Concert Review: Unsummer at the Subterreanean

“We always wanted to perform upstairs at Sub-T”.

Sub-T being, in full, the Subterreanean, located in the heart of Wicker Park, practically nestled just beneath the ailing train platform to the Damen Blue Line stop. In all her blood red-clad and vampirical glory, Alicia Gonzalez, the frontwoman and lead vocalist to the headlining band known as Fantasma Negra, confirmed that, though they’ve since performed two shows there at the same venue on the lower level, it was another echelon entirely to be set up and taking center stage on the second floor.

Which I will admit, I did not know existed. 

I blame my oblivious comings and goings on the fact that perhaps going up any sort of stairs wasn’t a great idea in the first place, what with my formerly being cane-bound for almost two years; both of which I ended up at least twice at this very venue, harboring everyone’s coats and making sure all who were in my charge were hydrated. Meanwhile, I would sulk at the bar, a glum hazard not to be entertained in any mosh pit. 

Those days have since passed. Now, only somewhat more steadily on my own two feet, I hold a phone mic up to a raven-haired force that is Gonzalez, who soon became flanked by some of her other bandmates once I had timidly established the beginning of my sort of lackluster interview.

Perhaps I should’ve warned them that I was painfully new to this. Acolyte though I was to their genre and others akin, admiring the likes of Fantasma Negra from the comfort of an audience is one thing. Trying to put into adult and coherent language that very same admiration – another thing entirely.

However, the environment they had already established was teeming with unorthodoxy and friendly chaos. They welcomed me into their cramped but warm little green room, offered me a drink via my ticket in, Demi (who I’ve to thank for even being there in the first place), and regaled me with where they hailed from, which was of no surprise to me:

Little Village. 

Southside of Chicago.

Us Latinos will always have that one little thread of darkness that wraps itself somewhere around our person, and from thence will lead us to avenues where it may consume us whole, but in the best possible way. 

Music being the swiftest and most common. Not to mention the one that sticks around the longest.

Such is showcased when I asked the band the question of what other artists influenced them and their sound. 

Dave – their lead guitarist – piped in, calling out acts like Danzig and The Sister of Mercy; Ministry, lastly. All of which were bands that were heavily seeped in the mid to late 80’s and its establishment of both goth and metal as a rich culture, not to be reckoned with but to be plunged into like baptismal waters.

The darker and longer the hair, the better, is what I gathered when discovering both the presence of each band, and their sound. And the latter, a milieu to compare – delightfully chilly and somber like a cold night in the city where we now reside for some, with thickly vocal bass and a beat akin to the clapping of thunder. For the others, roaring fire cutting through the dark of the night. 

If one were to truly take in the sight of Dave, one would indeed nod and in no way doubt such influence on him. In fact, he wore it veneratingly; proudly just as he did his canvas black shirt and his nape-length hair.

Gus, all the while, who was their bassist, wore the influences of his bands of choice like revelations. For indeed they were, as he so put it: “I was unaware that there was this growing-like desire for dark, kinda, post punk music. It caught me off guard and I love it. I’m realizing – in my DNA was The Cure, and Depeche Mode…”.

Two bands that are not only generationally cherished, mind you, but are recognized now as members of this genre that I’ll admit I’ve not really heard referred to before, further making me feel somewhat inferior in their presence. Goth metal and alternative, I knew, and knew them well. Black metal and Nu-metal – practically my vice when I was in grammar school, yearning to be a semblance of demonic amidst my peers in catholic school. 

Post punk, as it turns out, preceded them all, with her ambitious strides in the avant-garde and in any experimental realm that she herself finds disciples, like in the dangerously creative underground of Eastern Europe, or in this case, in the gangways and vintage stacked apartments of the Mexican-American Mecca that was Little Village. 

To find the influence of post punk there, and all of her other children that had longer lasting lime lights than she, is no strange feat.

Taboo in the past, perhaps. But strange? Hardly anymore. 

In fact, it is practically embraced to go back and listen to what once was, so it is a groundbreaking experience. Henry Rocha – equal parts band member and band manager – recalled that when he first gathered the gaggle that would be Fantasma Negra, he had armed himself with all the songs and their respective bands that he could hear them being inspired by. A playlist, if you will. 

And what said founding playlists contained – Molchat Doma from Belarus, Alyans from Russia, and even some of the soundtrack from the cult classic film ‘Hardcore Henry’.

“I brought a mix when I brought up the band, and said, “this is what I wanna do – y’know, I wanna set up the genre to be, like, post-punk.” There it was again – that word. I’ll be slave to it from then on out. “There’s a lot of misconceptions as to what it is. But it’s just a big umbrella of just subgenres. And then what’s great about being a band is that you can always cycle through them! Especially if you have so many other musicians like the ones we have here.”

Indeed, I thought as I took one last look at the band before scurrying out to witness the rest of the lineup back on the mainstage with Demi. Between when I first met them and now, the upstairs floor had since become voluminous with new faces and black-clad patrons.

Some came up from the lower level after hearing that Fantasma Negra would be the final performance before the venue closed for the night, and others were only just spilling in for them and them alone. 

Either way, the staircase leading upwards had a steady flow, and even up to the moment where they were just stepping onto the stage, it continued to give entry to those who were curious and/or loyal.

The post-punk madness of the Subterranean, with Fantasma at the helm of it all, was their reward for daring to enter – a band that is so classically unforgettable without even trying to be.

As they revved to life, I hoped that the reward itself of the second floor lived up to both what the band dreamed it to be, and what the night would make of it.