Spencer Biddiscombe recalls when the head of his record label, Snubbed Records, gave Give You Nothing’s album a listen. He said it sounded like a mid-’90s Bay Area punk band. Biddiscombe thanked him for the compliment.
“That’s what we’re going for,” he tells GT. “Every other band I’ve been in, I don’t think we ever sounded like what we set out to sound like.”
The band’s debut self-titled, full-length album was released May 1. It’s got heavy, energetic skate-punk riffs with melodic vocals throughout, giving the music a nice blend of pop and hardcore.
As new as the band is, the members have been involved in the scene since the early 2000s—but they’d played hardcore, thrash and powerviolence.
“This is what we grew up listening to in the ’90s in Santa Cruz. AFI, Fury 66. We were like, ‘We want to do a band like that,’” Biddiscombe says of Give You Nothing.
The band spent over a year on the record, throwing out songs they didn’t absolutely love, demoing the rest and getting a nice, polished studio recording that still has the live energy intact.
“A lot of times with bands you have one song and you want to get a record out,” Biddiscombe says. “We really wanted to spend time writing.”
The band barely played live the past year, but now that the album is out, plans to hit it hard. This upcoming show is the unofficial record release. The group hopes to put together a bigger release show sometime in July.
“Our biggest thing is just having fun,” Biddiscombe says. “There’s so many bands that are way too serious now.”
INFO: 9 p.m., Wednesday, May 22. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $10. 429-6994.
