In a subgenre obsessed with making earth-shaking sounds behind bulldozing guitar tones, it’s pretty standard to see stages full of elaborate pedalboard setups that feed into stacks of amps and cabs. But that’s not the case at a Lost Relics show.
“You’d be surprised at how little gear we use,” says guitarist and vocalist Jess Ellis, who has participated in the local music scene since the late ’90s.
“Just doing this for so long, you realize you don’t need all those cabinets and extra stuff. I’ve done it all. I’ve been that guy, and I've sized down my gear so much over the years,” Ellis continues, asserting that all he needs is a half-stack — “that’s it” — because he plays “straight into heads.”
"We don’t use pedals for distortion or anything like that," he adds. "We just use volume and go.”
The line sounds like a quote from the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, and then Ellis shares a little secret: “If you use less distortion, you can be louder."
That isn’t an opinion, but a quantifiable fact in the Lost Relics world, especially when it comes to playing concerts. “Let’s put it this way: When we play, the decibel meters come out, for sure,” says drummer Greg Mason, recalling one show in particular at the Lion’s Lair. “I think we were clocked at 117 [decibels] at Lion’s Lair, which is a very small room. It’s not even an ego thing — it’s just, that’s the sound of the band.”
For perspective, that’s the same level of loud Deep Purple reached during a 1972 concert at London’s Rainbow Theatre with the help of a 10,000-watt Marshall PA system. Three people in attendance succumbed to the massive soundwave and passed out. Afterward, the Guinness Book of World Records christened Deep Purple the world's loudest band. While Lost Relics may not have rendered anyone unconscious (yet), reaching record-setting noise levels certainly gives the group some street cred.
Just for fun, 117 decibels is louder than a bulldozer and just under the 125-decibel threshold of causing instant physical inner-ear pain and potential hearing damage. And in case you were wondering, 150 decibels, which is what one would experience standing next to a jet engine during takeoff, is when eardrums give up and rupture.
Ellis and Mason laugh when asked if Lost Relics can reach those levels.
“We’re loud, but we’re not painful," Ellis says. "It’s a full sound."
Or a “wall of sound,” as Mason calls it. “It’s all about the riffs,” he adds.
And that’s exactly what audiences can expect: Lost Relics isn’t too big on stage banter.
“We don’t talk a lot. We just come out and do our shit. We tune once or twice in the middle, but we don’t like to talk," Ellis explains. "We’re not there for a comedy show. We like to come out, smoke your ass and leave you wanting more.”
Listeners can also expect some new music. The band recently shared singles “Hangxiety” and “Doomed From the Womb” from upcoming album Die + Cry + Loathe, set to be released on Friday, June 23, via Golden Robot Records. Lost Relics will play Die + Cry + Loathe in its entirety at HQ on Friday, June 30, though it’s “technically not an album-release” show, Ellis clarifies. Clusterfux, Chew Thru and Death Dealer IV are also on the bill.
The set will be “short and to the point,” Ellis says. “We’re playing in the middle, which is actually the best spot."
Mason and Ellis were both previously in stoner-doom bands Smolder & Burn and Low Gravity before officially forming Lost Relics in 2019 with guitarist Marc Brooks and vocalist/bassist Jason O. James, Mason’s former bandmate in The Worth. "Both of those bands [Smolder & Burn and Low Gravity] had done their time, and we decided to try something new. It clicked pretty instantly,” Mason recalls.
"He nailed it on the head,” Ellis agrees. “I’ve known Jason for, shit, twenty-some years. All of us have been playing in bands around Denver forever. We all wanted to jam together for quite some time, and it just happened that we were all out of bands and got together and knew we had a good thing and just went for it.”
Coming of age in the ’90s, the Lost Relics dudes still like to follow the blueprints created by such bands as Fugazi, Melvins, Eyehategod and anything former Golden resident/guitar god Matt Pike does. “[Melvins frontman] Buzzo and Matt Pike — that’s all you need,” Ellis says.
Mason refers to that era's bands as “lost relics,” but likes to think “what is old is new again.” Of course, Lost Relics, whose name is a mashup of two previously considered monikers (“Lost” and “Relics”), puts a more “modern edge to it,” he adds.
“Those are the foundations. We like the weirdness factor of those bands as well,” he says. “I don’t think you can be in a heavy band that plays the style that we do and not be influenced by the Melvins.”
While the writing process is “pretty simple” for Lost Relics, according to Ellis, the lyrical themes have evolved over time and deal with more topical, real-world issues. Both “Doomed From the Womb” and “Hangxiety” address the existential dread many people have felt in one form or another since the pandemic began.
"Doomed From the Womb," Mason says, "has a lot to do with humans and the state of the world and bringing children into this world. And what’s the survival of the next generations? How is that going to manifest itself when things like climate change and political upheaval and all of these things are just on our doorstep and everybody’s acting like it just doesn’t fucking exist?”
“Hangxiety,” for which Ellis wrote the lyrics, employs a third-person perspective for “watching the world kind of crumble,” he says.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it. It just gives you existential dread,” Mason adds.
“Or hangxiety,” Ellis quips.
Lost Relics is more a group of “disappointed optimists” rather than brooding nihilists, Mason says, and likes to assuage anxiety with humor.
“We do have fun with our shit, too, even though it might sound pissed off and mean,” Ellis says, referencing the song “Rope Pusher.” “It’s about Trump. … We say a lot in Spanish in that one; it’s just all over the board. It’s just jokes to us, but it also has a point.”
Mason sees making intense tunes in this vein as a bloodletting of sorts. “Heavy music is very emotional and multi-layered. It’s dynamic. It allows you to express a variety of emotions,” he explains. “Instead of violent acts or some sort of anti-social attitude, all of that can come through in an artistic way when you can express what some would call negative emotions in a more positive way and get them out.”
Another positive that Mason and Ellis point to is the local scene's vitality. They both believe it's the best it’s been in the last two decades.
“I’d say the music scene is the strongest I’ve ever seen it,” says Mason, who’s lived in Denver for fifteen years. “People are getting out. They’re actually caring about bands. The quality of the music is really high right now, and that helps carry it.”
Ellis agrees, calling the quality of current bands “some of the best I’ve seen in years.”
"I love that, because you've got to bring your A-game,” he continues. “If you’re not ready to bring your A-game, you’re going to get smoked on that stage. That’s what we love, because we’re all swinging for the fences.”
Mason and Ellis aren’t afraid to admit that they’ve been "smoked" before, but that only helps foster a healthy competition between bands.
“I think the sense of community that we have is really strong. We try to take care of each other,” Mason says. “There’s no money to be made, so if anyone is going to argue about money, then you’re in the wrong fucking place. It’s really about just having fun, getting your art out there and enjoying the crowd and each other and having a good time.”
Lost Relics, 9 p.m. Friday, June 30, HQ, 60 South Broadway. Tickets are $10.
