Local punk/metal rock band GOSH is taking part in the growing new wave of hardcore music around Monterey County. The band members include guitarist and vocalist Ethan Dennerle, bassist Maya Durham, and drummer and vocalist Jayden Bocaling.
Bocaling, a fourth-year music major at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB), believes “the music scene in Monterey is hard to come by as a young person seeking the more aggressive. There’s so much presented with jazz and stuff, but you go up the road to Santa Cruz, and there’s a very, very, very active scene there. I think it’s starting to bleed slowly down the peninsula into Monterey, and I think eventually it’ll start buddinging into a flower – like Santa Cruz has.”
The band’s mission is freedom, doing what they love, saying what they believe in, and staying true to it no matter what. Their music is a unique blend of hardcore with bits from other genres. The group takes ownership of this fact.
“A lot of hardcore music can come off as inherently derivative because the tropes are so hard not to utilize because they’re so good,” Bocaling explained. “We’ve taken hardcore and said, ‘this is our bass, and we can do whatever we want to it.’ We’re not afraid to venture out into different genres and attempt to make a fusion of them. Having no fear towards our influences and what makes us inspired because as much as we love hardcore, we love music. Putting music outside of hardcore with hardcore is something that makes us special.”
This shows in songs like ‘Graveyard’ where they have a hip hop influence or ‘That,’ which is heavily inspired by Black Sabbath and leans more into metal.
The group’s original name was New Ritual but was later changed to GOSH to feel less severe.
“It’s just a fun name,” Dennerle said. “The first name was just so serious and honestly sounds like a dad band that you’d find at a dive bar in the city. It wasn’t a good name. When [Bocaling] said GOSH, I was holding back on asking him about it because he wanted it for his side project, but eventually, we [needed] a new name.”
The group has a new album in the works set to release in the summer and will be performing at CSUMB’s EarthFest on Friday, April 22, at 3:30 p.m.