While many hardcore bands hurl their sound at the world, DROUGHT turn inward—chipping away at their own histories to make space for something new. Their work doesn’t shout answers—it asks questions, makes space, sits with pain and lets it ferment into something alive. Their debut LP Souvenir isn’t a start—it’s a reckoning. Something remembered, something that won’t leave you alone.
Formed in the Bay Area in 2022, Drought—guitarists Eric Nakano and RJ Rabe, drummer Ray Avila, and vocalist Viggy Ram—pull from the emotional urgency of bands like mewithoutYou, Pianos Become the Teeth, and Title Fight to craft songs that feel equal parts journal entry and open wound. The band’s 2023 EP scratched the surface. Souvenir digs much deeper.
The record—tracked to tape with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden (Deafheaven, Gouge Away)—doesn’t feel like a debut. It’s lived-in. Frayed at the edges. The sound of trying to make sense of things too tangled to unwind.
“Wayfinding,” the latest single, embodies this beautifully—teetering between eruption and reflection. It’s about direction. It’s about masculinity. It’s about being raised among tigers and not knowing if they’re grooming you or hunting you. Featuring a blistering guest vocal from Infant Island’s Alex Rudenshiold, the track balances aggression and introspection with surgical precision.
Elsewhere, Souvenir welcomes contributions from Eric Butler of Mom Jeans and Pat Flynn of Fiddlehead and Have Heart, the latter appearing on the haunting “We’re the Flora.” That song alone—written after Viggy saw a bouquet art exhibit—brings the record’s central themes into focus: generational trauma, chosen identity, second chances, and the slow, thorny act of becoming.
Today, we’re honored to premiere “Wayfinding” and share a full interview with Drought—unpacking the weight behind Souvenir, the ghosts that haunt their sound, and the moments that made everything click. This is emotional hardcore with substance—brimming with questions, and refusing easy answers.
Souvenir doesn’t sound like a debut-it’s got this lived-in weight to it. When you listen back, does it feel like a beginning or a continuation of something older?
Viggy: Souvenir comes off the heels of our 2023 EP and in some ways grapples with some of the same topics and sonic landscapes, but we wanted to push them further. While the EP represented time with songs about aging and death, lyrically, Souvenir touches on space and more of our physical world. What is home? How do the places you’ve been inform who you are today?
RJ: Ah that’s kind of you. I think it’s a bit of both. We recorded the EP as we’re going through a line-up change. We wanted a snapshot of where we were as a band at that moment. A few of the songs off Souvenir were already in the works by the time of recording the EP. So, in a way those early songs were a segue from what we’d done with the EP to the growth that was happening as we began working on Souvenir. I do think Souvenir marks a significant change in our writing though. I think we’re all becoming more comfortable in pushing each other and ideas. In saying ‘yes’ to trying uncomfortable ideas and in learning to listen to one another as real storytellers.
Eric: It feels to me like a natural progression of some of the threads we were pulling on around the time of recording the self-titled EP. In my experience, the songwriting process for Souvenir, as with the EP, was about finding our place on the sonic landscape. I imagine everything that comes next will be an attempt to stretch those boundaries, using this record as a landmark.
You’ve mentioned recording to tape at Atomic Garden-what kind of headspace does that put you in? Did it change how you approached performance or even songwriting?
RJ: For better or worse a frantic one. I hate the idea of recording to tape. I can be obsessive about performances and become fixated on details. When you’re recording to tape you’re surrendering some freedom and control. So, while the idea is really uncomfortable I think we really like the idea of ugliness and imperfections in a recording. We’re all very much into the idea of things feeling like they’re about to come off the rails. I’ll often write parts that are outside of my range of abilities and just commit to figuring it out. I think engineers hate this as it can lead to instances of people not being able to play their parts in the studio. We had a really rigorous practice schedule in the months leading up to recording. You can practice your face off trying to make everything perfect but at the end of the day we aren’t really after that.
Eric: My take on it is that it places a higher level of importance on being able to play well together as a band. You have to pay attention to what everyone else is doing and respond accordingly. Because of that, we spent a lot of time rehearsing ahead of our recording session, and I think we gained a lot in doing so. I definitely like to be able to deliver the sound of the record when we play live, but the thing that gives meaning to the music has hardly anything to do with making sure my pedals turn on and off at the right times. So it’s always a bit of a balancing act.
