Meet the Busking Metal Band Taking Denver by Storm

There were many incredible shows at the final Underground Music Showcase, but one of the most unforgettable acts wasn’t even part of the official lineup.

Insipidus whipped up a party on the sidewalk caddy-corner to the Skylark, performing its thrilling brand of metal for over an hour. The band had decided to just show up and see what happened, and the result was one of the best performances of that July weekend. And according to Yoav Daube, the group’s founding member and guitar wizard, the trio’s busking led to more opportunities than the members could’ve imagined: Insipidus was discovered by tech company Sweep.io, which invited the act out to San Francisco for the Dreamforce conference. The cherry on top? Dreamforce happened to be headlined by metal overlords Metallica.

“The busking is really what opened the doors to us. We [got] the most money we’ve ever gotten to play a show,” Daube says of the conference, where the band ended up performing nine sets throughout the weekend, from private parties to busking.

Instead of having a booth of fliers, Sweep.io “thought they’ll send in a band to make some noise,” he continues. “They found us through the busking, they flew us there and they just let us be ourselves. We had a flier of the company in the guitar case. … It was one of the craziest weeks we had as a band.”

Insipidus even started circulating on the Salesforce subreddit, with one post during the event inquiring: “Who is that metal band (Not Metallica, the one on the street) that has been popping up everywhere at Dreamforce? I’ve seen them three times now, pretty wild stuff.”

Wild stuff indeed. Insipidus is fully singular and fervently brutal, with melodic and technical compositions that would turn even an indie-loving, fin-tech bro into a full-fledged metalhead. The band formed during the pandemic, when Daube found drummer Travis Hatley through Facebook. After a prior bassist left, Kane Pascarelli (who also performs in Pink Lady Monster) joined Insipidus a little over two years ago, and the lineup has remained solid since then. “We had parted ways with the older member two weeks before playing a festival,” Daube recalls. “I called up Kane the day that happened and he agreed to join, and he practiced for two weeks every day so he’d catch up with the music and then we went on our way. And since then, I call him Master Kane. He’s the youngest of the band — he’s just in his very early twenties — but he is the most mature and oldest of us.”

Meanwhile, Hatley may as well be a human metronome, an absolute machine on the drums, maintaining a constant rhythm alongside the unparalleled bass of Pascarelli as Daube shreds on guitar, unleashing mind-bending solos that leave audiences almost in disbelief. And the best part is, most folks discover Insipidus in the most unexpected way: on the streets.

It wasn’t until recently that Insipidus discovered busking was the perfect format to showcase its sound, howeer. “Last year, we were on our way to practice; I’d never heard of UMS before,” says Daube, who is from New York. Hatley had suggested the band set up at there, “and we asked someone for electricity from one of the stores and they let us, and that’s how the whole busking situation started. Up until then, we were just booking shows and trying to make it through the conventional avenues,” Daube adds.

“We busk in different states when we’re on tour. We had a really bad show in Kansas City — not a lot of people came — so we decided to busk. We drove around looking for the sweet spots, which are hard to find, but that got us an article in the Kansas City paper. That’s how we found to break through the noise of [other] bands,” he continues “I love busking. It’s so much more rewarding than venue shows we have, usually. It’s opening doors for us to things that we’d never get through the local scene.”

Plus, the band can pull in a lot more money from busking than playing venues. “On the most recent UMS, we made almost $900 in one night, and altogether we made around $1,500,” Daube says. “That’s a shitload of money for a band. We do our own merch, so we were able to fund all the merch. I can say very proudly that we’re a profitable band. Once we understood it, we bought a little generator and we try to find sweet spots. And, of course, it brings the people together, which is the best part of it.”

Insipidus has had some run-ins with the cops while busking, but Daube says the officers have been friendly and usually just give the band a heads up to cut the power. But then, the members make an effort to perform in spots that aren’t residential — skateparks, alleyways, corners on busy blocks. “It’s also the best place to practice,” Daube notes. “We do a lot of jamming on the streets; we can see how people react to tunes so we know if it’s good or bad, what song gets people moving. And now we’re fine-tuning our set to be perfect.”

Insipidus slays from the stage, too, but metal bills are often stacked with so many bands that it’s harder to get noticed. So people will want to take note of the upcoming shows: The band is slated to perform at the DIY event space the DMV on Thursday, October 30, alongside Clay K and the Vertebrates, but because it most consistently busks, the best thing to do is to follow the group on Instagram to get notified about where it will pop up next. And with the slew of new music that Insipidus has been crafting, the members plan to drop an album on January 1, which will be celebrated with a release show at Sanctuary Art Space on January 3.

The trio is riding high after its San Francisco run, which confirmed that Insipidus is moving in the right way. While many acts believe that social media is necessary to make it big, Insipidus knows the value of face-to-face interactions. “If you’re not a really well-known and established band, it’s really hard to get a following. But we meet the people where they are, which is the sidewalks, versus having to promote and get people in to see a band they’ve never heard,” Daube says.

It’s also rare to see a busking band that is this incredibly talented, much less a metal one. “It’s coming out naturally, the music that we play,” the guitarist says. “We started off as playing covers and then we decided to start writing music, and it’s all been very organic. We have fusions of different types, we’re not trying to lock in to be a death metal or any kind of metal genre.”

He says that the upcoming album, called Nearest Dusk, is the band’s best work yet: “We’ve recorded before, and did it very DIY, and it wasn’t the best quality,” he explains. This time, the band went into a studio, and now Nearest Dusk is currently going through the mixing and mastering process before it’s put on vinyl and cassettes.

The members work collaboratively on new songs. “Kane and Travis are much more prolific musicians than I am,” Daube says modestly. “I bring the melodies and they bring theories and we kind of fuse them together and we edit them. I’ll send them recordings of melodies that I come up with and we’ll arrange it again, propel it forward and practice it, playing a lot to see what comes out. It’s more instinctual. … But the most important part is that we’re really, really good friends, and I think that’s what makes it so fun and easy to create, when you’re surrounded by really good talent. Anyone starting a band, it’s not about the talent, I think it’s about the people.”

It definitely helps, though, that Daube, Hatley and Pascarelli happen to be bursting with talent and long backgrounds in music theory. When a musician has such experience, it beefs up the instinctual movements of songs even further, creating a perfect balance. While Insipidus’s sound has been tagged as everything from melodic death metal to rush metal to even “imperial metal for the emperor of Japan,” Daube says the band has simply found its own groove and rhythm.

“At the end of the day, what’s most important to us is that people enjoy the music and come together,” he concludes. “And we like that we’re part of the culture now of Denver. Here and there we’re even recognized, which is always a nice experience.”

Insipidus plays the DMV, 2424 East 43rd Avenue, 8 p.m. Thursday, October 30. Follow the band on Instagram (@insipidus) to get notified of busking shows and other events.