The spirit of Slugfeast
In session with, from left, Claire, Lucas & Alejandro of Slugfeast; photographed by Tyrone Taylor.
Once in a while a group rises from the dusty dawns of the Pacific that speaks to that indefatigable spark from within. A group that measures the ennui, the anguish, the ecstasy, the apprehension, and the entire carousel of emotions that twirls about the heart and spirit in a way that feels refreshing, righteous, radical, and relatable in all of the intuitive ways. A group that gathers up the elements of everything that has struck a chord with them over the course of the past three decades and melds those elements together in a synthesis that strikes acutely with a sense of here and now. A group whose arts wander into those inner winding corridors of feeling and thought that few traverse, offering anthems and declarations for everyone who has ever felt too much and/or contended with an overactive and anxious mind.
Introducing Slugfeast, the Sacramento/Davis/Bay Area trio of Alejandro Magallan, Claire Tauber, and Lucas Wieser who discuss their self-titled album from Cherub Dream Records. Recorded at Deathbed Recording in Oakland with an engineering/mastering assist from Brad Lincoln: Slugfeast present the culmination of their collaborations that have spanned across the past couple years along the western edges of interstate 80. For all of the jaded hearts of the universe, this is the record that will have you falling in love with rock & roll once again. A record that will redefine the worlds that DIY musings can build. A reminder of those fraught balances of beauty and boldness in a harsh and brutal world. A reminder of the power of friendship, and the infinite outlets of expression that fly forward on the wings of inspiration with the power to arrive at new echelons of understanding and artistic enlightenment.
“Tired Eyes” eases into the album with a sleepy, yet commanding, rhythm that leads to glimmering chords that collide together in an alchemy of attitude and presence that feels monumental. Slugfeast create the feeling of stumbling through a dive that houses many mansions with a kind of hazy headedness that slows it down to thunderous steps. The feeling of being a singular individual amid the overwhelming tumult of the crowd is carried over on “Once Was Fine” where Claire and company conjure the aura of alienation in our surrounding scenes, and symptomatic echoes from even deeper and more intricate international implosions in civil discourse. The turbines of celestial turbulence are turned up on “Local Pro”, blazing with a humble bravado that languishes in the lamentations of being a big fish in a small pond. The sublime and understated expressive conscious streams of “Heavy Heart” match the earnest lyrical diary expository with towering roars of ethereal guitars with the power to awaken the fabled inhabitants of alternate dimensions. “Slug Jr” delivers a jam to highlight the band’s brightest pop guitar tones that are propelled by ferocious percussion and walls of wailing electric strings.
The intermission that is placed at the center of the album is executed with the one minute instrumental “Remission” that haunts with a hum that reverberates with the solemn fragility of the human condition. This provides a segue to “Detective”, that shines with the band’s musical signatures that allows Slugfeast to shine as the garage band that could, the garage band that can, and ultimately the garage band that cares. As found throughout the album, “Detective” moves with the motif and motions of empathy, it’s a song that invites you to feel everything as the band lets the listener into a privy world of uncertainty that is all too familiar and relatable on various levels. The moods carry forward into a host of subterranean and subconscious territories on “Pet Sitting”, delving into the pensive planes of frustrations, the disappointments, the pity, the lack of connections, and the perils of being passionate at heart.
Slugfeast’s Claire, Lucas & Alejandro in the creative groove; photographed by Tyrone Taylor.
The band duets on “Tumbler” like a grunge gazing Jack and Jill having a slow core roll down a hill of copious and carefully strummed distortion. The almost accidental genius of “Wait and See” stands as the most beautiful thing that Corgan and the crew never made back in the early Butch Vig days, recalling the soundtrack specter of late night afters spent at the Maydestone during the mid-90s of the midtown/downtown Sacramento underground art circuits. “Scraps” is a slow and steady send off from Slugfeast that feels like floating off on a donut tube down the delta of the Sacramento River.