Viggy: There’s something really special about recordings where you know someone had to hit a drum head or strum a chord or strain to hit a note. Jack at Atomic Garden has spent a lot of time honing the process with so many bands, so he was a great partner and collaborator. For me, vocally, he’d both push me where I needed it but also listened when I knew I could get a better take.
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Was there a specific song that cracked the album open for you, like the one where everything finally made sense?
RJ: I wouldn’t say that happened with any one song in particular. A couple of the songs off Souvenir we’ve been playing since recording the EP. I do think we had a few “Oh shit” moments as songs were coming together. Songs that maybe helped bridge the gap from one song to the next or that helped inform how this more chaotic song can live alongside this much poppier one. It’s like a picture that’s slowly revealing itself to you until it all comes into focus.
Eric: That song for me is “Wayfinding”. It was written earlier on and it demonstrated what we were capable of doing in terms of combining moments of aggression with moments of quiet contemplation. At the time it was written it felt like it touched both ends of our sound as a band.
The line from “We’re the Flora”-“when I find the light, what will I become?”-feels like the emotional core of the record. Do you remember the exact moment that line came to you?
Viggy: I wrote the lyrics to “We’re the Flora” after I saw a museum exhibit in San Francisco of beautiful bouquet sculptures and was reflecting on how each of those flowers left the plants they grew from and were part of something entirely new. That same night I was listening to a really lovely song by Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins called “All Flowers in Time Bend Toward the Sun” where they both sing about finding companionship. It could be a love song, but it could also be about home or a community. So “Flora” is very much a love letter to ourselves—leaving families or cultural histories behind to create something new.
You’ve talked about generational trauma and identity-how much of this record is you trying to reclaim something, and how much is you letting go?
Viggy: I think it’s cool you think of reclamation and letting go. For me personally, I was thinking about how we don’t need to look elsewhere to build a better world or to overcome our histories. That can include letting go of our need to control too much or reclaiming something we think has been taken from us. But it can also include working on ourselves and changing. Everyone is capable of being a better person tomorrow, and no book or song or meditation class alone can provide that.
Was having Pat Flynn on “We’re the Flora” more of a musical thing or a symbolic one? He’s such a presence in the scene-did you feel mentored through that collaboration?
Eric: It’s impossible to overstate how much it means that Pat wanted to be a part of the record. Back in 2021 the first show I went to once venues were able to open back up during the pandemic, was to see Fiddlehead when they came through Oakland. Halfway through their first song, I decided I needed to start a band. So when we were writing the record and discussing guest vocals I got the wild idea to see if we could get in touch with him to make the ask. Lucky for us, the rad folks at our label (Iodine Recordings) were able to put us in touch with Pat and he was down! Truly a full circle moment for me. I also don’t think I’d still be a part of this scene if I hadn’t discovered Have Heart as a kid. They remain my favorite hardcore band of all time.
Viggy: Have Heart are one of those bands that provide depth to hardcore. Pat’s lyrics beautifully turn grief and hardship into conviction. So when he said he was into what we’re doing, “We’re The Flora” felt like the perfect fit for us all. He’s had his own experiences with generational trauma, so his lines come from the perspective of a mentor who’s been there and comforting you that you’re not alone. So that mentorship wasn’t just literal, it played out in the song as well.
You’ve also got Eric from MOM JEANS and Alex from INFANT ISLAND on the record-how did those guest spots come together, and what did each of them bring out of your songs that might’ve surprised you?
Eric: I can’t say enough good things about those dudes. They both expressed interest in our band early on. So again, when the conversation came up around guest vocals, they were obvious choices for us. I think this touches back on my earlier point about exploring where we fit in on the sonic landscape and finding the edges of our sound. Infant Island is much heavier and Mom Jeans is much poppier than us, but I think I’m particularly interested in exploring how those two things can live together within a single song, album, band.
Viggy: Eric and Alex’s guest spots felt especially apt. “Saint” is an allegory for overcoming our collective need to be remembered, but represented as the most typical emo trope: a car crash. And Eric’s style is already really cheeky in Mom Jeans, so it really fits the song’s sarcastic tone.
In “Wayfinding”, I was writing about masculinity and how every single one of us can feel its confines. What does it mean to overcome and redefine manhood?
As a queer man in our music scene, Alex really illuminated that sentiment in the song’s closing, where we imagine manhood as growing up in a tiger’s den and being unsure of whether the other tigers are licking our wounds for comfort or for taste.
