, the leaves are dropping off of everything, all the lights are going up… it’s miserable.

Why does every grocery store in town have to have all of these painted rain deer on the walls? Literally zero consideration for people with a history of incidents involving rain deer. We exist, okay?

Luckily, we’ve got something extremely visual to move through the trauma with today – a twelve minute hypnotic visualizer for the brand new EP from Inoculous, and we’ve got to say, it’s pretty crazy. There are pulsing, neon hypercubes, deep-sea psychedelics, and bubbling little forest castles. It’s a lot, but we’ll get to that in a moment – the tunes are pretty sweet as well.

Sonder kicks off with a sweetly melancholic acoustic refrain that quickly morphs into something fans of Floral and Giraffes? Giraffes! will definitely vibe with. There’s a deluge of tapping and gutsy guitar tones, and there’s also some cool production lurking in the background.

Hold onto your hats and check out the exclusive stream below.



_

Seriously though, we haven’t seen visuals like that since we miscalculated the dosage for a certain fungal field trip and ended up forgiving the electric ghost of Jesus for his sins against man. It’s a long story. We’re better now. We think. We’ve been processing a lot because of the holidays. Thanks to director Paul “Alfie” Garcia for bringing all of that up. Apparently.

Anyway, after the full-blown astral travel geometry of the visualizer’s first half, the second half definitely take a turn for the organic, and it makes for interesting contrast with the music. Demetri, the main songwriter behind Inoculous, guides the listener through a variety of sonic textures throughout Sonder‘s brief twelve-minute run time. There’s some light chugs and the occasional pillar of heavy sound, but for the most part Inoculous focuses on the storytelling of each song by leaning into their motifs or exploring an idea in multiple dynamics.

Whether you’re looking for some adventurous and prog-influenced music that still bears a strong resemblance to math rock, Sonder is certainly worth a listen, but we’d bet that Inoculous has enough creative juices stored up to transcend these pesky little genres either way – here’s hoping we hear more soon. - Fecking Bahamas


Discography

Creature Beach

  1. Red Sand
  2. ADHD
  3. Alligator

Photos

Bio

For better or worse, Inoculous is the musical equivalent of overthinking everything. The technical array of bombastic drum grooves, non-linear song structure, and stupidly infectious melodies give way to some dope ass songs. Led by guitarist/composer Demetri Wolfe, he started writing guitar based music in his dorm after the break up of his last project. The riffs were too technical for words, but not annoying enough to not instantly fall in love with. Thus the choice to remain instrumental. The following summer, he went into a basement in Virginia and recorded "Creature Beach", the first Inoculous EP. After finding real bois to learn bass and drums, Inoculous has become a live act performing throughout Ohio. Inoculous: We overthink, so you don't have to!

Band Members