Sean Kennedy: The needle and the damage done

Sean Kennedy seems in our Summer season 2024 Problem with cowl stars Wallows, Drain, Maya Hawke, the Linda Lindas, and Winnetka Bowling League. Head to the AP Store to seize a replica. 

Sean Kennedy’s physique seems to be just like the Fruit Roll-Ups tattoo tongue print of a Scorching Matter bin sale (in a great way). Of their Chinatown tattoo studio, the vocalist of the five-piece emoviolence outfit OLTH walks me via the marks (each bodily and psychological) that music has made on their life. 

A shaky-handed portrait of Ronald McDonald lovingly administered by OLTH’s guitarist Danny Evans stretches horizontally throughout Kennedy’s calf, a work-in-progress blackout swallow by bassist Dean Violante soars over their forearm, and the complete lyrics to Neil Younger’s “Movement Footage (For Carrie)” scratches throughout their ribs — to call a number of. If I have been to catalog every scribble, inside joke, and absolutely fashioned anthropomorphic motion determine etched into their pores and skin from head to toe, I would want a for much longer phrase depend. And by the point I completed, there’d be additions, overlaps, and new layers of private which means to unlock. As Younger as soon as mentioned three verses under Kennedy’s proper nipple, “I’d reasonably begin over again.” 

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The swallow is their most up-to-date — except for the free Ilegal Mezcal brand they obtained on their internal arm on the Neil Younger and Loopy Horse present in Forest Hills earlier that week. The live performance marked Kennedy’s first time seeing their musical/tattoo idol reside. “I used to be skeptical if it was going to reside as much as what I imagined. I like Neil Younger, and I do know he’s getting up there, however it introduced tears to my eyes. It was actually candy.” The mezcal brand, nevertheless, is much less heartfelt. Three loosely formed bunnies stack one on prime of the opposite in an obtuse reference to the Goddess Mayahuel, the Aztec personification of agave, who gave delivery to an “infinite quantity” of rabbits on the finish of a chilly winter or, merely put, three bunnies mating. The which means lies the place you make it.

The sexy bunny brand tattoo could also be solely random, however tucked inside the define of the swallow’s soon-to-be-filled silhouette, it serves a objective past the procreation of its species — to speak the impermanence, irony, and self-imbued which means that varieties Kennedy’s type in tattooing and music.

Kennedy spent their teen years taking NJ transit from their residence in Bergen County into New York Metropolis — the place they attended all-ages hardcore reveals at venues like ABC No Rio. 

Simply forward of the appearance of TikTok, and COVID-19, the scene of Kennedy’s early maturity was nonetheless comparatively IRL, and, with out the algorithmic push towards area of interest communities, proportionally homogeneous, however Kennedy adopted the beat of their very own drum. The wall of their studio is a formidable cornucopia of their explicit cultural tastes, with horror film collectibles, star-spangled sketches, Hi there Kitty stickers, and band merch collaged throughout it. 

In response to Kennedy, an ideal band tee must be “filthy, very well liked, and easy like a tattoo. One thing you need in your physique on a regular basis.” A couple of examples are strewn across the studio — Homicide in a Minute’s “i’ll cease stabbing once you cease screaming” hoodie and the long-lasting insignia of Black Flag’s My Battle tour merch. “Raymond Pettibon, superior artist,” Kennedy says of the person behind punk imagery from Sonic Youth’s Goo to the Black Flag brand, which is allegedly essentially the most tattooed image of all time. 

Although Pettibon wasn’t all too happy with the cultural saturation of the four-barred insignia, which got here to look on T-shirts and tattoo sleeves from the U.S. to Latvia, Kennedy’s method to trend is much less uniform. “I at all times felt like there was such a uniform for no matter area of interest it was. Indie children seemed like indie children. Punk stuff for essentially the most half was similar to cosplay, and it by no means labored. It was at all times like hitting a wall for me. There wasn’t something I may do or change in my type or look that will make me slot in.”

Now, 28 years previous, 6 toes 3 inches tall and twirling a lock of lengthy black hair, it is perhaps stunning to some that becoming in was ever a part of Kennedy’s MO. However between working at LVMH via most of their early maturity and looking for their footing inside a no-tattooing household, Kennedy’s early self-expression was steeped in compromise, and the confusion that comes with exploring gender and identification. Nevertheless wrought these years might have been, Kennedy took them in stride, permitting their upbringing to information them to who they’re in the present day.

