If you’ve ever passed through Lynn Eusan Park on your way to class, you may have been met by the ground-thumping, gritty sounds of the University of Houston’s burgeoning underground indie rock scene.
The park’s stage has hosted various bands, practicing rhythmic melodies with the tune of electric guitar riffs and drawling bass roars.
We recently spoke with two of these rising acts: Orion 224 and Spectre Sunday.
Living the life as a rock star Coog ain’t easy, but here’s how these two bands make it work.
Orion 224
If you like: Cage the Elephant, Green Day, Wallows, The Backseat Lovers, Paramore, Blue October, Poppy
You should listen to: “Everything Will Be Okay” and “Mess”
Members:
Christian Gonzalez, lead singer and guitarist, senior business administration and marketing major;
Gavin Gonzalez, drummer, senior strategic communications public relations major;
Sean Sticker, guitarist, human resource development major;
Victor Perez, bassist, studying audio engineering at San Jacinto College
Who is Orion 224?
Christian: We are an indie alternative rock band who is very in touch with our roots in Houston, Texas. We’ve been around since 2016. My brother and I, Gavin, and Victor, the bass player, are the three original members of the band.
How did you guys come together?
Christian: We used to play crappy pop punk covers to Green Day and Blink-182 in high school.
Gavin: I started playing the drums when I was in the 5th grade and my brother picked up the bass guitar shortly after. Then my friend was in band class with me, Victor. He played in the percussion section with me, and he also picked up a guitar for the first time. It’s really fun to play music when you’re young. It’s become a lot more serious recently and a lot more like a business, but it’s still rooted in the same stuff. We love playing music.
What does Orion 224 mean?
Christian: When we were in high school, we were Orion, and then when we got to college, we became Orion 224. In high school, we came up with the name Orion. We needed a name to play in a talent show, and we hadn’t decided on one. There’s a song by Metallica called “Orion,” and a few of us liked Metallica a lot. We’re like, man, let’s just put Orion down as a placeholder and then everyone started calling us Orion. We added the 224 because we wanted to make it easier for people to find us on Spotify. The 224 is supposed to stand for today, tomorrow, forever.
Your biggest song, “Everything Will Be Okay,” is about to hit 1 million plays on Spotify. Tell us about the making of that song and music video.
Chris: “Everything Will Be Okay” was supposed to be a joke at first. It was supposed to be our take on an indie pop song, because we had never written an indie pop song. It’s been all pop punk music. In the song, no matter what happens between the people, the singer realizes that everything’s going to be okay. Life moves on. I feel like that was a good message. It’s our most popular song.
Gavin: For the music video we were able to make it with a friend in the Hispanic Business Student Association. Her name was Hannia Yeverino, who was the director as well as Rafa Elorza. They’re very experienced in filmmaking and I presented the idea to Hannia, because I’d seen some of her work. We’re very blessed that we were able to make the music video for the price that they gave us because they kind of gave us like the friend discount. Just a bunch of college students working together to make some cool art. They did a great job. We’re proud of it.
How do you guys navigate your studies, going to practice, going to the studio, writing songs and being UH students?
Chris: It’s a lot. We went on tour across the country this summer. Gavin, Sean and I both have internships. Victor works over the weekend. Monday through Friday is all school and all work. We try to meet twice a week. I’m about to graduate. Sean’s about to graduate. Gavin’s an officer in PRSSA as well. We’re finding a lot of our time is kind of going to school and our internships. It’s a lot of time management skills.
What’s in the future?
Album in March, let it breathe a little bit, and tour in the summer.
What do you love about being a Coog?
We love the University of Houston. Whenever we go on tour I always wear my UH merch. Everywhere I go I always promote the University of Houston. Hopefully people will see how much we love our school and we’ll always be a University of Houston band. We take a lot of pride in that.
Spectre Sunday
If you like: Smashing Pumpkins, Cage the Elephant, Twenty One Pilots, The Strokes, The Killers, Tame Impala, My Chemical Romance, Deftones
You should listen to: “Cheap Theatrics”
Members:
Gavin Howard, lead singer and guitarist, sophomore graphic design major;
Marco Morales, lead guitarist, senior political science major;
Manny Hilario, rhythm guitarist, junior finance major;
David, bassist, freshman architecture major
Who is Spectre Sunday?
Howard: We pride ourselves on having a wide range of sound and restricting ourselves, and I feel like that’s kind of what defines our band. Just a group of college students who make whatever we feel like making. I feel like that’s what we are. A collection of students making all sorts of stuff.
What does Spectre Sunday mean?
Howard: It comes from a natural phenomenon called Brocken spectre. If you’re at a high-altitude and it’s very misty, on a very bright day, there’s a weird phenomenon that happens where your shadow is like a rainbow shadow.
Morales: I like the idea of a specter being this projection of yourself that you’re in your own body and you’re looking ahead and you’re seeing yourself. I feel like that’s what I’m accomplishing anytime I create something. As far as the word Sunday, I mostly just like the way it sounds phonetically.
How did you guys come together to make the band?
Morales: Manny put up a bunch of posters around campus for anybody that was looking to make music. It was Manny, me, and two other people, and then they left. Then Gavin reached out to us through the flyer, and so ever since then, the core has been mainly the three of us.
Howard: I was doing a lot of solo stuff at the time so I sent them one of my songs and then that song ended up being redone to fit a sound that we could use.
Tell me about the moment you guys realized that this would be the band.
Morales: As we kept practicing, eventually, we kind of realized we really were beginning to have a sound. We performed at Frontier Fiesta last semester. That was a big, defining moment for the start of the band. We also released our first album, “In Vertigo,” around the same time.
What is it like being a student at University of Houston while in a group?
Morales: I’m a commuter so being in a group like this, I feel like I’ve genuinely enjoyed being on campus and having something to look forward to every day. It’s hard sometimes trying to juggle classes and the music, but at the end of the day I’m a student first. It honestly made me enjoy being a UH student more.
Howard: It can be difficult to balance. But we’re always practicing at the stage by the dorms. A lot of students, as they’re going to and from their classes, will come up and ask about our band.
Morales: I feel like practicing at that stage is probably one of the best things that we’ve done because it’s made us connect with a lot of people and get involved within the UH community.
What is the ultimate goal for Spectre Sunday?
Morales: To make music, get together and play. I just want to be able to just go out there, play shows and grow our friendship. I really enjoy hanging out with the band. It’s something that I look forward to. I just want to continue to explore what kind of sounds that we can make.
Howard: If we never gained another listener or another follower, I’d keep doing exactly what I’m doing. I feel like we make music pretty fast, and don’t plan on slowing down.
What can everyone look forward to in the future?
On Nov. 1, we have our first show within the Houston music scene at White Swan. Our upcoming self-titled album is coming out, hopefully this month. We’ve also been exploring with some heavier sounds and starting to experiment more.
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