Jivebomb: Going Off Like A Bomb
Hardcore saw an explosion in popularity both during and post-pandemic; one of the many great bands that grew out of that fertile time are Baltimore’s JIVEBOMB. Already a city known for producing great bands (TURNSTILE and TRAPPED UNDER ICE to name just two), it’s continued to foment talent. We sat down with JIVEBOMB vocalist Kat Madeira to talk about their beginnings and their debut album Ethereal. “I always preface this with the term of being a pandemic band,” she begins, though arguably JIVEBOMB are far more than that. “There was nothing going on, and we were bored out of our minds that we didn’t have anything we could do with music, that’s such a huge part of our lives.”
Instead of giving in to defeat around the lack of shows though, to keep active and to simply have something to do, they got a practice space. “We found as many people that wanted to chip in as we could, to keep their gear, do whatever. The main people that were active are everyone that’s in JIVEBOMB now. Before we knew it, we had some songs and said to ourselves, well we could record it, and if we could play a show one day, that would be cool too.” At a time when everything was so bleak, they clung onto that hope and that small practice space to keep themselves sane.
Turns out, the hope was well-placed; shortly after unveiling their first demo and playing some shows, they were approached by legendary label Flatspot Records’ co-founder Che Figueroa to open their Disturbin’ the Peace festival, but as she admits, there were no conversations about doing anything beyond that until afterwards At that point, they were approached about putting out what became debut EP Primitive Desires, a raucous slab of beatdown hardcore. From there, it’s only grown; they were part of the Flatspot World tour that hit London in June 2024, and have toured across America regularly.
When it came time to write the follow-up to the well-received EP, Kat freely admits that “the process was gruelling. It’d been two years since we put anything new out, and though there’d been demand for new music, which is so sick, we were touring so heavily for a while that we didn’t have time to sit down and write. We chipped away at it very slowly, and our approach was, I don’t care who’s asking, we are going to take our time. We’re going to make sure it sounds like how we want it to sound like.”
The end result is something not just heavier and nastier than Primitive Desires or their demo, but also one that embraced whole new elements of songwriting and musicianship to create it. Ethereal is fuelled by powerviolence and beatdown hardcore, but its lyrics are far more – well, ethereal. “I like the intense contrast and how that plays out. I’m always writing; I write poetry and I journal every day. I feel very drawn to spiritual, almost religious imagery and I wanted to include that in the album,” Kat explains, as they made a conscious decision to lean into the juxtaposition.
That extends to influences on the album too; one of its singles, Estrela, takes influence from the American jazz and swing singer BILLIE HOLIDAY. “She has a song with the line, ‘angels have no thoughts of ever returning you,’ and every time I hear that my chest feels so tight. It’s so heavy but in a completely different way.” That openness to influences outside of hardcore means Ethereal has many different facets, including in its sound design, where Kat draws heavily on harsh noise and her own creativity in that space.
It was initially sparked by her love of hip hop, particularly J DILLA. “I learned that a lot of the hip hop songs I enjoy, J DILLA produced them, so I tried to figure out what he was doing. I watched probably an entire day’s worth of videos of people breaking down how he chopped up and screwed beats. I was so fascinated by it. Around that time, our bassist Ethan [Buttery] gave me a chord synthesizer and let me play with it. It started with trying to chop and screw my own stuff and I fell down this massive rabbit hole of harsh noise and sound design!”
Very quickly, it ended up part of the band’s sound, and Kat also found inspiration lyrically in finding new ways to express her ideas. “I like the challenge of writing something that’s a little vague,” she explains of Ethereal’s lyrics that leave much up to listener interpretation. “One of my friends said he loves nonsense lyrics, and everything I’d written for JIVEBOMB up until then was obvious and quite literal. I was inspired by that notion to make these lyrics resonate with everyone a little bit differently.”
The end result is an album that shows the band’s huge growth and potential for hardcore domination. Lyrically it evokes spiritual concepts and imagery, while musically they draw on grindcore and powerviolence far more, pushing both ends of the heaviness spectrum as far out as they can. JIVEBOMB might have grown out of a simple desire to do something musical during a trying time, as well as Kat’s first ever band, but they’ve blossomed into something far greater, alongside incendiary live shows across the world, something they’re still amazed about. With all that said – JIVEBOMB are still only getting started.
Ethereal is out now via Flatspot Records.
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