Sederra At The Roxy, Saturday June 15th 2013, Reviewed

Sederra’s heat treatment

On Saturday night, Sederra, a band from Orange county I saw last year opening for Jack Grisham’s side project The Manic Low, were part of KROQ Locals Only Showcase at the Roxy, and the quintet gave an explosive punk-rock show to the audience. I mean some songs sounded more straight rock’ n’ roll than punk, but the dynamic attitude on stage was definitively pure punk.

On stage, they exploded in all directions, never stayed still but rather randomly moved against each other, like a pack of boiling molecules. As a result, I could not take any good picture and had a hard time to follow what’s was going on since their moves were as unexpected as they were tireless. Vocalist Tom Schmitt was leading the scene with his semi-aggressive semi-humoristic way of moving and leaning down, whereas guitarists Mike Doherty and Tony Warner and bassist Eric Bootow were bouncing around him like a bunch of free electrons. Musically, they were not necessarily interested by repeating what numerous and more famous punk bands from Orange County have already done (and they are a lot of them), but they were obviously showing some of these numerous influences.

I immediately thought about Bad Religion, mostly because of Schmitt’s way of expressive singing and stage dance-antics, but some articles about Sederra also mention Fugazi, Hot Water Music, Quicksand, Foo Fighters, Rise Against, Minor Threat, NOFX as well as more classic rock bands, and it would be a waste of time to give an exhaustive list. Orange County has been a very fertile soil for these bands to grow and Sederra is following the steps of many others.

These guys, who have previously played in many bands (such as Longfellow) before forming Sederra, are sort of music veterans and have been nominated for Orange County Music Awards twice, once for ‘Best Punk Band’ and another time for Best Rock Band’, which says a lot about their music. On Saturday night, I thought they definitively sounded more hard rock than anything else during these last songs, and you could tell they knew what to do on stage with their commanding guitars in constant assaults and their fire-in-the-belly punk energy. And I forgot, they covered the New Wave song ‘The Metro’, with a sort of furious punk energy,… one more way to scramble the genres.

Setlist

Fly to the Sun
Actions
Smash
World
The Metro
Inconsiderate
Autumn addict
The Shakedown
Beat the thunder
Last train coming