A university students-led metal rock band brings their sound to Chicago

Vocalist Joey Hernandez performs the first song of Porcupine’s set at their most recent show at Subterranean on October 19. Photo by Maddy Maes, 14 East.

Every college student in Chicago has a different idea of what makes up the Chicago music scene. Many Chicagoans’ Spotify Wrappeds would mirror the Lollapalooza headliners, while others have a passion for discovering independent artists. However, some may overlook Porcupine, an up-and-coming metal band.  

“Post-metal is definitely a label that we get a lot. We also call ourselves metal-core sometimes, which comes from the intersection of ‘metal’ and ‘hardcore,’” said Brian Clancy, Porcupine’s drummer and a DePaul English major.

Drummer Brian Clancy performs at the end of Porcupine’s set at Subterranean on October 19. Photo by Maddy Maes, 14 East.

“It’s got sort of the theatricality and the hugeness of metal, but it’s a lot [angrier] and a bit more chaotic than a lot of metal … and we definitely have a lot of political intensity to our music.”

It was a long road for the metal band Porcupine to get to where it is today. They came together in 2016 and have experienced their own growth and changes since. But the band’s story starts with the childhood of Joey Hernandez and Dawson Kiser – two of the founding members.

Hernandez’s earliest memories of music began with his family. He vividly recalls driving in the car with his grandparents, blasting the Beach Boys, watching music videos with his sister in her room, and listening to the top hits with his parents. After that introduction to music and exploring other genres, Hernandez discovered metal music. 

“My introduction to music wasn’t really rock music, it was just like popular music,” Hernandez said. “The music I ventured off into was more of the radio rock like Evanescence, Linkin Park, all of those bands that were on the radio that everyone liked.”

Guitarist Jake Evans plays his instrument while facing drummer Brian Clancy during the final song of their Wednesday night set at Subterranean. Photo by Maddy Maes, 14 East.

Hernandez picked up his first guitar at age 15 on Christmas morning, not really knowing where it was going to take him. With Green Day and Weezer serving as an inspiration, he started out playing their riffs and exploring the music of other bands to find his own sound.

“[I realized] that music can be more than a typical song, it can be like a soundscape … there’s a lot of different things you can do for music,” Hernandez said. “A lot of it was just through myself because I didn’t have a lot of music friends at the time, I was just riding solo through my music journey. No one told me to play guitar, I wanted to play guitar.”

For Kiser, Porcupine’s vocalist, family also played a major role in his early musical influence. Kiser recalls his sister making him burn CDs full of punk artists for her and listening to his dad’s metal music before venturing off into making music of his own and helping start Porcupine.

“I was in a couple of high school bands with people that would end up being in Porcupine and we were all just kind of messing around. I was playing guitar, doing some singing,” Kiser said. “It just came from jamming when I was younger and getting more serious about it.”

Porcupine is a different band today than it was at the start. Band members have come and gone, replaced with new ones, but the changes in membership did not change the goals of the band. For many in the group, Porcupine is the band that made them truly start to take music seriously. 

Bass player Joey Sewall gets the crowd warmed up in one of the first songs of their Subterranean set Wednesday night. Photo by Maddy Maes, 14 East.

The members have seen each other grow throughout the years. As they’ve grown up and chased new life opportunities, they now find themselves spread out across the country. While Porcupine’s roots are local, and you can hear them practicing on Saturday afternoons in Clancy’s suburban basement, Kiser resides in Pennsylvania.  

“When I was younger, I grew up in Michigan, [I] moved to the Chicago area through high school, then went out to Pittsburgh for college, and then am constantly commuting back and forth,” said Kiser. “I kind of have two lives almost, I spend some time in Chicago and other times in Pittsburgh.”

Porcupine is undergoing further changes now, but the band members are not going anywhere, other than Kiser’s commute back to Pennsylvania. The band is working on releasing an album in the near future. On a more conceptual level, the songwriters want to start changing the way that they write the music.  

“A lot of what we do is based on us … collaborating, sharing ideas, disagreements, and resolving things,” said Hernandez. “I want a lot of the new album to be us working together … coming together and making something special. Making something that’s ‘us’ and not just one person.”

Porcupine has performed shows in multiple states across the country, and they do not plan on slowing down anytime soon. 

Header photo by Maddy Maes, 14 East