Dance Like the Dead guitarist Mark Wilson shreds the guitar at Marlboro Manor on Jan. 12. Credit: Courtney Roger
Columbus mathcore band Dance Like the Dead is making moves in the local music scene.
Dance Like the Dead consists of four members, including vocalist James Hardin, drummer and backup vocalist Archie Falandys, guitarist Mark Wilson and bassist Sandro Zambrano. Though each member comes from a distinct music background, Falandys said they are all drawn to the intense and elaborate sounds the mathcore genre has to offer.
“I like music that gives you whiplash,” Falandys said. “It can be the heaviest breakdown you’ve ever heard or just like some weird, plucky, pretty stuff.”
Hardin, a fourth-year in political science and sociology, said mathcore can be described as a subgenre of hardcore punk and metalcore with complex and fluctuating rhythms. He said the chaotic genre was a perfect fit for the group of four.
“It’s a genre where you don’t necessarily have to fit into a specific sound,” Hardin said. “It’s such a mix of so many different sounds.”
The band released its first three demos on Jan. 23. With indefinite plans to perform nearly every month — the group’s next show is scheduled for Feb. 17 at Dirty Dungarees, a local music venue and laundromat — Hardin said Dance Like the Dead has been largely embraced by the Columbus music scene.
“After we dropped those demos, a lot of people in the hardcore scene are reposting it and reaching out to us saying they really enjoyed it,” Hardin said. “We’re going to get probably a couple more songs ready to go and then ideally go somewhere to do a studio recording of an EP or even a full album.”
Archie Falandys headbangs to the beat of his own drums at Marlboro Manor. Credit: Courtney Roger
It was at local screamo band For Your Health’s performance at Dirty Dungarees Feb. 10, 2023 — a band of which Zambrano was coincidentally the drummer years prior — that Hardin and Falandys first met, effectively initiating the process of Dance Like the Dead’s creation, Falandys said. He said despite only meeting one another roughly a year ago, the band’s shared friendship has grown strong.
“I’ve been in bands where I’m like, ‘I’ll play music to you but I don’t want to hang out with you,’” Falandys said. “And that’s not the case here.”
Labeling itself as a “queer band,” Hardin said the group feels at home in the accepting environment of the local scene. In fact, he said the hardcore punk community specifically is widely regarded as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community.
“In the Columbus scene, the queer community is a big part of the hardcore scene,” Hardin said. “Lyrically, my stuff is either about struggling with mental health, depression, gender, sexuality [or] communism.”
Falandys agreed.
“People like to hear songs from people that they see as like them,” Falandys said. “I saw myself in a lot of queer artists growing up and that helped me a lot.”
The band recalled a time in which a neighbor knocked on Hardin’s door after the group’s first practice. Despite fearing its music would be met with a complaint, Dance Like the Dead gained its first fan — who was listening to the band play from the sidewalk outside — that day.
“I was like, ‘She’s probably going to be so p*ssed that we were playing really loudly,’” Hardin said. “I opened the door, and she was just like, ‘You guys sound so good.’ Like, aw that’s so sweet, we had our first super fan.”
Despite its deep love for the local scene, the band has hopes of branching out and playing venues outside of Columbus one day, Falandys said.
“They don’t know who we are, we have to go introduce ourselves,” Falandys said. “We play to five people, melt their faces and then we hope every five people will bring two friends to the next one.”
More information about Dance Like the Dead’s Feb. 17 show can be found on the band’s Instagram page.
