A visceral, sprawling, fuzz-drenched meditation on transformation, grief, and memory, Texas quintet Trauma Ray’s Debut LP Chameleon is obsessed with death in all its forms. Eager to explore its mysteries, it morphs like its namesake, wandering aimlessly in spectre-like ephemera through hypnotic chorus-laden nu-metal riffs and liminal interludes straight out of a PS2 horror game.
A few weeks ago, I caught up with guitarist Jonathan Perez in the middle of the band’s latest tour to talk about life on the road, the roots of their sound, and the serendipitously misheard German word that gave the band its name.
A Conversation With Jon of trauma ray:
KSDT: So, y'all have been on tour with blackgaze legends Deafheaven and Arizona death metal band Gatecreeper since late April. Aside from car trouble due to a broken rear differential, what has the touring experience been like so far?
Jon: All in all, it's been pretty good so far! I think playing cities that we've never been to before, random small cities, like Spokane, Washington, or even just a headline show we played in Ohio somewhere, was nice. We also got the chance to play a really cool venue in San Francisco called The Fillmore, which I used to go see shows at when we lived there. It was cool to play there. Getting to play The Belasco in LA was really rad. In the past two days, we played two nights in a row in New York, once in Manhattan, and once in Brooklyn at some really amazing venues.
KSDT: How would you say the current tour compares to the experience touring a few months back after the release of your debut LP, Chameleon?
Jon: When we released Chameleon, we didn't get to do a real headline tour. We actually happened to be playing in England when the album came out, and immediately after that, we flew back home, did another tour supporting Panchiko, and then we spent two months in Europe playing with Touche Amore. All of this to say that despite not having done a dedicated Chameleon tour as of yet, these support tours have just been the way we've been playing the record up until now. Aside from that, we did some hometown album release shows in January right before we left, and then we did a release show in November in New York City at TBI, which was really cool. But, a specific Chameleon headline tour will probably come sometime early next year!
KSDT: Being in a band that incorporates various elements of shoegaze, how do you aim to translate the immersive experience synonymous with the genre into your live performances?
Jon: We don't really think about ourselves as a shoegaze-specific band whatsoever. I think we have moments that are that, especially with live shows, but I think we are overall more focused on energy. We like to move around, and we're a very performance-based band. Live, we don't really have much going on on stage besides us playing the song and the intensity we bring, and I think that's how we kind of broke out of being just another shoegaze band. I mean, traditionally, shoegaze bands aren't necessarily known for moving around, so we definitely tried not to do that.
KSDT: It’s my understanding that karaoke is actually what led to all of you meeting and eventually forming trauma ray. Tell me more about the story of how you guys came together!
Jon: Oh yeah! Uri, our singer, was running karaoke when we met. I had just moved back home from California to Fort Worth, where we were from, and I just happened to be at a bar one night. In between people singing karaoke, Uri was playing Cocteau Twins and Slowdive, and since Fort Worth is a very folk-heavy town, it was weird for me to hear that between people singing karaoke. I just went up and asked who was playing, and that's kind of how me and Uri met! Uri already knew our bassist, Darren, and then we had put an ad out on Facebook, and Nick was probably the first person to respond. Then Coleman, our other guitarist, is Nick's college roommate. But yeah! Karaoke is kind of the binding factor. I mean, we’re on tour, and these guys will still go do karaoke together. Uri still runs karaoke back home.
KSDT: What are your go-to karaoke songs?
Jon: Darren, our bassist, does Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Uri does Elton John sometimes, and our drummer Nick loves Creed. Me? I’m too shy, but I’ll do some Marcy Playground’s “Sex and Candy” if I have to.
KSDT: Being from California and having lived here my whole life, I’m curious! Tell me what the scene is like in Fort Worth, and how, if at all, did coming up in the city influence you all as musicians?
Jon: That’s a tough one. I feel like when trauma ray started in Fort Worth, there were a lot more alternative/shoegaze bands. There are not so many anymore. In general, I feel like Fort Worth and Dallas lean way more towards hardcore and metal. Currently, there's a few bands, like Audiobaton, there's a band called Bleed, there's us, and then in the city of Denton, which is not too far away from Fort Worth, like, 45 minutes, there’s a ton of bands. It's more of a college city, but throughout Texas in general, especially when we started in 2017, there just happened to be a huge surge in alternative and shoegaze bands. I don't know if that has necessarily influenced us by any means.
I think when me and Uri met and first started talking about music, we were more influenced by the bands we liked and wanted to do our thing, you know? Just like any band. I don't know how much Fort Worth necessarily influenced that. I think we were doing something pretty different than most of the bands at the time. We just started playing locally with all kinds of music, not just alternative, not just shoegaze. We were just trying to play shows as much as we could. So we played tons of mixed bills with all kinds of different music.
KSDT: If I’m not mistaken, your guys’ name is a play on a German word for “dream” or “reverie.” What ultimately pushed you guys to adopt this as your name, and were there any other names you had considered before ultimately landing on it?
Jon: That's what it's supposed to be. We have a song titled that on Transmissions as well. Uri and I were trying to figure out names forever. I think naming your band is harder than writing songs. I think we thought it meant “daydream.” We were just in Germany, and we were asking people about it. I think we were close, but, yeah, that song is kind of what the band name means! The actual name “Trauma Ray” came from one time when I said “träumerei” to a friend of mine at a bar. He was really drunk, and he thought I said “trauma ray,” like a ray gun that shoots trauma. He thought it was sick, so I was just like, “Yeah, whatever, that’s it!”
