An Update On Beach Rats (members of Minor Threat, Lifetime, Bouncing Souls)

Image via @beachratsnj Instagram

Update: Hear Beach Rats’ debut song ‘Lonely For The Night’ here.

Punk fans were excited to learn of the new band Beach Rats, which features vocalist Ari Katz (Lifetime, Mitylion, Miss TK & The Revenge), guitarist Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Bad Religion, Dag Nasty), bassist Bryan Kienlen (Bouncing Souls), guitarist Pete Steinkopf (Bouncing Souls), and drummer Danny “Dubs” Windas. The band’s only current web presence is an Instagram account, but I wanted to learn more, so I called up Ari Katz for a brief interview.

Ari told me that the Beach Rats’ debut EP is complete. “It’s all done,” he said, “it’s mixed, it’s mastered. We did it in a day, just busted it out. It’s five songs.” Ari said that Beach Rats are very excited to release the EP and perform live in the near future – but they don’t have specific plans for those things just yet.

He said of the recording session: “We did it so quickly, with no overdubs, no nothing. We recorded it like I haven’t recorded in a very, very long time. Just getting a good take and that’s it. It was fun to make music like that – it was exhilarating.”

Ari also described the formation of Beach Rats. “It kinda came together like this,” he said. “About a year ago, there was a benefit show for Dave Franklin from Vision, who passed away. My band Lifetime and the Bouncing Souls were friends with Dave and I grew up with Dave when I was younger, before Lifetime. We wanted to play the show, but it didn’t work out; Lifetime and Bouncing Souls couldn’t do it. Pete from the Souls called me one day, and he was like, ‘Hey, what if we learn a few covers and just do a set?’ They’re friends with [Beach Rats drummer] Dubs, who lives in town, he used to roadie for them. He’s a sick drummer. We just picked some covers and practiced a couple times and played this show. Then we were joking around, like, ‘Oh, we should just do a hardcore band.’ Pete was like, ‘Brian Baker wants to do a hardcore band.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, right.’ The next thing I knew, we set up a practice. That was the first time I met Brian – at our first practice. We just started writing, and that’s how it all happened. It’s me and Brian Baker, Pete Steinkopf, Bryan Kienlen, and Dubs. … We all just really were psyched to play some fast hardcore with mosh parts. It just worked out that we were all ready to do it at the same time.”

Stay tuned to Culture Creature for more Beach Rats information (and music) as soon as it’s available. You can also listen to our interviews with Lifetime guitarist Dan Yemin and Minor Threat vocalist Ian MacKaye.