No Trend
Tritonian Nash-Vegas Polyester Complex
LA-based punk transmasculine badass Dagger Polyester told us about their love for a No Trend gem.
Dagger Polyester: When I was sixteen, I didn’t know much about my favorite band. I had acquired every available recording and listened to them several times over, or so I thought. There wasn’t much information available about the band, and besides, I already felt I knew them intimately through the music. I didn’t even know the lead singer’s name, though his punishing screech drowned out many a dull school lecture. “TOO MANY FUCKING HUMANS, YOU BREED LIKE RATS! AND YOU’RE NO FUCKING BETTER!”
To my knowledge at the time, No Trend had released only two records, not uncommon for a somewhat underground hardcore band. There was Too Many Humans/Teen Love and When Death Won’t Solve Your Problem. Sometimes, records by what I believed to be some other band by the same name would appear in their discography. I’d give those records a thirty second listen each, only to disregard them as strange, uncanny, jazz fusion monstrosities. But in fact, there is only one band called No Trend, and those monstrosities would forever change my life, beginning with Tritonian Nash-Vegas Polyester Complex.
What I had correctly gleaned without any substantial research about the band, was that like me, they were stark contrarians, natural born outsiders with an “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em!” mentality. Their infamous slogan was “NO TREND, NO SCENE, NO MOVEMENT.” I instantly recognized the band’s frustration with conformity, even within subcultures. The problem with subcultures and scenes is that there are rules and limitations, just like the larger power structures they claim to operate outside of. A scene always becomes a microcosm of the very thing it rallies against but with a different haircut.
When I was twenty, I had already created and destroyed five different musical projects: a psychedelic vaudeville act, a gothic americana collective, an industrial/hardcore duo, a quasi-screamo band and an experimental electronic solo project. I had been through so many genres, I felt I had nowhere left to turn that would both excite and abhor me enough. Seemingly out of the blue, I discovered rock music, the untouchable genre always relentlessly leaking out of tinny gas station speakers. It seemed like the ultimate artistic risk to try and teach myself how to make rock, specifically glitter rock, as it was the most uncool thing I could possibly think to do. I set out to write a rock musical, educating myself on the basics of the genre, which I knew practically fuck-all about prior to this manic quest. I even started sporting corny retro jumpsuits and platforms.
Tirelessly teaching myself to arrange for horns and strings in an attempt to mimic the lush, overproduced sound of glam, cock rock and hair metal, I quickly disappeared into this work. Some time during this spontaneous pursuit, it hit me. Tritonian Nash-Vegas Polyester Complex is absolutely a No Trend record, and I know exactly how they got there. You can chase discordance and parody all the way to sincerity.
The album cover is a colorized black and white photo of band leader Frank Price hanging from a noose, having used a kick drum case as a stepping stool. A closet door is swung open in the background, revealing a glittery, Elton John type suit and matching platform shoes. The album title is written below in a bright red, 1950’s retro font. The intro to the album, “One Under Parr,” begins almost as a typical early No Trend song would. A blaring, minimalistic riff rages, but this time, there is the faint presence of bongos. Then the horns come in, à la Lounge Lizards. The arrangement is dissonant and stressful, suddenly halting in a brutal upward glissando. In the following track, “Copperhead,” lead singer Jeff Mentges, sporting a drunken Elvis impression, bleakly describes small town life, (presumably southern or midwestern). Swaying, lazy slide guitar conjures the image of a trailer park sign adorned with little painted palm trees that reads, “Tropical oasis! Vacancies!” in the middle of the desert, creaking as it rocks back and forth on its chain. Ecstatic drums and the second guitar’s counter rhythms drive the song forward as we are introduced to the world this record lives in.
Then comes “Without Me,” by far the most devastating piece of music No Trend has ever released. An ecstatic build featuring a layered, melodic bass line gives way to one of my favorite opening lines of all time: “I had a dream / I never dreamed again / What you don’t know can’t hurt you / What I know is killing me.” The bass, almost improvisational, never seems to repeat the same line, dancing through the song while always perfectly in time with the explosive drums. As Mentges wails, dramatic tubular bells resound. The whole song constantly builds to no end, creating tension with no release, only to abruptly end in a typical stadium rock fashion.
The rest of the album journeys through strictly organized cacophony, impressive musicianship, immense theatricality, social criticism and the dissection and reassembly of prog and rock tropes. There is not a single song on this record worth skipping, with its endless, unexpected twists and turns.
On the final track, “Bel-Pre Rising,” we’re left with what sounds like a disorganized dinner theatre finale. The very mechanism of the album appears to be sputtering, breaking down, like the last flicker of a nearly-dead neon sign. A delicate glockenspiel line repeats throughout the song, frustratingly stilted yet disarmingly vulnerable. Horns join in, slightly out of tune with one another. Just as the piece comes to a head, the glockenspiel rings out by its lonesome, only to be interrupted by blaring horns once more in another sudden halt. No Trend’s Tritonian Nash-Vegas Polyester Complex comes to a bitter end, having described the psychosis of total freedom, pulling and expanding in opposite directions like a negatively charged liquid.
As an artist who, for better or for worse, pathologically wishes to extend far past their own milieu, stubbornly searching for new ideas and abandoning all ties to one single style or sound, you might die in utter obscurity. The chances of that are greater now than ever. But No Trend sets a gold standard to make the music that is almost out of reach without hesitation or the influence of the outside world. You might never turn a profit, you might not make it into the history books, but what you create could reach someone, several decades in the future and convince them to follow suit.
Dagger Polyester's debut album Perversion for Profit is out now. Visit daggerpolyester.com for info.
Photo courtesy of Dagger Polyester
