Album Review: Democatessen by Sub/Shop
As a longtime denizen of Richmond, living here in 2025 is a bit weird. In a lot of ways, I don’t recognize this city anymore. Constant construction, waves of new inhabitants with no understanding of the area’s history, the slow disappearance of the many personal landmarks that once littered the landscape of the city where I’ve spent my entire adult life. It’s a bummer sometimes. What tends to cheer me up when I think too hard about it, though, is the realization that many of the people I grew up alongside are still here, still being creative, and still reminding me of what always made this city such a great place to live.
Sub/Shop is a collection of people who have that role in my life — people who’ve been playing in bands I’ve been going to see for over three decades now. The full list of this band’s previous projects is way too long to reproduce here, and some of the most noteworthy names on that list would if anything be a misdirection if I mentioned them now. As the kids say, if you know, you know. That said, if you want a more coherent understanding of how this band’s lengthy pedigree informs their debut release, Democatessen, there are certain projects we need to focus on. Flechette, Field Day, and Large Margin in particular all factor into the equation here.
All of these bands played guitar-driven post-hardcore music with a strong influence from the Washington, DC music scene of the late 80s and early 90s, and that sound acts as the foundation for Sub/Shop as well. Sub/Shop members Robert-Eugene Stubbs, Kyler O’Brien, and James O’Neill were all involved in at least one of these bands, and the three of them combine their powers here to produce a similar sort of heavy, rhythmic post-hardcore sound. These tracks are thick, powerful, and rockin’ — Democatessen is certainly not a low-energy listen. The incredibly powerful backbone provided by this rhythm section (I know, I know, in rock music the bass and drums are supposed to be the only rhythm instruments; I’m adding rhythm guitar in there. This is my review, deal with it) is the essential building block upon which everything else Sub/Shop does is built.
However, what really makes this band’s sound interesting is the way the other two members of the band both augment and undercut the driving force of Sub/Shop’s music. I’ve known lead guitarist Brendan Trache for many years now, and he’s always been one of the most interesting musicians in my personal orbit. An illustrative Brendan story: many, many years ago, one of my bands recorded at the same studio one of his bands had recently recorded at. The engineer mentioned that band’s record, and said that he found one of the guitarist’s choices consistently baffling. When he mentioned the band’s name, all of us guessed immediately that Brendan was going to be the baffling guitarist. He played us a song from the record, and isolated Brendan’s guitar tracks. “Listen to this guy! It’s almost like he’s trying to trip up everything the rest of the band’s doing.” One of my bandmates grinned and said, “I bet that’s exactly what he’s trying to do. That’s why he rules.”
Brendan is the sort of player whose choices are completely unpredictable, but always add a fascinating additional layer to what his bands are already doing. He’s not just there to thicken up the sound; he’s trying to offset what’s already being done in order to throw it into relief, make you hear the rest of the band with new ears. A great example of the way he does this in Sub/Shop shows up in the guitar lines that intertwine throughout Democatessen‘s final track, “Negative Discourse.” While at times, the two guitars — which are panned to opposite speakers, so they’re easy to differentiate — are playing pretty close to the same thing, they’re never quite in lockstep. And as the song goes on, the two tracks drift further afield from one another. The quiet breakdown that hits about two-thirds of the way through the song finds the two guitars trading off lead lines, each of which seems to disrupt and play off of the other in a fascinating manner that avoids the atonality you’d be most likely to predict in this situation in favor of a strangely dissonant harmony, one that is both fitting for the most melodic song on this album, and far more intriguing and memorable than what you’d expect from a typical post-hardcore band. I’m not even sure which of the dueling lead lines is Brendan’s contribution and which is Stubbs’s, but the overall result has Brendan’s fingerprints all over it.
In a move that resembles previous Brendan Trache project Brainworms, Sub/Shop has come together as a collection of seasoned veterans of Richmond underground music, who have somehow enlisted a singer I’ve never encountered in another band before. Granted, I’m not as deep in the local scene as I once was, so I may have missed the previous efforts of Sub/Shop’s vocalist, some dude named Chip, but I think if I’d ever heard him sing before, I would definitely remember him. His vocal approach is unusual, skipping the shouts and screams that are the go-to for most post-hardcore singers in favor of a sing-shout approach that has few analogues in the history of post-hardcore. A few reference points I can leave here are the needling laments of Honor Role/Coral vocalist Bob Schick, the hectoring rants of Circus Lupus vocalist Chris Thomson, and the sardonic declarations of Single Mothers frontman Andrew Thomson. But really, the vocal stylings on display in Sub/Shop are Chip’s own, vitally enhancing the melodic undercurrent that is a deep yet strong layer in Sub/Shop’s sound even as his vocal approach can hardly be called conventional, in melodic-singing terms. The way his ranting approach plays off the more melodic moments the guitars generate on this record is just as important to those passages as the moments when he approaches conventional melodic singing are to the harshest, most driving moments on the album.
Post-hardcore is a genre that’s existed for many years — at least 35, maybe as many as 40 depending on how you count it. There have been a lot of bands trying their hand at this genre during that time, and many of them have generated a capable roar that would entertain most fans of the genre for long enough to rock through a set or the running time of a release. However, bands that stand out within this realm are a bit harder to come by; there’s only ever going to be one Fugazi, after all. Thankfully, Sub/Shop have the kind of strong spirit and creative approach necessary to make a record with real staying power, one that will upend your expectations and send your ears into new twists on what probably sounded like very familiar territory only a second before. Democatessen may have flown beneath the radar of some Richmond music fans, but it definitely should not stay there. Hear me now and remember me later — this is one of 2025’s standout releases. If you have any affinity at all for loud guitars, driving rhythms, and heavy-rockin’ tunes, you need to have this album in your life.
Democatessen is available on CD from Handstand Records, and as a digital download on Bandcamp.
You can catch Sub/Shop in concert next on Friday, November 7th at Gallery5 alongside Young Widows, Dumb Waiter, and Lacey Guthrie. Admission is free as part of First Fridays festivities.
To stay up to date on future releases and shows from Sub/Shop, make sure to follow them on social media.
