Electronic Metal Duo Clockwork Echo Rock Out With Blood on Their Faces

Gabriel Ryan and Kari Gallo can describe their electro-metal band, Clockwork Echo, in three words: blood and fire. The two musicians are masters at conjuring intense atmospheres – Gallo plays the keyboard, body chains clinking as she dances, while Ryan slides across the stage, screaming into his mic as lights pulse in the background. Both performers head-bang with abandon while dripping fake blood as adrenaline and metal music pump through their veins.

Ryan has performed in countless metal bands, bouncing from one group to the next in his early twenties, but his interest in electronic tunes was born out of pure boredom. “I’ve been listening to aggro-tech and dark electronic for a pretty long time,” he says. “I was living in New York at the time, and I had these long commutes on the subway and was bored out of my mind. I couldn’t play hard [metal], so I just started fiddling with electronic stuff.”

Ryan moved to Denver in 2018, and before long, the pandemic gave him the hiatus he needed to take music production seriously. Soon he was releasing Clockwork Echo’s unique brand of electronic metal and collecting fans with each performance.

“At the outset, we were trying really hard to be aggro-tech, which is this harsh, industrial EDM but turned up a few notches; that scene really hit its peak a long time ago,” Ryan says. “It’s really just like metal…[but] instead of guitars, now you have synthesizers kind of filling the same role within the frequencies of the trip.”

Gallo describes the sound as the baby of hardstyle EDM and metal.

Ryan is the only member of Clockwork Echo who records music in the studio, but he emphasizes the importance of the live members who join him for performances. Before Gallo and Ryan’s collaboration, the band had three other live members – Alex Rau from Voicecoil, Jayke Haven from Faces Under the Mirror and Matt Sarver. “I would be hesitant to call Clockwork Echo a solo act,” Ryan says. “You can totally have a band with a single member, and with members coming and going. The distinction lies in the conceptual focus.”

Gallo didn’t join Clockwork Echo until last September, when Ryan was filming a promotional video with an “absolutely ridiculous” priest-turned-badass narrative concocted by videographer and musician Mark Sousa, who performs in alternative bands Voicecoil and Gravity Corps. “I was like, ‘Dude, I’m not going to be able to do this with a straight face,'” Ryan recalls with a chuckle.

That’s when jack-of-all-trades Gallo entered the scene; her intense love of metal and mile-long CV made her a perfect fit for the video. According to Ryan, she absolutely nailed the performance and showed up at Clockwork Echo shows as a fire performer before becoming the band’s synth player.

“I had a garage band in high school, and then I ended up doing all the other things following music that wasn’t playing, anything like go-go dancer, fire performer, a stage hand, roadie, the lighting tech, a promoter,” Gallo says. “And I’m like, ‘I’ll start a band again after forty, when my knees hurt.'”

Her fire performing began in Texas with a metal band whose off-the-wall performances made sparks fly – literally. “They have a whole circus with their band, so metal grinders, fire, aerials, blood, everything,” Gallo says. “So I was inspired by that, and the music brings that loud, grinding sound, so it makes sense.”

Clockwork Echo’s dark, gritty music doesn’t have an underlying message, and Ryan explains that “we just like to go up and make noise and stuff. We don’t take it seriously, so [we] just have fun and play. And we like to push buttons, too,” he adds. “There’s obviously a shock value in a lot of the stuff we do in the lyrical content and also the stage presence.”

Ryan suggests the industrial scene is drifting in a lighter direction, interweaving with pop in a transformation similar to the shift of hair metal in the ’80s. “We’re just going to try to go in the complete opposite direction – the loudest, fastest, hardest electric-industrial band out there,” he says.

Although Clockwork Echo is fairly young, the band already has more than a thousand followers on Facebook and has toured with Mexican industrial electronic band Hocico and L.A. metal group Psyclon Nine. Clockwork Echo’s upcoming show at HQ on Thursday, July 6, kicks off yet another tour: The band will spend July traveling around the U.S. with Skold and Grimm.

Despite Clockwork Echo’s multiple tours and growing fan base, the realities of fame haven’t set in for Ryan and Gallo. “Even this weekend in Seattle, there were maybe ten people that had seen us last tour and were wearing a shirt with [our] logo on it, and it’s just like, whoa,” Gallo says.

“All the hard work really starts once you’re actually starting to pick up momentum with it. So at least from my perspective, I’m not even really thinking about it that much because of the list of responsibilities of stuff you have to manage with getting a band to go on tour and not screwing up in front of all of the bigger bands that have been doing it for longer,” Ryan reflects. “But sometimes it does kick in, and it’s just like, ‘Holy shit, that was pretty cool.'”

Clockwork Echo, Skold and Grimm play HQ, 60 South Broadway, 8 p.m. Thursday, July 6. Tickets range from $16-$100.