The state of Mississippi is home to a wide variety of bands and artists making all kinds of music, from things you’d typically expect like blues, country, jazz, and the like, to the mostly conventional pop and rock acts, to the more arthouse-y experimental noise artists. Vicksburg 3-peice shoegaze band Death Throes From A Star, consisting of members Palmer Shiers on guitar, Jordan Wilson on bass, and Adam Rogan on drums, manages to be at the nexus of all of them.
My first encounter with the instrumental shoegaze band was Friday, February 2nd, 2024 at Urban Foxes. On the bill for the night were local bands that I had seen a few times already–Measureless Aeons, Kicking, Crypt Eater–plus this band, which I had never seen before. I didn’t want to show up too early like I had done previously and sit around like a goober waiting for the show to start, so I waited around a bit. When I arrived at Urban Foxes about 30 minutes after the time listed on the poster, I was shocked to see two things: the show had already started, and the house was packed. I was particularly disappointed, because I had arrived halfway through Measureless Aeons’ set, and there were so many people in the tiny café that I couldn’t even get within eyeshot of the band. I even wore my shirt that night.
Disappointment aside, after Measureless Aeons was this new band. I don’t do very much research when it comes to the bands I see in town, so I had very little in the way of expectations. What I saw was a bassist, a drummer, and a guitarist, as well as an obscenely large pedalboard that was home to several pedals. Aside from that truly formidable pedalboard, there wasn’t much fanfare with this band that consisted of rather plainly dressed, gray-bearded musicians. Deceptively so.
After the guitarist introduced the band, they began playing. And it was nothing like I had ever heard before. I stood there, transfixed as they played through “Celestial Poisons”. The song starts off normally enough, with simple, beautifully reverberating chords soon joined by drums and a droning bass line that gradually intensifies over its 12-minute runtime. The song is definitely a marathon, not a sprint, and crossing its finish line is just as satisfying. It’s a fantastic track on its own, but when performed live, it’s magnetic, almost psychedelic, drawing you in with each repeating bar. After the night concluded, I realized I was hooked. I had to see this band again. And I did, just about every time they came to Jackson, which was not often.
Despite my immediate affinity, I don’t think I truly realized how special this band was until I made the trip to Vicksburg for the very first time ever for their EP release show on Saturday, May 18th, 2024 at the BB Club. The band was celebrating the release of their self-titled EP and would be playing it in its entirety. I was expecting a good show, since I am pretty much always impressed by them, but they truly went the extra mile during this show with ambient backing tracks that played between songs and visuals for each song playing from a projector. They were small additions, but they made a difference.
The Jackson heavy music scene is small compared to other major cities, but Vicksburg’s is even smaller, with just a handful of bands, all of them having been around for many years. “I think it’s 10 people that play in four bands,” Palmer said of the small community.
“It’s always kinda been that way,” Adam added, “Vicksburg is mostly a lot of cover bands and these old schoolers from back in the day that’s been doing it for the past 30, 40 years.”
Since they’ve been in the scene for close to two decades, I asked them if they thought things have changed in that time. “Things have changed, but for the better,” Adam replied.
According to Palmer, there were more bands, many that are no longer around, just getting their start around the mid-late 2000s. “I think around 2010 or so, it kind of died down a little bit,” he said, “We started in 2017, and there were already bands getting going.” He added, “All of our friends are in bands now. We’re trying to keep the scene in Vicksburg going.”
It’s really heartwarming, because if a Vicksburg band comes to Jackson, you’ll see lots of other people from the scene there in attendance as well. It’s seems like they all load up in a caravan to make the drive down I-20. They stick together and support one another in a way that maybe isn’t as possible in larger communities. That night at the BB Club, it seemed all of Vicksburg (and some of Jackson) were in attendance.
Since Death Throes is from Vicksburg, and my quest to find as much information as I can about the band Burning Windsor is never-ending, I asked if they remembered them. Sadly, not really. “We used to share a practice room, the Doom Room, with them,” Adam said, adding it was potentially before they used that name. Aside from that, they didn’t have many interactions with them. So, the quest continues.
Although they had their first release just last year, Death Throes has been around since mid-late 2017. “We would practice once every couple of months for a little while,” Adam said of the formation of Death Throes.
“We ramped it up to once a week,” Palmer added, “and it just kind of kicked off from there.”
Prior to this, as is the case in the small city of Vicksburg, the three of them played together in various projects together over the years. “First, I met Adam. We had a side project from his main band, which was Buzzardstein,” Palmer said. “We played in a doom band, and then, I think Jordan came in the picture right after that.” By the way, If you’re wondering, an interview with Awesome J of Buzzardstein can be found on an ancient WordPress blog called Doommantia.
