The five-track E.P. Your Eyes Are Colored Fierce is a 15 and some minute-trip through chugging, raw garage/alt. rock-leaning lo-fi tracks.
Billy Conquer is essentially bassist Samuel Edmonson (bass) and vocalist and guitarist Stefan Scott. The two met in high school and played in various bands around their home city before launching Billy Conquer in late 2018.
The opening track, “Fight,” is a beautifully-melodic with fuzzed-out guitar jams. You cannot miss how the entire vibe of the song jumps higher in key with the vocals. This is done so effectively in a way that is not commonly done successfully by bands.
“Fight” is about losing your cool or “taking an argument further than it needed to go,” Scott says. “When you play that memory back in your head, revise it in a way that would have resolved the conflict or even brought you closer to whoever it was you were fighting with. Makes you feel warm inside doesn’t it? This song is about that.”
This is a guitar and bass-driven track with chord, pedal, and vocal staggering plus grungy/90s alt. rock burnout at the end.
Edmonson’s bass playing exudes a hypnotic rhythm coupled with Scott’s technique-driven, melodic guitar playing to more adventurous, heavily sustained guitar riffs.
Next, the duo launches right into another heavily melodic, stoner-like alt. rock masterpiece, “Wasted State.” The underlying slacker-like vibe, interesting guitar sound effects, the fuzzed-out jams and the droning effect of the bass backed by simple format drums all come together so wonderfully with a Sonic Youth-like natural flow.
In listening to this infectious song, it’s obvious, and as the E.P. evolves, even more clear that these guys are having a good time. You can actually feel that listening to this E.P. and that’s a rare thing.
“There was definitely a lot of good energy in the room,” remarks about having a good time while laying down splendid DIY stoner rock tracks.
“Everything was recorded live in one session lasting about five hours,” he adds. “We wanted it to feel and sound like any other band rehearsal or live show. We have been playing music together for a long time and what we have found is that we perform and write better when we are having fun.”
“Wasted State,” Edmonson says, “was inspired by the college keg parties at Western Colorado University,” which he says is also known as ‘Wasted State’ by some students. The band heads up there every spring break to perform a house show at Sam’s brother’s house. The audio at the end of the song is taken from a phone recording of the show.”
This ode to guitar-heavy alt. rock within the ‘indie rock’ realm, or packaging if you will, is continued on the rambunctious “Backyard Song,” with its strong lo-fi bumbling bass lines.
The song is perfectly set for a nice summer day, which Edmonson says was the aim. “The song is about the times spent in the backyard of a suburban San Antonio home where the band would frequently practice and hang poolside on sunny days.”
The E.P.’s title track, “Your Eyes Are Colored Fierce,” keeps things at a chill alt. rock signature but with much more freeform style of playing by the band members creating a bit of a woozy, swirling feeling that is perhaps just what they were going for.
Edmonson says it’s a song about bar-hopping in Colorado. “The structure and parts of the song are exactly the same as when the band first jammed it together. During recording, Stefan accidentally hit his loop pedal at 2:16.”
For an E.P. flowing with kick-ass songs, the band didn’t include any marginal tracks. We love how the closing track, “Getting Away With It,” picks things up and adds a bit more cheer to wrap up an exciting, time-machine enabling, heavy and non-conformist E.P. that gives us just a little more hope that talented young musicians out there will appreciate rock and pop/rock.
We can also hope that bands like Billy Conquer keep reinventing and creating spectacular alt. rock in their own way while staying true to the ethos of DIY and musical freedom.
As a band unit, they have put in their dues over the years, attracted a following and remain true to themselves and their music the whole way through. San Antonio’s rock scene and culture are all the better having Billy Conquer among its ranks.
Last spring the band dropped its debut E.P., A Perverted Life in the South. The E.P. was recorded, mixed and mastered at Matador recording studios in San Antonio by Tommy Munter who has also worked with Rami Jaffee (Foo Fighters), Chris Shiflett (Foo Fighters), and Daniel Mendez (Lit, Heart, Dashboard Confessional).
All of the songs were co-written by Scott and Edmonson with lyrics by Scott. The E.P. was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Tommy Munter at Matador Recording Studios in San Antonio, Texas. The duo is most influenced by artists like Yo La Tengo, Pavement, and Neil Young.