You probably won’t hear anything in 2024 quite like the self-titled debut album of World Destroyers’ Pleasure Club. Featuring members of Black Angels, Dead Meadow, Death Valley Girls and Grooms it vacillates positively between alien and accessible, a world-music vibe dosed with post-punk and free jazz while sometimes hinting at an alternate-reality Talking Heads. You can experience this unique sound in person when the Los Angeles quintet makes its South Florida debut headlining Bumblefest.
Band founder Neight Trion tells PureHoney an origin story as unexpected as the music: The idea for World Destroyers’ Pleasure Club came to him over a series of dreams while recovering from a brutal fentanyl addiction. ”This vision has increased in clarity and when its working at its best is like taking dictation, albeit requiring a lot of work to interpret and actualize it,” the singer and keyboardist says by email.
After finding four likeminded souls from around L.A., Trion began writing songs influenced a bit by personal favorites such as Leonard Cohen and Mark E. Smith though he emphasizes that World Destroyers’ Pleasure Club are trying to do something new.
”Our self designated genre is Polywave. The goal is forward and now,” Trion says. “Not to try and pretend we are in some other era, omitting the contributions of the countless poets and artists since whatever preferred decade one wishes to re-create. The metamorphosis is nowhere near complete, who knows what this will look like next year or five from now? We are committed to building a life-long relationship with those that hear and resonate with the signal we are sending.”
Trion sees the boundary between audience and performer blurring at Bumblefest, inviting the curious to “come with us and contribute in whatever way they want to toward the communal transformation we seek.”
It’s possible, he says, that new listeners will realize they already belong to this Club. “We would love it if the listed members of the band, associated artists, collaborators and allies were too many to list in any publication,” Trion says. “Lets mark our brief moment here at the edge of possible extinction with a joyful sound and the pursuit of the ecstatic.”
Bumblefest is Sept. 6 and 7 in downtown West Palm Beach. bumblefest.com instagram.com/worlddestroyerspleasureclub ~ David Rolland