Destroy Boys have toured far and wide from their home of Sacramento since their debut in 2016, and the closing months of 2023 find them on the road with none other than Pierce the Veil and LS Dunes, adding to one of the most stacked lineups to grace the collective punk, emo, and post-hardcore scene this year. Amid those dates, DB found time to schedule a pair of headline shows: one in Jersey, and another in Hamden, CT on the 22nd of November, which is where we catch up with the band. As it was in 2021, the band’s most recent full-length record remains Open Mouth, Open Heart – though the show is also timed well with the release of a new single, ‘Shadow (I’m Breaking Down)’, just unleashed as an EP alongside a pair of alternate versions, the trio collectively entitled The Shadow Self. Alongside April’s ‘Beg for the Torture’, these tracks could ultimately join the band’s collection of stellar non-album singles, though it seems equally likely is that they hint at a DB project yet to come.
While Destroy Boys began as a project for vocalists and guitarists Alexia Roditis and Violet Mayugba, they’ve solidified a four-piece lineup in recent years. Narsai Malik joined on drums in 2018, and David Orozco has wielded the bass since the initial OMOH tour. While both singers speak early and often of how amazing it has been to tour with Pierce the Veil – a classic, triumphant case of a band rising to tour with some of the people who inspired them in their youth – they’re clearly also thrilled to be back amongst their public, and the sold-out crowd, impending holiday be damned, packs Space Ballroom as tightly as I can recall ever having seen it. They’re joined by a pair of regional acts: three-piece firebrands Qween Kong from adjacent New Haven; as well as Moxie Pocket, whose singer Brenna Sastram owns the front of the stage with captivating antics that wither away the gap between stage and crowd.
Naturally, Destroy Boys’ headline shows are opportunities for them to branch out and play a more expansive set than their opening slot affords, and they use the time to explore both OMOH and 2018’s Make Room more thoroughly. The latter represents a transitional phase in their writing – the set-opener ‘American River’ is a memory of trying to crack the banal mold of high school in their home city of Sacramento and songs like ‘Vixen’ and ‘Crybaby’ ring of the volatile aches of early relationships. These contrast with songs like ‘Drink’ from OMOH that bear a few more years’ worth of perspective, where Roditis anthropomorphizes their relationship with alcohol – reckoning with the comfort of the glass while being wise enough to know how it plays into common pitfalls, including their family history. The rounded vowels in each word blur the line between “loathe” and “love”. Broadly, it’s one of several DB songs that outlines a need for clarity in scenarios that seem bent on denying it – both ‘Crybaby’ and ‘Honey, I’m Home’ invoke the metaphor of a lack of sight, emblematic of the searching that occurs within one’s personal evolution.
After closing with ‘Fences’, another non-album single that has landed itself recently in the band’s main-set-ender spot, they return with something of a skit planned. The band play out a conversation wherein each claims to have written a song the previous night, or at least recently, and they ‘debut’ each, with great trepidation about how they’ll be received by the audience. In truth, they’re a trio of covers: Green Day, blink-182, and Weezer. It’s a bit that keeps on giving, and really – who can resist a good sing-along moment for any of these formative bands? It seems positively hardwired that anyone under the age of 40 simply must sing the “as I walk away!” echo in ‘The Sweater Song’. As memorable to those who only heard the radio hits as they are to folks who followed any of these bands in the aughts, it’s as good an excuse as any to cut loose for a bit of an informal Emo Nite with Destroy Boys, an acknowledgment of the near-universal progenitors who landed us – band included – here. The four would be equally home touring with any of these three acts as they are now with PtV and LS Dunes.
The bit comes before the most celebratory moment of the evening. Roditis approached the very edge of the stage for what has remained DB’s most iconic single song, ‘I Threw Glass at My Friend’s Eyes and Now I’m on Probation’. Not only a singular achievement in song titling, it was the flashpoint from debut Sorry, Mom that led many, myself included, to first hear of the band. And while they’re anything but one-hit wonders, evidenced by the audience’s fervent response to songs like ‘Muzzle’ and ‘Locker Room Bully’, it still holds a special place in the collective heart of fans. The song, which prompts the most intense pit of the night, is an all-too-common tale; Roditis recounts being involved with a much older interest who proves, predictably, to be an unduly toxic influence. They begin by stating: “You’re ruining my life day-by-day,” and later admit aloud – “You don’t care about me like I care about you”. ‘Beg for the Torture’, from earlier this year, finds Mayugba facing down another version of these events, a referendum on the universality of the human tendency to choose poor pairings, but also the (typically male) methodology of failing to treat people as equals, or outright exploiting a disparity in age or some other facet of implicit power.
Roditis remains the only one onstage for the final song. It’s a vulnerable moment, something made possible by the relative intimacy of the headline show. They play ‘Piedmont’, one of the more spare offerings from Make Room, and here it seems slowed even further. It’s the track from which that album’s title is derived, and absent the thrilling wall of sound that is its recorded chorus, the existential wondering of the track hits home even harder. ‘I Threw Glass…’ is Roditis at their most animated, whiplashed between viewpoints and defense mechanisms – but in this Make Room centerpiece they’re committing one of the widest-looking perspectives to the band’s work: “There are all these things / that I’ll never know”. Like the predecessors they invoke here, the hook of intensity that draws people in as listeners is a through-way to a great depth of emotion – one which the band and audience shout and sing and mosh their way through, together.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
