When Michael Garcia from the San Gabriel Valley’s band Memory Milk first told me about East LA natives, Hyper Minds, he said, “you really need to work with this band. You’re gonna love them.” I had never heard of them before, but I kept an open mind. In mid fall, we finally met to have our first recording session at my studio Machinehouse Audio. Immediately, I saw what Mike saw – a visceral band of brothers that took their craft seriously and harnessed the pure energy of punk.
On October 13th, Hyper Minds began recording their recently released EP, “At War With Ourselves”. As Singer Roland Joseph O’Cello stated, “this came from a place of deep frustration of how I failed to fully express myself,” core elements that would become the driving force for this body of work. With tracks like “Broke” and “Scare Tactics” that resembled raw sentiments that pluck out their unwavering nerves with whiplashing aggressive speed to activate the power of storytelling.
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As soon as the red light turned on, Hyper Minds objective was to keep it honest and straight to the fucking point. Every second was utilized as the rhythm section, drummer Andrew Fernando Morales and bassist Juan Antonio Rodriguez, made sure to glue one’s intensity to the other’s grit. The inevitable byproduct was a bombastic smooth foundation that allowed Guitarist William Patrick Carmen to shred his way through the stereo field as O’Cello penetrated the backing guitar with his fast power chords. With no breaks, nor sunlight for nine hours, we had captured all instruments in that one day.
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The next day O’Cello came back to spill his gnawing guts out. I dialed his vocals and discussed basic perimeters before he confidently laid into the first track, “Nervous.” This charmingly timid, well-mannered dude quickly turned into a audaciously fast-biting MC savant that employed animated vocal syncopations. In full excitement, I just said to myself, “What the fuck was that?” He unapologetically shapeshifted his voice into vivacious jitters that brought out the frustration he had mentioned as he yelled out his lyrics, “I’m so damn nervous that I’m stuck inside my mind.” Without words, we both knew that we were making magic that late afternoon.
Eventually, we got into the mixing and mastering stage and I got to see the band from another side. I switched gears and listened as a fan, not as their engineer, which allowed me to learn from them. Their colorful songwriting is inherently straightforward, but each track carries an enormous amount of weight. The emotional depth is an ode to self that reflects on the fucked-up nature of how the past affects the present. The closer I got to the songs, the closer my specific intentions for the mix came to light – staying true to the vision and sound, while adding technical applications to enhance the feel of each track.
@hyper.minds “Scare Tactics” off our forthcoming EP “At War With Ourselves” Out on all streaming December 5th!! Aaaand Thats The Bottom Line, CAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO!! 💀 #garagepunk #garagemusic #garageband #garagerock #punk #punkrock #punkmusic #newpunk #punktok #psychrock #eggpunk #lapunk #lamusic #lamusicscene #losangelesmusic #losangelesband #laband #freshmusic #newmusic #newband #catchysong #catchyaudio ♬ original sound – Hyper Minds
Now, I listen back and I hope you hear what I hear – a story of a band organizing their anxieties and pressures with their art. “At War With Ourselves” is an sonic stream of consciousness that unleashes the power of inner-chaos through the clear cleanse of catharsis. Within these four-tracks, Hyper Minds discovers their own formula and shares it with the world as they leave that past and enter a new era of growth and stability.
