Desert rock will never die. Sure, it may take on different forms as the decades pass, but the hard-hitting riffs and dirty guitar tones are still alive and well in our music scene.
This brings us to VOLUME. The band was formed in 1993 by Patrick Brink, and over the course of a decade, VOLUME crafted a unique mix of heavy psychedelic rock that spanned punk, doom, sludge and more. Shortly after releasing the EP Requesting Permission to Land, and enjoying opening slots for bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Mastodon, the band broke up.
In 2023, VOLUME has returned. Requesting Permission to Land was reissued just in time for its 20th anniversary, and the band is playing shows again.
“I’m originally from Twentynine Palms, born and raised out there,” Brink said during a recent interview. “I moved to Orange County in the early ’90s and started the band, but back around 2003, the band pretty much exploded on the road. I just focused on family, and did that for the last 20 years—but the kids are all grown and everything, and I’m back up in Twentynine (Palms). I’ve been there for, like, six years, and I just was like, ‘It’s time to start the band and kind of finish what I set out to do way back in the day.’ We just re-released the EP, and that’s a stepping stone for what we’re trying to do to get the name back out.”
Brink has learned that it’s not easy to pick up right where you left off 20 years ago. He said that navigating the modern landscape of music is challenging, but “they’ve all been good challenges.”
“In lots of ways, it’s changed for the better,” Brink said. “It’s kind of given the artists, in some sense, more control and ability to get your name out there. You don’t have to rely on a big label or anything like that, so that’s pretty nice. There’s a learning curve. … It was different back in the ’90s. Forums were the biggest marketing tool for bands, and in fact, with the stuff we played, there were only a handful of websites that even dealt with this type of music. Now you come back, and it’s so diversified. You have so many social medias and different ways to reach an audience, but there are a lot of things you have to learn. I’ve been trying to do that and get the name out there.”
The brand of stoner rock in which VOLUME excels is not the most popular music today. That said, Brink is doing all he can to use social media to his advantage.
“I do it just because we have to,” Brink said. “It’s a full-time job in itself, just trying to keep up with all the different avenues of trying to promote, to see what’s working, what’s not working, and if anybody’s talking about you right now. I’d rather just write music and play live and record and not have to worry, but it’s still fun. You get to meet a lot of people outside of just playing and stuff, so it’s cool.”
Requesting Permission to Land retains a lot of its musical power, even after the passage of two decades. The psychedelic fuzz grooves on “Habit” lead into emphatic, crunchy punk-ripper “Colossal Freak.” Brink’s screams on “Don’t Look Around” and the slow-burning, trippy blues of “Makebelieve” transport listeners into the near-15-minute doom epic “Headswim.” There’s fantastic drumming on every track, from Fu Manchu’s Scott Reeder.
“There were a few labels that wanted to sign us, and we went with this label from Australia, because they promised to put it out on vinyl. Back in the day, nobody was really wanting to put out vinyl; everybody wanted CDs,” Brink said. “Of course, now nobody wants to put out CDs; everybody wants to get their stuff on vinyl. The label that put it out 20 years ago only put it out on CD, and they folded before the vinyl came out. I got hold of Jack Endino, a really cool guy who has done a lot of my favorite bands like Mudhoney, Nirvana, Soundgarden and stuff. He was actually supposed to produce our album when we got back off the road, but that all went to nothing after we broke up. He remastered it, and it sounds great.”
The process of having his songs remastered helped Brink feel proud of the work.
“I went back and relistened to them, and it was pretty exciting,” he said. “They held up. They were good songs, and I was surprised, because I think they are still relevant. There were a few things I wanted to change on the recording a little bit, but that’s always the case. For the most part, it sounded cool, and there were some low ends where you couldn’t really hear the bass, and that’s what Jack brought out. It was pretty exciting to go back and hear that, and then also hear what Jack Endino did with the old files.”
Brink is happy that Requesting Permission to Land’s re-release is exciting fans both old and new.
“To my surprise, a lot of people remember the album, and actually still have the album, but there are so many new people who have never even heard it,” Brink said. “They’re coming along and finding out about the new release, which is really cool. We’re gaining new friends.”
VOLUME’s live show features a mix of favorites from the EP, older songs the band never got to record, and songs Brink has written in recent years.
“I’ve already got, like, three albums laid out,” Brink said. “I want to get out some of the stuff that we were playing live but we never put on tape; I still think those songs are really good. I just want to get those out and then get to the stuff I recently wrote. I’ve been writing a lot over the last couple of years. I just keep turning out stuff, so the plan is to try to put out an album a year for the next few years, and then see where it goes from there.”
VOLUME is currently raising funds via Kickstarter to have the next EP recorded and produced by Dave Catching at Rancho de la Luna, hopefully in early 2024.
Brink is happy to be picking up where his old band left off—and is even more excited that there’s still a lot of love for desert rock.
“Our sound, even the new stuff, still sounds like VOLUME, but it’s not rehashing the same old songs,” Brink said. “If you’re a musician, you want to evolve; you don’t want to write the same riff over and over, but it definitely has that familial sound as VOLUME.
“The scene has evolved in a lot of ways. … There are a lot of different styles meshing together. There’s now shoegaze doom, and all sorts of different variances of doom, and now you’ve got stoner metal, stoner rock and all these little branches. People are just taking from other genres and bringing them into the mix and keeping them fresh, which is really cool.”
For more information, visit volume-rocks.bandcamp.com or instagram.com/volume_rocks.