And like the entire self-titled, Slugfeast let their various hallmark creative touches show in the most intriguing ways with hooks that are woven into intricate, and at times unorthodox, musical song structures. Think a music theory scholar’s fever dream that casts the classical and modern schools through the cables that are threaded into the treatments of effects pedals and prescribed amplifiers. The album’s conclusion finds the listener returning to the countless sections of the record worthy of a closer revisitation, feeling those avalanches of big chord adorned sentimentalities and sensibilities that sound even mightier upon repeat listens. All told, Slugfeast have delivered one of the best artistic works of 2025.
Out of the blue and into the blur with Slugfeast; photographed by Nicholas Coleman.
Alejandro Magallan, Claire Tauber, and Lucas Wieser of Slugfeast kindly took the time to offer the following exclusive and insightful exchange of thoughts, meditations, and so much more:
Insights on how you all formed Slugfeast.
Lucas: Slugfeast started in 2022, right as a band that me and Alejandro had formerly played in was just about passing on. I was actually playing piano in that band, which I’ve been playing all my life. Over time I felt like there was an intensity or visceral element missing. I was having trouble channeling that in my piano playing. I really wanted to dive deeper into making rock music after playing primarily jazz for a decade and so I decided to pick up a new instrument. Though I still love the piano, I feel like I can most authentically express myself through beating on my drums. Our first group together was really fun, but musically my keys and Alejandro’s playing was sometimes at odds just existing in a similar sonic space and being a really jammy band all around. We wanted to make really heavy music that focused more on lyricism while also being a better vehicle for Alejandro’s playing. We were looking for a second vocalist and bassist and Claire was the first choice. After jamming with Claire for the first time I feel like we knew there was something special there. Especially after I heard Claire and Alejandro harmonize together for the first time. We wrote music for most of 2022 and played our first show that summer in Sacramento.
Alejandro: Lucas and I had been playing in a psych fusion band called Keef Haring, which was an extremely fun band to be in, but wasn’t really reflecting where our musical interests were headed, as we were increasingly drawn towards the sounds of bands like Yo La Tengo, Horse Jumper of Love, Ovlov, and other fuzzy alt rock/slow core favs. Keef Haring was also an extremely jammy band, which again was a lot of fun, but I had found myself wanting to write tighter songs in a way that Keef’s heavily improvisational style didn’t really lend itself too. With all of that in mind, and also with Lucas taking an interest in drums at the time, we decided to form a new band to explore these different rock textures and songwriting styles, with Lucas on the kit and myself playing guitar. We needed a bassist, and we knew Claire through working together at KDVS (UC Davis’ freeform radio station) so we hit them up to jam and see if there was any musical chemistry. We met up, played together over some riffs I had been cookin’ up, and it felt like we had a real synergy going on, so we asked Claire to join the band, and we’ve been playing together for about three years now.
Describe for us the journey from your demos to the realizations of the Slugfeast self-titled album.
Lucas: Recording with Slugfeast has been such a special experience for a number of reasons. For one you can hear me learning my instrument. I sound really unsure of my ability on some of the first Slugfeast demos. I gained my footing a little bit through experience and having good teachers and bandmates that really pushed me. You can also hear Claire getting super confident as a vocalist. She wasn’t really singing when we started the band and Alejandro and I kept badgering her and now she fucking owns it. Alejandro has always been gifted on guitar but in some ways I feel like he also really came around to owning it with this group. Recording this really pushed us as artists and musicians. It was super collaborative. It was the first band I’ve been in where we’ve been so intentional with everything we did. We recorded those first demos with our buddy Taylor in Sac. We were also lucky enough to be introduced to Brad Lincoln at Deathbed Recording in Oakland who engineered and mixed the record for us. He’s super good at what he does.
Claire: Recording the Slugfeast album was a long process. We started out just playing music together. I think the initial reason was Lucas was starting to play the drums and wanted to start a slow core project. Lucas and Alejandro reached out to me to see if I wanted to play bass and that was probably about three years ago. And then we just kept meeting up and working on songs together and some of those songs turned into the songs that are on the album. We have a couple different ways that we write together. I think probably the most common thread was Alejandro coming to us with the riff, and then us playing around with it until we came up with something we liked. Sometimes I'd come home with them and work on some melody. And we all worked collaboratively on the lyrics and the songwriting.
