As recently as November 2009, Jesse Garza and Amaris Aviles of Killer Moon were living in Miami, under circumstances most bands would envy. “We lived together in our own house and were jamming every day and partying and stuff like that,” says Garza, the talkative member of the local heavy-psych outfit. “That’s all we did for two years. It was awesome.”
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But Garza and Aviles, who are both 23 and have been a couple for seven years, don’t seem to regret the move. They came back because they wanted to be part of a bigger, healthier music scene, and they’ve already done one of the things they wanted to do here—this fall they recorded an album with Chicago engineer Sanford Parker, who over the past few years has had a significant hand in shaping a new fusion of psychedelia and metal. “That was probably the heaviest our music’s gotten,” Garza says, referring to the songs he and Aviles wrote for the as-yet-unreleased Killer Moon. “And he just made it heavier.”
While in Miami, Garza and Aviles kept up on the Chicago heavy-psych scene, a diverse bunch of acts ranging from black-metal bands like Nachtmystium to acid rockers like the Great Society Mind Destroyers—taken together, these variants probably represent the closest thing to a “Chicago sound” since the heyday of postrock more than a decade ago. But Killer Moon still have to find their own place in that scene. They’ve played dozens of shows here already (“Probably way too much,” Garza admits), mostly as an opening band, but they’re just beginning to develop a fan base and build connections with other groups—locals like Apteka and Del Rey as well as out-of-towners like the Neurosis-affiliated U.S. Christmas.
“The bands we play with here,” Aviles adds, “we had to kind of change the tone.”
The band hopes to release Killer Moon this spring as half of a double-LP set; the other LP, provisionally titled Tunnel Vision, will consist of material they’ve been working on in Garza’s prosumer-level home studio. It’s an ambitious plan for a group working without management or a label, but Lance Barresi, cofounder of Permanent Records, has offered to help them find a distributor if and when the set ever comes out—they’re currently talking to metal-leaning vinyl-only local label I’m Better Than Everyone about pressing it.
Tue 2/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600 or 866-468-3401, $8, free with RSVP to rsvp@emptybottle.com, 21+.