RJ: A lot of us grew up in hardcore and the DIY scene. In that world your friends are your hype men. It’s always felt really organic to rope friends into being part of whatever you’re up to, whether that’s taking photos or printing your shirts, doing anything to champion them. Eric and Alex lending their voices really helped amplify what those songs we’re trying to do.
This record navigates between melody and dissonance without getting lost in either. Was that balance something you all discussed in the studio, or does it just come from your collective instincts?
RJ: I think that relationship is something we aspire for and that thankfully comes fairly naturally. The songs take shape as Eric and I volley parts at each other. We have very different but complementary ways of writing and playing, we’re lucky. We’ll push or pull at each other’s ideas, adding tension or relief. With that there’s an opportunity to walk the line or fully tip the scales in one direction. I think we all give careful consideration to what the others are trying to do while trying to keep in mind what the goal is. We might lean into melody in one instance while making a real effort to ugly things up in another.
Eric: It’s very much an instinctual outcome. I think it’s rare that we’re collectively satisfied with writing music that feels confined to a singular emotion. I don’t know that it’s a conscious effort really. It seems to just be that we self regulate as the instrumentation is coming together.
Some bands aim to sound massive, others go for intimate-you somehow managed both. How intentional was that duality?
RJ: Haha, inside of you there are two wolves…I think it was entirely intentional! We really try to pay attention to a song’s arch and to zoom out. I think we all really enjoy that contrast within a single song but we also have fairly eclectic tastes as a group. So, while we all enjoy the serene, we also enjoy a lot of mayhem. It’s a special feeling to be pulled in close before having the doors blown off.
Eric: Most of the music I listen to is within the folk, country, indie-rock genres. I often find myself thinking something along the lines of, “What would it sound like if…For example: Big Thief were a hardcore band”. I guess that’s something I’m always looking for in music; seeing just how big the peaks and troughs can be.
Viggy: I firmly believe you can only sound massive if you have moments of quiet. The band did a tremendous job of being thoughtful in how we layer sounds to make that happen, and kudos to Jack Shirley who’s a true master of dynamics.
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Lyrically, this isn’t a record of easy answers. Were there lines or moments you hesitated over, unsure if you were ready to say them out loud?
Viggy: I’m glad that comes through. Sometimes hardcore vocalists seem so sure of themselves, preaching with conviction. And that just hasn’t ever been my experience. Every day I want to be a bit kinder and better, but our world doesn’t make that easy. There are a few lines I’m still unsure of. In “An Invitation”, I sing “If I could return in another woman’s womb, I’d burn all my belongings and I’ll let this be my tomb” which for me was about how my choices here matter more than some imagined future or alternative reality. Is it heavy handed? Maybe. But haven’t we all thought deeply about doing it over and how we can be true to ourselves? I hope anyone who listens can identify with that overarching sense of “I’m trying my best and sometimes it’s really hard.”
Does the process of writing about pain make it easier to carry-or does it sometimes dig the hole deeper?
Viggy: Wow, this is a deep one. I don’t like to think our songs are about pain so much as they’re representative of the healing process.
Your sound carries the ghosts of bands like TITLE FIGHT and MEWITHOUTYOU, but it’s still very much your own. What’s the emotional lineage you’re consciously pulling from?
RJ: Ha, some of the dudes are going to be so flattered by those comparisons. I think with those bands and bands like them their music was an introduction to the idea that heavy or aggressive sounding music could be about more than just being angry. I love music that comes from an angry place and I draw a lot from it but it can feel very one-dimensional. Bands in this genre give permission and celebrate a greater range of emotion. Screaming your head off can just as easily come from a place of joy as it can come from suffering.
Viggy: I’m personally really influenced by mewithoutYou and I know our drummer Ray loves Title Fight, but I think our influences come from all over the map. Eric loves folk and roots music, while RJ is absolutely a hardcore kid at heart. But one commonality we all share is that we like that throwback headier, more introspective hardcore sound. From Have Heart to Pianos Become the Teeth.
How did your early shows-especially with JEROMES DREAM and VS SELF-shape the energy or structure of this full-length?
RJ: I’m not sure it directly influenced us or what we are doing in any obvious ways. I will say it did provide some insight that our scene is alive and well and that others are just as hungry and excited to connect as we are.