Alejandro: To me the demo tape was really sort of a proof of concept. We had just started performing those songs a few months before we recorded them, and they were still very much in a liquid form when we made those recordings. I think primarily we just wanted to have something we could send to bookers and venues so that they’d have a rough idea of what the band’s vibe was. At the time we were intending for Slugfeast to be more on the sludge/doom metal vibe, and I feel like these demos reflect some of that particular brand of heaviness, especially this version of “Pet Sitting” and our psych drone jam “Red Giant”. As we continued to play together more and more though we realized the natural state of our collective musical voice was not quite that aggressively heavy, and as we started to just let the songs come out naturally the voice of the band, and eventually the voice of the full length record, started to surface, congealing into something that was still heavy and rocking but with a raw vulnerability and a lot of tenderness, as well.
Claire Tauber of Slugfeast live and moving in the moment; photographed by Blane Worley.
Thoughts on the adaptation of candid inner reflections to the assemblage of creative rhythms, chords, and entrancing atmospheres.
Claire: I think fortunately we all have pretty compatible artistic sensibilities. We’re all interested in talking about our emotions and our inner worlds and we all have a bit of a tendency towards melancholy, which I think comes through in the music. We have some differences in our music taste, but I think it blends together nicely to create this kind of unique sound that Slugfeast has turned into. Being in a three piece is wonderful. It gives everyone a lot of space to come up with ideas and share their world and bring it out musically, and we're pretty good at communicating if we have an idea we feel pretty strongly about. Sometimes it takes a while for us to play with the tune and dial it in and then there's a few on the album that we wrote relatively quickly. So I don't think there's a rhyme or reason to it.
Alejandro: I think the sound of Slugfeast is really defined by the fact that first and foremost we’re all legitimately friends with each other. Lucas and Claire are two of my favorite people, and they’ve both seen me and been there for me at some truly low points in my life, and I feel like that type of support has really enabled me to be more vulnerable and candid as a songwriter, especially in my lyricism, which is something I struggled with for years (and is still a struggle, to be honest). We also all share a lot of musical DNA; I think we are all really grounded by a deep love for the music of the 70s, and we also share plenty of overlap in 90s rock, singer songwriters, jazz, Brazilian music, all kinds of stuff. We also all tend to live a bit on the melancholic side, which I think manifests quite evidently in Slugfeast’s music. Part of the beauty of the collaboration of Slugfeast is how we bring our own unique angles to our musical interests; while we share this love of 70s and 90s rock, indie, etc., I think the paths we took to get there are all fairly distinct, and the influences that pave those different roads add a lot of unique colors to our sound.
Further reflections on the sonic synergy between you all.
Lucas: I think being in a power trio is nice because we all have our own distinct lanes and roles within the band. We also even each other out. When one of us goes too deep, or isn’t digging in hard enough the other two will right the ship.
Alejandro: I’m a big fan of a good ass riff so a lot of our songs start out with some sort of riff or motif I work out on guitar, which I then bring to the band and we then flesh out the songs as a collective. One of the things I really love about Slugfeast is how collaborative it is; we don’t have a true frontman or bandleader, it really feels like a cooperative project where we each get to contribute in meaningful ways and be supported by one another. This set up takes a lot of trust and I feel lucky to play in a band with two musicians who have such impeccable instincts for the music we write. I also love being in a power trio, I feel like it’s such a perfectly balanced musical dynamic where we each naturally have our own niche and have a lot of room to explore and express ourselves as individual musicians while still supporting each other and the song. The trio set up is also great because for any decision we make there’s always a tiebreaker.
Slugfeast’s Alejandro Magallan cultivating a cavalcade of charged chords; photographed by Blane Worley.
Reflections on how your other creative outlets have informed Slugfeast, perhaps unconsciously or consciously.
Lucas: I really like to read and write poetry. I haven’t sung very much but I wrote some of the lyrics on the record with Claire and Alejandro. I feel like I’ve also been heavily inspired by the desert. We’ve been camping in Joshua Tree and other places countless times since we started the band. Impressionist stuff. Movies. There’s tons of bands and genres that have influenced me personally. Even though the extra musical things affect me mostly unconsciously, I think they might affect me more strongly than the bands I love.
