Koi was born out of two Sacramento based, youthful (as in fucking high school), but extremely creative punk/ska/hardcore bands, The Pedestrians and The Connection. They recorded two albums, one split with a - way ahead of its time - metalcore band, Beyond All Hope, and the next was Tropic of Carmichael, named after Koi's home town. Aurielle Zeitler of Beyond All Hope joined the band, and Koi eventually changed the name to Namor, who then went in to the studio with Billy Anderson (Neurosis, High On Fire). It was during this session that the band changed their name for a moment to Metridium Fields and finally Giant Squid before the record was finally finished (which the band then called Metridium Field. The only members of Koi left in Giant Squid are guitarist/vocalist, Aaron Gregory and bassist, Bryan.
The band went through a plethora of members, (mostly drummers), many of which came back during the bands current existence as Giant Squid (JD, Dave, Aurielle). The songs that become Giant Squid's breakthrough, doom rock/whatever album, Metridium Field, were written and performed live while the band was known as Koi. Considering they were mostly a punk/new wave influenced ska/reggae band, this was a huge shift in song writing style, which eventually prompted the name change to Namor and so on. But before this, heavy guitar riffs were being coupled with spacey sounding reggae/ska rythms in a way that were surprisingly fluent and embraced none of the cliches of either genres, but rather formed a strange sound all of it's own, with songs running up to nine minutes in length. Aaron would sing like new wave Dracula in a bad Morrissey cover band, with lyrics that would embrace anything from socio/political/environmental themes (trying to be Citizen Fish) to extremely personal and emotional subjects like ridiculous post high school relationships and dead dads and shit.
Basically it was a bunch of kids who grew up obsessed on bands like the Subhumans, Citizen Fish, Culture Shock, Dead Kennedys and Bad Religion, and worshiped their local heroes like The Yah Mohs, Filibuster, The Deftones, Hella, Legs on Earth, F.B.V., Pocket for Corduroy, and Far, making music with absolutely no boundaries set to their song writing, creativity, and experimentation as growing musicians, regardless if they should of or not. And honestly, for better or for worse, there really isn't anything else out there that sounds like Koi.
All songs recorded/produced by Joe Johnston at the Pus Cavern North recording studio, North Highlands, CA.
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