Eric: I’m not sure I could draw a direct connection in how those shows affected the record. But in both cases, there was an undeniable energy in those rooms that was infectious. It was inspiring, especially because we got to witness our music resonating with a lot of people. That alone is a great motivator. There’s an incredibly vibrant scene in the Bay Area right now and I feel extremely honored to be a small part of it.
Viggy: We’re all pretty demure guys, so our shows feel like the one place we can really put it all out there. JD and VS Self are both really passionate bands in different ways, and sharing the stage with them and others has just made us feel like we’re in the right place with the right people.
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You’ve already been announced for FEST, New Friends, and Your Renaissance. Are you approaching these shows as celebration, continuation, or confrontation?
Eric: I can’t help but think of these opportunities as a kind of celebration. When we started the band, I figured we might play a few local shows here and there. I never imagined I’d be traveling across the country, or internationally, to play for people. I’ve wanted to attend both NFF and Fest as a spectator for years now. So it’s really special not only to be able to go, but also to play, especially with so many incredible bands on each bill.
Viggy: Every show feels like a celebration these days. We’re itching to get out of the Bay and with the record coming out, it feels like the perfect opportunity. There are so many bands we love and admire who are playing these fests—we’re just honored to be included.
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The name DROUGHT suggests emptiness, absence, maybe even survival. Did it always feel like the right name, or did it take on new meaning over time?
RJ: It’s interesting to hear that interpretation. I think for as intentional as we are as a band we always try to leave some ambiguity in what we do. We want people to be able to find their own way in, to connect in their own way. I think we faced all the challenges any young band does when trying to settle on a name. When the name came to me it was early post-covid times. There was a lot to feel down about. I think a lot of us felt disconnected from one another and there was this utter feeling of hopelessness in the world. You couldn’t look at the news or your social feeds without feeling like we were failing each other. I think that’s where I get really introspective and the youth-crew kid in me wakes up and asks “So what? Is this when you’re deciding to give up?” The name is about recognizing that blight, that emptiness and instead of folding your cards, taking that opportunity to double down. It’s not about turning a blind eye. It’s about making a choice, to press on, to survive, to maintain your conviction. To band together and to press on. I get fired up and inspired in those moments. I think it’s that spark that can help us all connect!
Eric: When we were trying to decide on a name for the band, we had some conversations about how the name could have a number of different interpretations. I’ve never attributed any specific meaning to it, but conceptually, I like to think of a drought as an often times difficult, but ultimately temporary state.
If you had to describe Souvenir not as a record, but as a physical object someone finds in a drawer years from now-what would it be?
Eric: A dried leaf pressed flat in an envelope.
Viggy: An intimate note left inside a book.
What kind of conversations do you hope this record starts-not just between listeners, but within themselves?
Viggy: The hardcore and emo DIY scenes always have big conversations about ethics. Veganism, straight edge, feminism. But all of these have an internal component. We have to grapple with harms we’ve caused or seen within our own community if we want to build a better world. And I hope this spurs listeners to be a little more honest with their communities about what they’re going through.
Eric: There are a couple overlapping themes floating around in my head especially when it comes to playing shows, and being able to share our music in person. But they apply to hearing the record as well. The first is about self-reflection, and how we relate and interact with the people around us, how we treat others, including, and especially those we disagree with or feel a sense of animus towards. The second is about what each of us can do to help those around us who are struggling in one way or another. As a kid, I found my way into punk and hardcore through feeling like I could connect with people and feel heard in a way that I wasn’t able to find elsewhere. I could listen to a record, go see a band, and talk to them at the show. The music we make has an emotional vulnerability embedded within it. It’s an invitation for anyone listening to our record to reach out if they’re in need of an open ear.
When it’s all said and done-if someone says this record helped them through something-how do you want to respond?
RJ: Man, just reading that question gives me goosebumps. I think that’s the highest form of a compliment you can receive as an artist. I think that’s one of the things that draws myself and the other guys in DROUGHT to each other, and the kind of music we like. We’re a pretty introspective and emotional group of people. To draw from that place and connect with others there, I think that’s at the heart of who we are and what we hope to do.
Viggy: I want to believe everyone wishes they felt a little less alone. So to think these songs connect for even one person would make it all worth it.
Eric: I guess I’d want to say, thank you. We could be yelling into a void. But we’re not, because you were here to listen. As a band, we’re all trying to make our way over hurdles in our lives, and making music is a way of expressing our feelings. So the fact that someone out there is saying, “I hear you”, is invaluable.
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