LIVE IN CONCERT: WITH ANDREA

I think I am just going to have to accept the fact that from now on every time I go to Velour I am going to be swimming in a sea of children who dress like my oldest siblings did in high school. I saw low rider jeans, and I thought I was going to faint. Why god? Why? I thought we put the ‘00s Charlie’s Angels era behind us.

With Andrea is an indie rock metal band? In the days before Andrea, Montana and Adrian of the band Cinders called them Metal Mountain for their harder sound.*

Now, are they the metal bands of the ‘80s? No. They’re not Pantera.** And they’re not Slayer, but it’s clear that there is a heavier influence of bands like TOOL or songs like “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath that With Andrea takes—which isn’t too common to the Provo scene—and blends with the classic indie tones better than the Magic Bullet from a late night infomercial.

I think that’s what I’m appreciating most about the indie scene right now here in Utah. It’s not one sound. There are omnipresent elements of indie all while borrowing from eras that contrast heavily with the traditional indie sound. They dips their toes in these heavier sounds but never fully commit to the belly flop, and I think that’s why they’re thriving in the scene.

The crowd sure eats it up. The band had the first ten rows pulsating like someone’s chest in an Alien movie right before the baby Xenomorph bursts forth, chanting “Hey! Hey! Hey!” like they’re in a low-budget production of Fiddler on the Roof.   

They can rock their hearts out with more crunch on their guitars than Jif Extra Crunchy, and the very next song they can slow it down and have you swooning like how most heterosexual women circa 2011 (and maybe until the end of time) gushed over Ryan Gossling in the classic rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love.

They can shred, and they can serenade. What more could you ask for?

So who makes up this band with such an eclectic sound? On bass (starting with bass because as a former bass player, we don’t get enough love), we have a mix between Carrot Top, the deaf guy from Rat Race, and the lead singer of Eve 6. On lead guitar, we have Duke Weaselton, every role Tim Blake Nelson has done (but with a mustache) and the lead singer from Greta Van Fleet. Last but not least, the lead singer and the drummer look like Danny McBride’s character from Hot Rod was split into two people.

*Before With Andrea they went by Middle Mountain.
​**But I would love to see a true metal band of that caliber play Velour. It’d be the funniest thing ever.