Alejandro: The primary non-musical outlet for me would be film. I adore movies, I collect DVDs and Blu-Rays in the same way I collect CDs, cassettes, and vinyl, and when writing a song I’m sometimes thinking about what kind of movie scene I’d like to set this music to, or sometimes trying to reverse engineer the tone of a particular scene or shot into something purely sonic. I’ve also been getting back into reading the last couple years, mostly science fiction and noir. Been digging the more surreal/psychedelic sides of those genres a lot, and I feel like that might’ve bled into some of the lyrics and imagery on the record.
Notes on how the unease and uncertainty of the world has impacted your own work.
Lucas: For the last few years I’ve been becoming jaded about the nature of music and art in general. There’s nothing inherently noble about being an artist, and I feel like a lot of times people conflate the two things. Sure there is a lot of incredibly inspiring things that people have made that changed and made the world better, but a lot of art that gets made is just self expression that doesn’t materially affect all of the fucked up stuff that’s happening every day. But I also know that creating is an outlet, and affects our small community and that it can make day to day life livable, and even beautiful. So I feel like we have to have both. Dedication to affect the world through material change, as well as creative projects that benefit our communities and ourselves. Slugfeast is my contribution to the latter.
Claire: One of the questions on here is notes on how the unease and uncertainty of the world has impacted our work and I think it's hard to not feel intensely about the uncertainty of the world — there's so much sorrow to be felt about what's happening in the world. A lot of our songs are about more interpersonal feelings, but I think the world interacts with all of that. I'm becoming more and more of a cynic and I think that shows up in the songs. I think we try to be earnest about our inner worlds as we're participating in the the fucked up world that is to live in the United States.
Items that bring you all hope.
Lucas: I’m a teacher. I work with middle schoolers all day. They bring me hope because I know they’ll grow up to be smart adults. The kids are alright.
Alejandro: My friends. I’m lucky to know a lot of cool ass people doing cool ass stuff both artistically and professionally, and a lot of them are working their way up in the world and remaining principled and driven the whole way there. It’s beautiful to see.
Other artists and icons that continue to inspire you all in ways both overt and sublime.
Lucas: Too many. Mainly the people around me in Sacramento and the Bay. My friends inspire me most of all. Eli, Nick, Angeles, Sam, Phil, Erk, Jake, Riley, Julian, JB, Christina, Cass, Emily, Finn, Walker, Abby, Nash, Taylor, Wyatt, Cole, there’s tons of people I’m forgetting.
Alejandro: Some of the musicians and bands I’m thinking about when songwriting include (but are in no way limited to): Yo La Tengo, Bill Frisell, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Black Sabbath, Ovlov, Smashing Pumpkins, Sleep, Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Sonic Youth, Weezer, Pharoah Sanders, Dinosaur Jr., Sonny Sharrock, Elliott Smith, Jimi Hendrix, Mazzy Star, Townes Van Zandt, Dylan, Cohen, etc. I’m sure if Lucas and Claire came up with their own lists there’d be some overlap, but there would also be plenty of artists I had never even considered as parts of the lineage of our sound, and I think that’s very cool and beautiful, that Slugfeast contains influences and artistic DNA that I have no idea about.
Pointed percussion provided by Lucas Wieser of Slugfeast; photographed by Blane Worley.
Notes on the Sacramento scenes that few people know or recognize in the ever dwindling world of music / art pop media.
Claire: Notes on the Sacramento scene that few people know or recognize in the dwindling world of music slash art pop media: It's hard for me to view it that way because I live here and I love a lot of the music that exists here and I love going to shows and the creative community. I feel like I've never had a lack of music since I started playing in bands. There's always interesting sounds happening and inspiring people around creating cool music so maybe it's not recognized and in the world, but, you know, fame is probably a curse for the most part. It's always nice to have your music listened to and shared with people who might enjoy it, but we get to do that when we play a show to our friends in a backyard, you know? It's hard to really imagine wanting more. So I love the Sacramento scene.
Lucas: The Sacramento music scene is small but mighty. There are so many talented and skilled people killing it and doing it for the love of the game. I live in SF and Claire and Alejandro live in Sac. There’s so much genius going on in Sac, but because it’s close to the Bay I feel like it flies under the radar a little bit. Don’t sleep on Sacramento.
