As the realities of streaming becomes more and more bleak for local musicians, the focus on how success is measured is shifting. The pressure to reach big numbers on social media and streaming services such as Spotify can be overwhelming, but Maike and Rodriguez found a certain freedom in that. “I feel like the less time that I put into social media the more responses I get," Maike muses. "We’re in such a weird era of being online where, if it’s too polished, nobody really resonates with that.”
For Rodriguez and Maike, if ever there was a time to not care about what other people think, it is now. And Deth Rali is taking this creative mindset with it, as the Denver duo finds itself on the eve of a Midwest tour and the August 21 release of “The Architect," the first single off of its upcoming third album, The Fall of Neon.
Despite the astronomical numbers necessary to be declared a “success” in music, things seem to be moving for Deth Rali. Audiences are engaging and the duo continues to sell out vinyl pressings of its second album, Ruby’s Castle Island — always a good sign for a band getting off the ground. “You have about ten to fifteen minutes of people actually paying attention to what you’re doing on stage,” states Rodriguez. “You really have to make every bit of it as interesting and fluid as possible to keep people right where you want them.”
While the Pit Viper sun glasses and pale face paint screams goth, Deth Rali cannot be boiled down to one style sonically (in true Colorado-band fashion). On its previous two albums, Light Levels and Ruby’s Castle Island, Maike and Rodriguez bounce around within the genre, exploring everything from synth pop and psych rock to shoegaze and metal, accompanied by the frantic touch of prog rock. “Tame Impala worship,” as Rodriguez affectionately describes it.
Deth Rali took form during COVID; Maike had written and recorded Light Levels and he was looking to start a live band. He reached out to Rodriguez, whom he knew from running sound for Rodriguez’s other project, Pout House, and found he was a kindred spirit and appreciator of dark electronic goth music Maike was making. While other musicians would come and go, the project would ultimately settle as a duo. In the meantime, Deth Rali began working on a second album and a process began to take shape.
“Jay can do this by himself if he chose to,” recalls Rodriguez. “I think that after we just went through a year of a revolving lineup of people in our community that reached out to help, it was just getting more difficult to stick to a plan to book shows to actually formulate a game plan for what we were doing.”
“Yeah, I think we work well together,” adds Maike. “I do all the music myself and I kind of prefer it that way. He’ll have a whole new side with the rhythm that I’m not even thinking about.”
Locking into this process, the duo set out to record a third album. This time around, Rodriguez was fully on board from the beginning, developing rhythms and workshopping Maike’s demos. While Ruby’s Castle Island was an expansive project, involving numerous sessions and people offering insight, this time around they kept it mostly to themselves; within three months, they had a full album written and recorded. “I’m in a fortunate position to work with someone like Jay, where it does feel very collaborative,” says Rodriguez. “We were able to get to a point where we chopped up three songs from one piece of music he brought to the table.”
With The Fall of Neon also comes a growing sense of confidence in Maike. Envisioned as a concept album, Maike wrote ten songs telling the story of a fascist tech lord who comes to earth to save it but then gets addicted to the attention. For their live show, he has been adopting this persona. “We had to practice playing this character in this story who’s this attention succubus,” explains Maike. “I’m more introverted, but I like to go out be that character in front of people. I actually take a lot of cues from Zach from Hex Cassette.”
Looking ahead, the plan is to drop a single every month until the full album release in early 2026. Until then, Maike is settling in on fact that the best way to reach people is to lower himself to crude jokes online and not frequently talk about the music they have put countless hours into. While the constant hustle of online promo culture is not pretty, Maike sees a silver lining easily overlooked. "There's actually never been a time before when you can just go find your extremely niche group of people."
Deth Rali's latest single and video, "The Architect," drops on all streaming platforms August 21.
