Rattlesnake Battalion draws its influence from early 2000s punk and ska bands such as Bomb the Music Industry and Titus Andronicus. Photo from a video by Mateo Montoya
Sarah Faulkner – Editor-in-Chief
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This Saturday night, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m., local pop-punk band Rattlesnake Battalion plans to make some noise at their upcoming performance at the Desert Island Supply Co. for the Fourteen76 art showcase of local artists, including UAB current and former students.
The band is composed of UAB students James Moss, Christian Hulvey and Blake Smith, as well as a fourth member, Liam Herb, who attends the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and played with the group over the summer. The band has had shows at DISCO and the High Note Lounge following its conception in January.
The members, who grew up and attended school together in the Chelsea area, played music together before they formed Rattlesnake Battalion.
“I met Blake in middle school through our fourth member and auxiliary percussionist Liam,” said Hulvey, a “tentative” music technology major who primarily serves as a bassist for the band. “They played in a band together at that time where Blake played guitar and did vocals. I eventually formed a one time band with Blake called Thunder Badger in eighth grade and we played [at]the school’s dance. I’m pretty sure I met James the night we played that dance, and we became good friends throughout high school. James and I had talked about playing music together for a while, and decided to start a band earlier this year.”
According to Moss, a guitarist and a vocalist, he and Smith met each other through marching band, in which he played trumpet and Smith, their current drummer and a vocalist, was a percussionist. While ideally Smith can switch over to playing guitar and doing vocals once the band finds a new drummer, Moss hopes to incorporate the trumpet in music produced by
Rattlesnake Battalion in the future.
Using animals for the band’s name, like Smith and Hulvey did for their middle school band, is something that continued into the member’s university years, when the group of friends decided to form a band together. Though Hulvey said that the band name represents to them what they call “the mixed bag” of friends that the members are, they described the conception of their current band’s name as being spontaneous.
“I like animals names, and I’m pretty sure I just blurted the name out at one practice and it stuck ever since; we are a battalion of rattlesnakes,” Hulvey said. “An alternate name is RatSnakeBatLion.”
“We were gonna use the name Limp Bizkit but apparently that has already been taken,” said Moss, who is currently taking a hiatus from pursuing a music technology degree to work full time.
The lyrics, written by Moss and Smith, tackle issues like relationships and personal problems. Moss said that he draws influence from the punk and ska music he listened to while growing up, like Bomb the Music Industry and Titus Andronicus, which were both punk bands active in the early 2000s.
“[Our music is] loud and silly and energetic,” Moss said. “I’d say our theme is ‘Drake and Josh.’ […] I just always thought playing songs and acting goofy was fun as hell so that’s what I try to do.”
“We all have kind of different things that we want out of music, but decided to make music together mostly because we’re good friends,” Hulvey said.
In light of their “Drake and Josh” theme, the band played the “Drake and Josh” theme song while playing a show with Whirlybird at Disco. They opened with it again during their performance at the High Note lounge. Hulvey recounted the show with Whirlybird as being one of their favorite shows.
“Most all of the shows at DISCO were some of my favorites, but we had Liam on synth at that one and I remember a lot of my friends being there, which is always really fun,” Hulvey said.
While he said that all of his experiences at DISCO have been “tight,” Moss described his favorite experience, the band’s first show at “some dude’s house,” as the most fun for him to play.
“It was just really silly having like 40 people crammed into this tiny living room,” Moss said. “I didn’t really know if people would enjoy the set but it was very fun playing for so many friends for the first time and people seemed to enjoy it.”
Besides from taking to the stage at DISCO again, Moss and Hulvey are working on producing music that they can potentially distribute as CDs in the future. Those who are interested in sampling the music Rattlesnake Battalion has already released are encouraged to either come to the art showcase on Saturday at DISCO or to watch the video, shot by Mateo Montoya of fourteen76, of their performance with the musicians Joyboy and Black Hole Kids on Youtube.
