Young Horror-Punk Band Stumbles Toward Ecstasy

The members of the horror-punk band Epidemic are unpacking their gear in a small, windowless rehearsal space at Reseda’s Sound Arena Studios on a Saturday afternoon, plugging in quickly, going light on the chitchat.

Seconds later--after little in the way of tuning up--the band will whip up a fearsome racket, direct a damning rage against the brutality and senselessness of the world, and generally tighten up for this week’s gig: tryouts for the annual talent show at Patrick Henry Middle School.

Epidemic (as its press material may one day read) is Eli Hathaway, 13, on bass; Rudy Necoechea, 14, drums; Tim Muraviov, 15, guitar; and Jeff Walker, 14, vocals. Jeff’s mom, Lisa Walker, drove them here after spending the early part of the morning shuttling her son to and from a baseball game.

“Jeff’s been all baseball until this year,” Lisa Walker says through the rolled-down window of her car. “I told him I didn’t know if the band would go anywhere--so to keep practicing the baseball.”

For the next two hours, while Epidemic exorcises its inner demons, Jeff’s mom will wait patiently in the parking lot, programming the anti-theft feature on her car stereo and taking in the neighborhood’s light-industrial ambience--Ray-Ken Auto Works, the Me Gusta Fresh Mexican Grill, Lou’s VW Service.

The band, meanwhile, will turn up their rented amps to the level of jackhammer-upon-piledriver-upon-Concorde, burning fearlessly through varying states of cohesion while Jeff, the singer, fine-tunes his presentation--an expert mix of spastic hollering and feigned detachment. It’s a cool that Jeff will maintain while reading the lyrics to “Nightmare,” an Epidemic original penned by Eli.

“This is the part where your nightmares become reality!” he barks, his eyes peeking at the page from behind the edge of a lowered skullcap. “Your fears become true! THEY’RE GONNA KILL YOU! THEY’RE GONNA KILL YOU! THEY’RE GONNA KILL YOU!”

*

Even if she wanted to, Lisa Walker would probably be unable to differentiate her son’s unhinged wailing from the tangled mass of power chords, 4 / 4 drumbeats and over-amplified emoting that rolls toward her car from Sound Arena’s one-story, nine-room rehearsal complex. The cacophony is pretty typical for a Saturday here--the collective product of Epidemic in room F, a couple of older modern-rock bands in rooms A and H, a Morrissey cover band in Room G, and four friends writing fully realized songs about TV personality Fran Drescher in room D. It started about 10 a.m., and won’t let up until the midnight closing time.

This being L.A., it would not be uncommon for Sound Arena to be hosting a Mexican banda or washed-up hair metal deity today as well. But it’s the starry-eyed kids like the ones in Epidemic--kids too young for their learner’s permits--that the staffers here seem to be partial to.

“We get the stars, people like Robin Trower and John Mayall and War, to kids who pay me with change who only have enough for one hour,” says Sound Arena co-owner Al Lepson, 42. “We have a lot of talented kids come through here, and then we just get some unbelievably [bad] bands, where you just want to kill yourself after an hour of listening to them. But they’re all trying to make it.”

Lepson--whose five-location chain accounts for about 20 of the innumerable rehearsal rooms hidden among the Valley’s nudie bars and auto lots--is a longtime musician himself, and he’s aware that for many of his clients, the hourly rate at Sound Arena buys more than just access to a clean, nondescript room, four gray-carpeted walls, a drum kit and a P.A. It also buys an opportunity to indulge in unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll fantasy.

“Look,” Lepson says, “every kid who plays a guitar wants to be a rock star. I know what these kids are going through. I hear how these kids talk. They think they’re gonna make it in this business, but they don’t realize how much competition there is, and how [bad] they are.

“But I’d rather these kids come in here and play music than go on the street and vandalize stuff.”

Epidemic has about 10 original songs--all of them written by Eli, the de facto leader of the band. Eli, who has been playing bass for about seven months, is not much taller than his chosen instrument, with fast-moving, intelligent eyes and black hair that he slicks back into a sort of updated Eddie Munster do. When asked what his goals are for the band, Eli answers without pause for reflection: to get a record contract. And to tour with his heroes, the Misfits.

Further elaboration will have to wait. This room cost $26, and the clock is ticking. So it’s two Misfits covers to get warmed up, and then a headfirst dive into the originals. To an ear unaccustomed to those nuances that separate good horror punk from fair-to-middling horror punk, both the covers and the originals sound pretty similar. Then again, Epidemic has only been together since December, and this is just their third practice with Rudy, the drummer.

“Our first drummer just couldn’t play,” Eli explains. “He couldn’t keep us on beat.”

Rudy--a quiet, cherub-headed matchstick of a kid--doesn’t overtly acknowledge the pressure such comments engender. It’s the eyes that give him away: though he’s a blur of flailing limbs below the neck, his head floats just above the rims of the drum kit, locked in an unblinking search for reinforcement from the others.

Rudy, Eli and Tim lose their way with the songs here and there, but they play with no less relish when things go a bit haywire. Jeff conducts subtly: When the band catches a groove, he bobs to it, almost boxer-like in his hooded sweatshirt. When they lose it, he waits for them to find it again, patient as his mom in the parking lot.

Scattered throughout are tiny, ecstatic moments that seem to last seconds, just fragments of a chorus or verse that come together right. Rudy catalyzes one of these moments when his arms and legs discover a fast rolling gallop. Suddenly Tim is jumping, flashing his braces through a smile.

The song comes to its unceremonious end, and Tim points at Rudy with his pick.

“That was so good,” Tim says, still hopping a little. “That was so--good!”

*

A brief tour of Sound Arena’s facilities reveals that Epidemic is the least technically proficient band in the place. But its members are also the youngest, and with a few exceptions, those ecstatic flashes seem rarer the older the musicians get.

That doesn’t stop any of the players from searching out those moments, however, and the muted rumble of multiple fantasies-in-progress rolls out into the parking lot well past 3 p.m., when Epidemic’s $26 runs out.

So it’s back to Jeff’s mom’s car, where Eli fields a final, unavoidable question: How punk can you be when your mom drops you off at band practice?

Eli handles this one with rock-star cool. “As long as we get here and back,” he says, “it doesn’t really matter.”