Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Touchet.
Hi Christian, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I learned to play guitar jamming with a friend of mine, Jackson, while he learned to play the drums. We were both in high school at the time. At some point, the opportunity for a show came up, so I asked Kyle to join us on bass. Cole ended up following suit, and since Kyle was more of a guitar player anyways, Cole ended up taking over bass duties. Simon eventually got folded in as Jackson went off to college in Virginia in 2017, and that formed the basis of the band for almost six years.
I went to school in Athens while the rest of the band stayed in Atlanta, so for a long time, it was a lot of driving back and forth on weekends to work on music. All of our early recordings were done in my Mom’s basement on an eight-track tape machine that we split on. We made a lot of noise, so we moved that whole operation out of there as soon as there was a better basement to record in. We’ve only ever had one practice/recording space that wasn’t in a basement, but nothing we did there was very productive.
We would always play any show we could get when we were starting out. Most of them went terribly, but occasionally we would meet some good people. For probably the first three years of the band, we weren’t interested in appealing to anyone. We would crank our amps and clear rooms at almost every show, mostly because it felt good to be so loud and abrasive. I always felt more free playing to an empty attic.
Henry from Chunklet saw us play at 529, or maybe it was the Earl, sometime in 2019 and knew he was destined to be our uncle. He helped us put out a few 7″ records right around the start of the pandemic, which allowed us to experiment with our sound a good bit without having to think so heavily about the album format. Of course, things slowed down after that as they did for everyone. We’re currently sitting on an album that we’re putting out with him whenever the pressing plant decides to get around to it.
Currently, we’re without a drummer after finishing up in the studio this past weekend, Simon’s last sessions with us. There’s still a lot of work to be done on this new record, so that’ll be occupying our time for a bit. After that, I’m really not sure what our plan is. Maybe we get a new drummer. Maybe we don’t. Keeping it ambiguous is more fun.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I lost my brother to suicide in April 2019, immediately before we released our first album. It sent me into a pretty long depressive state that I’m still reeling from. I also lost my stepdad the same way just a few months after I graduated from college in 2021. Kyle and Cole had two brothers pass away within the last couple of years as well. It’s all been rough. You can write about these things and pretend like they make you more creative, but I just don’t see it. Losing a loved one is an all-consuming thing. You just can’t think about anything else when it happens. I’ve done my fair share of processing through the music, but it’s taken years to work up the energy to really finish any of it. It’s an exhausting thing to write about. We played a show in Athens just a few days after my brother’s passing and I can still remember how it felt to take the stage in the midst of it all. It was cathartic but also incredibly isolating. Even with the rest of the band being up there with me, I couldn’t help but feel alone.
Of course, the pandemic was also a huge struggle for us. Many bands seemed to be able to utilize the free time to be more productive than ever, but I think it just exacerbated the way I was already feeling given that it hit only a year after my brother’s passing. We got very little done during that period. It didn’t help that there weren’t any shows to force us to get together. Since things have opened back up, we’ve thankfully been much more productive. Still, it feels impossible to recapture the energy for writing and recording that we had back in the day. Life gets in the way.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I think we make noise rock. I’m not always sure because musical labels are all so blurry these days, but we are definitely loud and we are definitely dissonant more often than not. I’d say that’s mostly what people know us for, and we’ve been pretty consistent over the years. Although, I think these last few years, we’ve taken a much more subdued turn.
I’ve been told numerous times that attending one of our shows makes people want to murder someone. I hope nobody ever does that. I think people view our music, especially my singing, as angry, but I would describe it more so as anguished. I get up on stage and I cry in front of an audience. It probably makes people uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the point.
I’m very proud of the music that we are making right now. We’ve been trying to get this album done for years, and it feels good to finally be on the home stretch after finishing up in the studio. I’m really not sure how people are going to receive it when it eventually comes out, but it captures the feelings that I want it to and says the things I want it to say, which is all that really matters to me.
What were you like growing up?
I was a lonely kid. I had trouble making friends in school, something which still doesn’t come easily to me. I was obsessed with Godzilla and loved playing video games as much as I could. I think I was just an off-putting kid, which led me to spend a lot of my time on the internet. That’s how I really got into music: digging through forums and lists trying to hear every great album that had ever been made. Really, I was just trying to find things that interested me more than what I was hearing on the radio or out of my parents’ speakers.
I wasn’t a very musical child though. I recall being reprimanded in my elementary school band class for neglecting to practice. The band teacher made me face the corner and practice rolls by myself while the rest of the class rehearsed. That same snare Vangas has used since we’ve been together. I quit the next year, mostly because of the teacher. I played the trumpet for a year before that, which I always wish I stuck with. I think I gave it up because it was either too hard or they didn’t use it in music that I liked at the time. I had a penchant for never finishing anything as a kid. Martial arts, scouts, homework – if I didn’t want to do it, I most likely wasn’t going to. I probably should have though.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://vangas.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vangaseternal/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vangaseternal/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@vangaseternal
- Other: https://vangas.bandcamp.com
