What do you get when you cross a guy who sells CDs for “three or five dollars”, a musician with less
that five CDs, and a couple of other guys with instruments?
You get the band The Yequals.
Three and a half years and three CDs ago, four guys from San Antonio got together and decided to call themselves The Yequals.
That group of guys was Ben Drezek, Derek Badillo, Dominick Hinojosa, and Adam Kelley. Their sound was something best undescribed
by me and left for you to discover yourself. Their influences range from Kiss to “anything by Mike Patton”; and
they’re one of those bands that you have to actually sit down and listen to in order to get the full effect. “You
can’t just go to a show, hear one song and be all ‘oh yeah that’s The Yequals’”.
“We’ve been playing since we first started. We recorded our first CD two months after we first got together
and started practicing.” Said the band’s guitarist/ vocalist Ben Drezek. “We haven’t gone a month
without a show either.”
Three CDs in three and a half years is an accomplishment for any band, but these guys have done it. The first being an
Ep titled “Legalize Murder” followed by “Alberta” and the latest released in June of 2004 “Consume-Regurgitate-Resume”;
plus they’re in the studio right now recording their fourth album which has yet to earn a name. “When we go into
the studio, we’ll record an album and while we’re waiting for it to get finished, we’ve already written
half of our next album.”… “Our song writing style is pretty unanimous . I’ll bring in the skeleton
of a song into practice and we’ll collectively finish it as a group. If one of us doesn’t like one part of the
song, we’ll all pretty much agree not to play it.”
And that kind of cooperation and dedication has driven the band to tour between Texas and California, and in Louisiana.
Plus it has earned them spots on the same stage with such national acts as As I Lay Dying, Mae, Story of the Year, and
(my personal favorite) Vendetta Red.
With a sound that is “not quite fast, not quite punk, not quite metal, sometimes slow, and always loud” this
band will rock your face, your dog, and your mom with enough energy left to disturb the neighbors and corrupt their children.
In their words “this is loud… fucking LOUD!!!”
-Mandee Stock-