Alejandro: I grew up in Sacramento and feel a lot of conflicting things about it. I think I love it the way I love family sometimes, unconditionally despite it often getting on my nerves. That said, I am extremely proud to be from Sac and to be a part of the music/arts scene here in town. It’s not the biggest but there is so much heart and passion being put towards all forms of creative expression here, and a true willingness to do whatever it takes to see an idea through. And specifically on the music side there is sooooo much good stuff going on, and so many deeply talented and determined people making it happen one backyard show at a time.
Dreams for the future of Slugfeast.
Claire: I guess I just hope we all we get to keep writing songs together and keep I feel like I learned so much through recording this album and through the songwriting process, something that was kind of beautiful about it is Lucas and Alejandro really encouraged me to sing and do more songwriting, and I don't think I've been in a project, at least not in a really long time where I felt so much ownership and collaborative ownership of it, like, it's truly all three of ours, and there's not one band leader. We all kind of do different roles. So I'm just looking forward to refining our vision and our craft and writing more songs. And it would be great to be able to record them, but I'm not in a rush to do that. It took us a full year to record this one, so I just want to sit back and take time to just play music. Music is so fun and it's really cathartic to create something from scratch. So I just want to do that more. And then maybe we'll write some good stuff and if we don't, then maybe we won't share it. But I just hope that we get to keep playing music together…
Alejandro: I just want to make a lot more music with this band. I feel like we all grew so much musically during the writing and recording process for the album, and I want to apply that knowledge moving forward to just write better and better songs with my friends. I am so so proud of the work we put into the self-titled but I’m very ready to see where we can go next from here sonically. I’d also love to do more with visuals, making the video for “Detective” was legitimately one of the most fun days I’ve had in years, and I’d love to mess around with some more surreal imagery in the future too.
Aspirations that keep you all driven and moving forward.
Lucas: I want to do a proper tour of the US. I’ve always dreamed about hitting the road and traveling to new cities and meeting new people through music. I got a little taste this year when we toured down to LA and back. It was amazing and it made me want more. I’m so grateful to get to play music and be heard by people.
Standing about with Slugfeast; photographed by Nicholas Coleman.
Wisdom on the power of perseverance during times that can feel largely dismal.
Claire: Wisdom on the power of perseverance during times that feel largely dismal. Well, we have no other choice than to persevere, you know? Like, time will keep passing and things will keep happening. And I'm going to do my best to just keep following my North Star. Both in my music in this context, but also just in life, to be a participant in the world in a way that I can be proud of. I struggle sometimes with having music feel trivial in the face of watching a live streamed genocide or active climate collapse. Like, that's enough to keep you up at night and as it should, really. So I do struggle with that, you know, the role of music in my life, but there's a lot of ways that I could fuck off and like not be putting my energy into those other things I care about. So if I'm using music as an outlet, I think it's a lot better than other things I could be doing. So I think I hope there's enough space for all of the things in my life, and it doesn't have to be either or. So I hope that through music, I can learn to be as truthful as possible, and I think that's something that translates into how I live and how I move through the world.
Alejandro: I mean on a certain level it really is do this or die, right? All we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other, move with intention, and hope for the best. Music sometimes feels kinda useless, and it does often feel silly and a little selfish to invest so much time and energy in something that seems so insignificant in the face of the man-made horrors of our modern world. But it’s also something that’s meant everything to me, helped me find connection and some kind of purpose in this world, and I know it’s done the same for many others, and I feel like that is really the point of it all. I don’t know, I feel like I don’t really have any wisdom here, just musings, but I think we gotta deal with the tough times the same way as any other time, just do what ya gotta do to get to the next day.
Hopes for tomorrow and communities that you all wish to recognize.
Lucas: I hope that we get to keep playing music with and for each other. I really want to recognize the Cherub Dream Community. JB has assembled an amazing group of musicians and people. It was an incredible honor to be able to put our record out on Cherub alongside all the other bands. There’s a unique brand of Norcal Noise that’s brewing and Slugfeast is our contribution to that. The people we’ve met have all been really kind, and the community is not homogenous in any way. It’s really rare and we’re lucky to be a part of it.
Slugfeast’s self-titled is available now via on Cherub Dream Records.