On Saturday, four Yale student bands gathered at Stella Blues bar for a musical celebration of Earth Day.
The bands — Gabrielle Barnes, Friends of Kanaan, Half-Inch Hero and Lovely Friends — performed in genres ranging from metal to emo to eco punk music from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.. They even included theme songs from classic cartoons in their setlists. Yale student Ben Kelly ’23 — also known as DJ Wandermere — was also in attendance.
“We kind of wanted to culminate Earth week with a bang,” said Tasman Rosenfeld ’22, who co-organized the concert with Jamie Chan ’23. “Jamie reached out to me about doing some sort of Earth-related event because we’re an ecopunk band, and I said: ‘why not reach out to a bunch of artists and do something cool?’”
Rosenfeld is the lead singer in Half-Inch Hero, an ecopunk band from South Florida which plays “melodic post-hardcore” music about environmental issues. The group has been playing since 2016, but Saturday marked the first show where they’ve used the name “Half-Inch Hero” — previously they were called “Earth Pig.” The band draws inspiration from bands like My Chemical Romance, Underoath and The Used.
On Saturday, Half-Inch Hero played “Slave to the Power” for listeners who wanted “to mosh,”, according to Rosenfeld, as well as an original song called “Martyr,” which is about a frog Rosenfeld killed on a scientific expedition and deals with the ethics of scientific expeditions.
Rosenfeld saw Earth Day as an opportunity to bring people together to learn about the environment and to inspire compassion for the environment.
“We really have to advocate for its protection in light of corporate demands and everyday demands of humanity,” Rosenfeld said. “We just need to build compassion and empathy within us to recognize what we’re doing and mitigate it.”
Besides celebrating Earth Day, the concert also aimed to showcase this particular genre of music — which, according to Rosenfeld, does not have a well-defined space at Yale.
“If the band community at Yale were more open to heavy music, I would have been playing a lot more live music,” Rosenfeld said. “There definitely seems to be a preference among the student body for indie bands and pop bands, more pop-rock music, which is great, but just not the music I like to play.”
Kelly, Half-Inch Hero’s lead guitarist, said that the concert was a “celebration of the beautiful things that nature and the Earth give us, music being one of them.”
“It’s a way to share some beautiful things with good people,” Kelly said. “It’s not a show for your mom, it’s a little more high energy, a little aggressive, but all in a fun way.”
On Saturday, Kelly played in Half-Inch Hero. It was his debut show as DJ Wandermere, featuring original music he composed over the pandemic.
The name was inspired by the name of the road in front of his high school in San Diego, California. He said the idea of his music was one part “melodic dubstep,” one part heavy metal and one part orchestral music, and is also influenced by his background as a composer for films.
“If I had to encapsulate what makes me unique musically, what I do is more complex than most of the EDM scene,” Kelly said. “I haven’t really heard anybody yet really do the symphonic dubstep thing.”
Kelly is also heavily influenced by metal music, not an “in your face heavy riffing type of metal,” but rather a “hauntingly beautiful soaring melodic melancholy type metal,” he said. His music is electronic but nevertheless features several organic instruments. Even after Saturday’s concert, Kelly plans to continue mixing music.
“This is just the beginning for Wandermere, so I very much plan to play as much as I can, wherever and whenever I can,” Kelly said.
Evan Branham ’24, the bass guitarist for “3 PM Noise Complaint,” the last act of the evening, was excited about his group’s debut show. The group originally formed with the intent to submit an audition to the Spring Fling Battle of the Bands, and while they didn’t succeed, they enjoyed playing together so much that they decided to continue.
On Saturday, 3 PM Noise Complaint played a combination of rock, metal and classic themes.
According to Kelly, Saturday’s concert focused on music that is uncommon at Yale.
“It’s worth [going] to try something new, to push your boundaries to a more aggressive style of music,” he said. “It’s very easy to get comfortable in your habits, whether that’s the concerts you go to or the music you choose to listen to, and I think that this is a very good opportunity, not just for the performers, but also for anyone who wants to come out and experience something new and powerful.”
Ticket admission was $5, with 90 percent of proceeds distributed among the bands.