As Adam explained it, the material on their debut EP has been with the band since the beginning. “Celestial Poisons and Ascension, we played those for forever. A couple of those songs are a few years old.”
“We started writing Celestial Poisons the very first practice we had,” Palmer said, “It was just a riff at that point. Every time we came to practice, one of us would have a different idea and we just kept adding to the song.”
“We used to joke that this song was going to end up being 30 minutes!” Adam added with a laugh.
“We played a song that was 30 minutes before,” Palmer said, and I was left wondering if that 30-minute track would ever be reintroduced. I would like to hear it.
That was the writing process for Death Throes – coming up with a riff and gradually adding more and more passages onto it–only one of the tracks on Death Throes From A Star, Star Turn, is under 7 minutes long, and just barely. After doing that for a few years, they decided it was time to put out a body of work. Adam explained, “A couple of years after playing the Muddy River Music Festival in Vicksburg, we wrote a couple other jams and put that together as a set.”
Some people scoff at the idea of live performances comparing in sound quality to studio recordings, insisting that studio recordings are just as good, if not better than live performances, but Death Throes is a band best enjoyed live. Don’t get me wrong, I love the album, but its recordings just don’t do it justice. Each song truly is an aural expedition, a whole-body experience. I don’t do substances, but I would assume the dopamine release is comparable.
So, what is shoegaze, exactly? The name should be a clue to it, but upon first hearing the term (and before hearing the actual music), I thought it was introspective sad-boy music. Emo for people with BFAs, perhaps. Palmer offered a very simple explanation: “Loud, noisy, beautiful music, however you want to play it.” Loud is certainly a way to describe it. I always wear earplugs at shows–and you should too–and even with my Eargasms, which block out a decent amount of sound, I can still feel the loudness.
If you want to be technical, though, shoegaze gets its name from the fact that the guitarists are constantly looking down at their sprawling pedalboards (or shoes, I guess), switching between effects mid-song. The genre rose to prominence in the 80s and 90s in the UK, which is when Palmer got into it. Death Throes, though, doesn’t strictly adhere to the label. “What we do is considered some type of shoegaze, but it’s heavier,” Palmer explained, “I’ve been using the term post-shoegaze, because the original shoegaze movement was in the 80s and the 90s, so everything after that is post. So, here we are.”
“It’s kinda just a combination of a lot of different things that we like and just what we play, our own style,” added Adam, “[Shoegaze is] a good description, and then you can go into and interpret it how you want to.”
Speaking of pedals, the first thing you notice about Death Throes at a show is that massive pedalboard. “I’ve always loved guitar effects,” Palmer said. The current loadout for Palmer’s setup is about 20 pedals, but that’s just a fraction of his arsenal. He put together a whole separate, equally large pedalboard–for fun, I suppose–because he has just that many lying around. 35 extras, in fact, putting the total at somewhere around 55. “I switch them out from time to time,” he told me, “but there’s usually 19 or 20 on [the main] board.” One of the pedals on his board, a Digitech XP-300 Space Station effect pedal, is quite few years older than I am, having been added to his collection in 1994. “I’ve been collecting for a while.” These days, this pedal is quite rare and sought-after, with eBay listings going for as high as $675
At some point, though, one has to wonder whether there would be diminishing returns on having so many pedals. “It’s about how you play,” Adam said.
“You can always get by with the reverb and the distortion and delay,” Palmer said, “but I like to stack the sounds on top of each other.” Also, you have to keep in mind that not every pedal is activated at the same time–some pedals are used only for certain sections of certain songs. Still, with that many effects layered at once, Palmer’s guitar can sound almost synth-like in certain parts.
So, what’s next for Death Throes? According to Palmer, more writing. “We just recorded our EP, and we’re very, very happy with it,” he said, “but we’re at a point now where we want to write some new stuff. We’ve been playing a lot, so we haven’t had a chance to do that. The ideas are there. We probably have 20 riffs – each one could be a different song. It’s just going to take us some time to put everything together.”
“Hopefully record again,” Adam said, “maybe before the end of [2024], first thing [2025]. Just see how it goes.”
Palmer’s final words for Death Throes enthusiasts was heartfelt. “I just wanted to thank everyone coming to the shows. I mean, that’s important. Whether or not you’re just going to listen, or you’re playing the show. Any type of support, that’s what it’s about. So, whoever’s doing that, thank you.”
JXN UNDERGROUND 