The kid of an Irish Catholic Deadhead, Kennedy was destined to tattoo. When the skull-and-crossbones, lightning-bolt-laden visible language of their household’s sensibilities collided with the Marvel comedian books they collected all through their youth, a brand new universe was born. “I actually wish to develop on Jack Kirby’s artwork. Actually shiny pop-y stuff was at all times tremendous enjoyable to me. It’s additionally type of psychedelic and suits all these totally different classes of photos which can be burned in my mind.” The ensuing type seems to be one thing like a biblically correct angel and the forged of Braveness the Cowardly Canine put in a blender whereas on LSD, and it’s stunning. 

It’s the type of type you solely come upon via the uncommon mixture of experimentation, self-awareness, and chemistry generally misconstrued as “dumb luck” — the identical combine that makes OLTH so particular. OLTH’s five-piece outfit got here collectively by the use of adolescent debauchery and divine intervention within the New Jersey-to-New York hardcore scene. Every of its members — Kennedy, Evans, Violante, Ben Finkelstein, and Malcolm Hoyt — have hung out out and in of different bands earlier than coming collectively in 2022 to kind OLTH. Six months later, the band’s debut album, day-after-day is sOmeOne’s speciaL day, was born, and it’s been nonstop since.

“After we fashioned as a bunch, it was like, ‘OK, go give up your day job. Give all of it for this shit,” Kennedy recounts. 

The identify “OLTH” was cast within the hell-fires of a band group textual content. By the following morning, every member had marked the fated 4 letters throughout their arms, legs, or knuckles. Since then, the nonsensical monosyllable has taken on a profound, metaphorical significance for followers.

“It means nothing. It’s only a sound. It’s interchangeable. What’s that known as? Onomatopoeia? It’s what it appears like,” Kennedy confirms. “I like how followers have simply run with it. We’ll present up in locations like Boston or someplace random, and so they’ll present us that they freshly tattooed OLTH on their arm or their internal lip. That’s fucking cool. It’s all surprising, however it’s dope.”

Band members have additionally gotten intelligent with inventive license. Most lately Violante obtained an OLTH/THC tramp stamp tattoo the place a weed leaf and a bong make up the O and the L ala stoner rock meets hardcore within the basement of your native bodega. 

Although every member performs with the ironic, heterogeneous hodge-podge of digital tradition, their reverence of the legacies of punk, hardcore, metallic, and screamo music carries via. 

“The scenes look so totally different now than the reveals I used to be going to as a child,” Kennedy says. “It’s stunning. It’s so fucking cool to see all varieties of folks simply absolutely be themselves in no matter manner. I couldn’t be like that once I was 16 going to reveals.” 

If you happen to go searching at an OLTH present, you’ll see a large swath of punks, scene children, tweakers, LARPers, normies, crowdsurfers, and nose-bleeding headbangers. Band members have famously sustained accidents, from ribs damaged within the pit to faces cut up on guitar stems. Surprisingly, the one factor that’s stayed intact is the candy lyrical stylings of Kennedy’s whistle-scream. 

Kennedy’s shriek registers simply contained in the 20K hertz of the human listening to vary and is equidistant between Addison Rae’s “Von Dutch” remix scream and the early howls of Orchid. “No sore throat. No dropping my voice,” Kennedy boasts. “I used to play on this grindcore band once we have been children. After we performed a pair reveals, one thing simply switched in my mind — [I realized] doing the vocals that manner didn’t have an effect on me. It was similar to, ‘Yeah, preserve going up.’ So when it got here time to begin this undertaking, I used to be like, ‘Nicely, I suppose that’s what I can deliver to the desk.’”

OLTH’s type of screamo is equal components self-sacrificing and satirizing. Essentially the most heart-wrenching flip of lyric precedes essentially the most unintelligible sound you’ve ever heard: “I’ve wasted a lot time/All of it considering of you.” With out shying away from sentimentality, OLTH mood suits of terror with the type of instrumental tenderness often reserved for kicking rocks throughout an deserted parking zone in Western Massachusetts. From the rubble emerges a sound riddled with non-public jokes, private histories, and the will to make much more nonsense from the mayhem of contemporary existence. 

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