Oregon Voice

A Glimpse of the Eugene Music Scene

• Posted by Matt DeBow
• on March 30, 2010
• Filed in: Eugene, Live Review, Music, Oregon Voice

Because I am still in Eugene for spring break, I get the pleasure of discovering what our local musicians are producing and performing. Good Friday, The Horribalistics, Tullis, Drebin and a Vision in Gray who are all from around the area got to strut their stuff for a short set at WOW hall.

I arrived out the WOW Hall and the band Good Friday was playing and praising Jesus while playing acoustic guitars. Their music was decent, but I was not expecting to hear Christian camp songs so I ran outside and waited for the next band.

The next band, the Horribalistics, true to their name, certainly didn’t put on a great show. They’re another generic punk band. They played loud, fast and simple, but lacked the raw energy and anger that style of music requires to create a great show. They were unable to draw in the crowd, but they were following a Christian band. Any fans of the previous band were probably now offended and left.

The bands that stood out were Drebin and Tullis. Tullis put on a great show except that they sound too much like Floater without enough variation to create their own style. Unlike putting a punk band after a Christian band, Tullis was a good way to get the crowd ready for the next band: Drebin.

Drebin also sounds similar to Floater, but Drebin distances themselves from a Floater clone because their sound is  funkier because of their loud, funky and aggressive slap bass style thanks to the bass playing of Derik Sibert although they are a bass-driven band like Floater.  Matching the bass styling is the drummer, Ian Samhammer, with his excellently timed, loud and aggressive style of drumming. Samhammer’s creative drumming is the best part of Drebin.

Samhammer met Drebin through mutual friends when they had a different drummer before Samhammer joined the band. They have been playing for a few years together. Each song of Drebin’s, while they are similar in style, does not fall into the trap that so many bands do: not all of their songs sound exactly alike.

“The band is fun and interesting and not all the songs sound the same,” said Samhammer.

Sibert led Drebin and the crowd confidently onstage with their bass-driven sound that nicely complements his low-pitched vocal stylings. The only weakness of Drebin is the the guitarist, Kurt Schreiner, seems to get lost in what to play onstage and lacks the confidence of his counterparts, which hurts his playing. It is hard to play guitar well in a highly bass-driven band, but strong guitar playing is what lacks in Drebin. Also, Schreiner lacks the chemistry that Samhammer and Sibert have onstage together.

Drebin, unfortunately, were not given their fair share of their time slot and they had the audience at their fingertips when the plug was literally pulled out of their amp forcing them to stop playing. Because Drebin was sharing their equipment with Tullis, they were not given any set up time even though it took them ten minutes to tune their instruments and they were only given a 20 minute set that should have been 30 minutes. The crowd was cheering loudly for them when their set was stopped abruptly.

The WOW hall was rented out by the promotion company Nemesis Entertainment and they could not have ran the show any worse. The band that clearly had the most fans had the shortest time slot. As A Vision in Gray, after Drebin, started playing the audience diminished and they played for twice as long as Drebin.

A Vision in Gray was a mix of Emo and Metal and they just couldn’t pull of the mix of styles all that well. Not that I am really a fan of Emo anyway. There was a keyboard in their band that was out of place.

I am glad I live in Eugene where I can always catch a show of local talent, but I hope that I never have to suffer through Nemesis Entertainment organizing a show again.

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