Oddman Out

For the local five-piece band, Oddman couldn’t be a more fitting title. Not quite metal and not quite hardcore, their sound has been described as both of these and everything in-between. If you’re new to the band, Oddman plays truly heavy, high-energy music that explodes in an incendiary live show — that’s really all you need to know.
“Genuinely, we are all going off [on stage],” says frontman Scott Wallace over pizza at Woodstock’s. “I’m not consciously thinking about what I should be doing for the crowd, I’m just doing it.”
“We’ve all been doing this a long time,” bass player Zach Ahern adds. “To just stand there, would be a total disgrace.”
It seems that this sentiment echoes the manner in which Oddman has handled itself since its inception. Though their refusal to align themselves with a particular school of heavy music has alienated fervent fans of hardcore and the more extreme forms of metal, Oddman has been able to secure themselves a large following in Chico’s relatively small market. However, the band’s long relationship with Chico hasn’t always been a pleasant one — over the course of their history, Oddman has had to take the good with the bad.
“When I first got here, I saw Deathstar at Juanita’s,” answers Scott when asked how he’s seen Chico’s music picture evolve in the time he’s been involved with it. “Juanita’s made me what to play music in a band, locally. It made me realize that you could be in a band, and it’s not an unbelievable thing. Deathstar at Juanita’s was it for me. Since then, I think it has changed for the negative at first, but I think it’s starting to come back a little bit now. I honestly do. There’s a lot of good bands, a lot of genres out there.”
“The music scene changes depending on how hard bands are willing to work,” drummer Cayle Hunter elaborates. “Right now you see bands like Reverse Order and Red With Envy [who are both opening for Oddman at their record release party at The Brick Works]. The reason why we’re playing with those bands is because they’re two bands who bust their balls to get their names out there. They take their bands seriously. That’s what helps do things like resurrect the music scene.”
One lingering problem that remains in Chico, however (as in most other local music scenes), is the lack of all-ages venues. According to Cayle, this is a problem not only because it cuts down on a scene’s diversity — both in bands and audiences — but it also harms a band’s ability to form a bond with its audience and build a loyal following.
“There used to be more all-ages places, and now if it’s all-ages, it’s got to be [at The Brick Works],” he explains. “When you have all-ages venues where bands just starting out can get a show, even if they suck, there might be a gem in there. But it gives the kids an attachment to them; they can grow up with the band and grow up with the music in a place where they can see live music. It’s not like that right now. You grow up at The Brick Works, and that’s your only choice in live shows.”
Other problems in trying to survive as a band in Chico stem, according to Scott, from an apathetic college-crowd that seems to be more concerned with drunken revelry than seeing live music, and the obvious constraints of performing in a town that is, unfortunately, neatly situated in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, far away from big city exposure.
“It’s tough playing shows with bands from big towns, and they have all these connections to distributors and labels and stuff,” guitarist Justin Godfrey relates. “Just because they’re from a big town and they have that chance.”
But Oddman isn’t a group that will buckle under adversity, as their aggressive sound might suggest. The band has dealt with it their whole career and has always come out on top. Oddman has had great success selling their two full-length albums —
It All Starts Here and Hollow Eyes — locally, but with their third release, the eponymous Oddman EP, the group hopes to spread the word outside of Chico’s cozy confines. The five-song CD acts as a kind of anthology, featuring one song off of each of their previous albums — “See Intensity” from It All Starts Here and “Mike Hogan” from Hollow Eyes — a re-recording of “Rockstar” by the band’s current lineup and two new songs, which really have the members of Oddman excited about this release.
“The new songs were basically recorded because it’s our best stuff, and the EP is going to be used for industry purposes and whatnot,” Scott says. “But they are, by far, the best songs we’ve ever done…[The new songs] have more melody, and they’re more well-rounded…it’s the heaviest, yet easiest to understand stuff we’ve ever done. It’s really good, well, at least we think so.”
“We were so stoked on these new songs, we had to put them on a CD,” Cayle adds. “So we basically invented this EP, so when we go out on the road to a new place, and they’ve never heard our other two CDs before, they can buy our [inexpensive] EP, and if they don’t like that, they’re not going to like us, period. But basically, this EP is just an excuse to get those two new songs on there.”
On June 26th, Oddman will throw a CD release party for their new EP at The Brick Works. Scott hopes that this show will help get the band back out on the road to tour, something they’ve been longing to do for a while.
“Honestly, this band is going stir crazy, and we want to get on the road — we can’t stay in one place for too much longer,” Scott says.
Regardless of the many complications of living as a band in Chico, the members of Oddman assert that this is their home, and despite all the ups and downs, seem to have genuinely enjoyed and appreciated their time here.
“We have so many friends here,” Scott says. “I could go down the line and name drop all our friends — all the bands and people. This is our home, but at the same time, being a band and trying to work, there are a lot of limitations, but we’re working on it. If everything works out right, we’re going to be all over the country.”

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