KSDT: On Bandcamp and in several interviews since its release, you’ve attributed your debut LP Chameleon’s main theme to death, citing the manner in which a chameleon, like death, “can shape-shift in and out our lives in different forms.” Was this theme something you already had in mind going into the album, and if so, how did it influence the creation of the album sonically?
Jon: I think for us, especially with the way Uri writes as a singer, we write the songs and then kind of let the mood of that dictate where the lyrics lead. As songs were being written, and lyrics were being written, that central concept just kind of naturally reoccurred throughout, which ultimately led to Uri creating the name of the album. It was just one of those things where… when he said it and after hearing the songs, it just kind of clicked and made sense for all of us. It was way more natural than thought out, especially since we didn't really have a lot of time to write. Chameleon was written in January last year and then came out in October the same year. We had a really short deadline, so we wrote a lot and recorded as we were writing. Then, all of it just kind of came together. It was very organic; that theme is something that we all think about. Our music is very introspective and moody in general. We as people are very light-hearted and goofy, but our music can be so heavy and emotional, so it's kind of just finding a balance of that.
KSDT: Tell me about your biggest musical inspirations for the sound of Chameleon
Jon: You know, it's funny! When I listen back to our previous EPs and singles, I can kind of hear what we were listening to at that time. We have a self-titled EP, and at that time, we were listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins. Even on Transmissions, I feel like you can hear it in little ways too. During COVID, when Inlet by Hum came out, I think that really had a huge impact on all of us, despite the fact that we all listened to very different music. When you play guitar or any instrument, and you listen to bands even though you're writing your own song, the way that you learn to play is by learning songs by your favorites. That influence on the way you write is always going to be in you. I think Chameleon is the first time where we weren't thinking about influences, and we were more focused on “What does trauma ray sound like?” We wanted something that finally defined us, and I feel like we achieved that with this record.
KSDT: What pieces of gear do you think were most instrumental to achieving the textures on tones on the album?
Jon: I mean, a lot of it is having a really big, loud amp and a drummer who hits really hard and a bass that's very thick and heavy. To me, the music we make is something you can do very simply, and you don't need much, you know? It's all chord choices, and then fuzz and distortion into a big amp through a 4-by-12 with a lot of reverb and a little bit of delay. Anyone can achieve it.
In terms of pedals, we love Earthquaker devices; we all use at least one or a few of their products. There's a company from Germany called JPTR FX, that was the first company to ever really ever send us pedals. I use a reverb from them called The Kaleidoscope, and Uri uses their fuzz called The Warlow; those two things are a big part of our sound. Walrus, we use, but Earthquaker is definitely our favorite company.
KSDT: If you had to choose one song off of Chameleon as your favorite or the most enjoyable to write or play, what would it be?
Jon: Well, the last song on the record, “USDDOS,” for me personally, was the most enjoyable to write, because it's so different from what we usually do. One, it's a really long song, but more so than that. Just the lyrics in that song and the way it came together at the end, it started as this thing that I would play to myself at home. Hearing it on Chameleon the way it became was crazy to see. I think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done. Then, maybe the song “Chameleon.” It was something that Uri wrote, and we all kind of collaborated on the ending of it. That's definitely my favorite song to play. We play it every night, and I’m still not tired of it.
KSDT: On the topic of “USDDOS,” I was under the impression that the song is named for a poem by Chilean author Robert Bolaño. Tell me about the decision to name the song after the piece and some of the biggest inspirations for trauma ray outside of the realm of music.
Jon: I mean, there's not too much outside of music beyond life or personal experiences that really influences my creative process. There's a poem by Roberto Bolaño, called “The Romantic Dogs” and “USDDOS” is just the abbreviation of a line in the poem where he talks about a boy becoming a man and not wanting to leave childhood. It means a “dream within another dream,” but it's in Spanish, so we just broke it down because it's so long. It's just something I've always had written down in my notes for years. I think I read that poem when I was in my early 20s, and it just stuck with me, and I loved the idea of a dream within another dream being a constant as things change and as we grow old. That song just kind of feels like that to me, the way it ends and the way it kind of slowly grows and builds and changes.
KSDT: I wanted to ask about another song on the album: track 7, “Drift.” Upon first listening to it, I thought it was really reminiscent of the music for games like Silent Hill and the work of composer Akira Yamaoka. In general, are you guys fans of the series, and did this influence the creation of the track?
Jon: Coleman, our guitarist, wrote that whole interlude track. He wanted it to feel kind of like a PlayStation 2 track. We joke about it being elevator music in space. Uri does love Silent Hill, but that song was something Coleman basically wrote entirely himself in the studio. It was just kind of also supposed to be a sort of palette cleanser in between both halves of the album.
KSDT: And finally after this tour, what’s next for trauma ray?
Jon: We have four more shows left, and then we’re gonna take a little time off in the summer to chill and try and write some music. And then in September, we pick back up. We're playing some shows with the band Panchiko again, and then in October, we're supporting Loathe for their US album release tour. Find us on all streaming platforms and @trauma.ray on Instagram!