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Eons

Morbid, interstellar and sorrowfully good: Eons will comfort you when you’re blue, guide you through the electric dimensions of your brain and entertain you with their troubled and highly personal narrative. Eons harness misery, feed it acid and inject it into a particle accelerator. What’s more, they are a bunch of goofballs. They jestingly told me that their ultimate goal was “Disney Records,” and that they want to start touring with the Jonas Brothers and One Direction. After meeting these fellas, I wager they’ll do it.

The group took form about 10 months ago as a three-piece outfit consisting of bassist Scott Wardle, guitarist Matt Wiley and their first drummer, whom they recently replaced with their current drummer, Taylor Orton. After a short period of jamming as a three-piece, they added second guitarist Chase Covington and singer Tylor Blackburn, and began playing shows.

Nobody in the band quite knew how to describe their music. Wiley took the lead, saying, “It’s like … spacey post-hardcore. When this band started, we all kind of had the mentality to just do whatever came natural … In this band, it was, ‘Have some beers and play some riffs.’” While this sounds like a sure-fire way to blunder, it doesn’t seem to show in their songs. Almost everyone in the band has been playing music for 10-plus years, a detail that is reflected in the structurally complex songs of their first EP, The Weight Of Tragedy, which was released last September.

The fact that none of them have any serious musical training seems to belie the rhythmically jarring aspect of their tunes. The music isn’t the only compelling aspect of their songs. Blackburn spares no gruesome detail when dealing with his subject matter—caterwauling every lyric like a ghoul’s impassioned reading of a coroner’s mad diary. Blackburn says of his writing process, “How it usually works … Matt will come up with a riff idea and him and Scott will work on it together, and then they’ll bring it to a band practice … The song is almost done before I really start writing. I think it’s, at least for me, more appropriate to feel the tone of the song without lyrics and think of what that reminds me of, and then write.”

Last October, Eons went on a Northwest tour with local band Despite Despair. They were elated to tell me that they “got to play with Trial, which is fuckin’ rad,” says Covington. This was their first tour as a band, and they sighed when telling me that “it was too short.” While on tour, they played hippie haven Arcada, Calif. I shuddered at the thought of a hardcore band playing for a gaggle of hippies, but there didn’t seem to be any friction. Wardle says, “It was probably the funnest show … We went from playing with a bunch of straight edge bands, which were rather mellow … [and when] we showed up [in Arcada], people were just smoking blunts, drinking beers.” They played with a band called Oodles of Heroin, and Wardle announced to the crowd, “Hey, my name is Scott, and tonight you’re all my friends.” Someone replied, “Hey, Scott!” and threw him a beer.

When the topic turned to playing local shows, they spoke endearingly about the area: “The good thing about Utah is there’s a good scene,” Wiley says. When I asked them what local bands they enjoy playing with, they responded with a list too vast for the scope of this article, but Blackburn says, “I’ve never really played with a local band that I didn’t enjoy playing with.” They put a lot into their live performances, and Blackburn says they try to capture “the idea of the song,” and describes their live shows as “full of energy” and “crowd involv[ing].” Covington says, “It’s awesome when everyone’s like ‘Yes!’ and excited, and the energy is up.”    

One of the raddest things about this band is their sense of camaraderie. In spite of each member occupying a unique slice of the band, they all seemed to be on the same page. When I asked them what they do when they hang out together, they replied in near synchronicity, “Drink beers and play music.” They plan on cutting a full-length album soon. Wardle says, “We’re really just writing enough that we can play different sets rather than what’s on the EP … We got some new stuff rollin’ which is awesome—it feels really good.”  Their goals include touring, playing Europe and Australia, and at the top of the list is “having fun and enjoying every second of it,” Wiley says.

You can find Eons’ music on Bandcamp at eons801.bandcamp.com. After you check out Eons at Urban Lounge on April 12, check out Wiley and Orton’s other projects: Starvist and Still Sea, respectively.