Saccharine Trust

Saccharine Trust arose in the early 1980s when vocalist Joaquin, who also went by Jack, Brewer joined forces with guitarist Joe Baiza. What began as a noisy, dissonant quartet openly hostile to standard rock conventions gradually shifted into a more intricate yet still abrasive unit that fused rock and jazz. Many of their pieces started from minimal prompts such as a lone riff or straightforward drum figure, then quickly veered into unplanned territory through collective improvisation.

Although SST, the label run by Greg Ginn of Black Flag, first gained notice for the raw, high-volume guitar assault of Southern California hardcore, it also documented groups that tested the style’s outer edges. Acts including the Minutemen, Universal Congress Of, and Saccharine Trust folded in portions of 1970s progressive rock, avant-garde jazz, and funk-driven grooves alongside heavy metal-flavored riffs, yelled vocals, and sheer loudness. Saccharine Trust’s experiments did not always succeed, and certain passages lapsed into empty bombast, yet the band could be gripping when it restrained its more excessive impulses, especially on stage. One clear highlight remains the 1986 album We Became Snakes.

The group never ranked among the foremost Los Angeles outfits of the early 1980s, but it stood apart by introducing varied textural layers into a scene otherwise built on volume and reduction. Such choices placed Saccharine Trust on paths few other Southern California bands considered, making it different from rather than greater than its peers and therefore somewhat more arresting. By the early 1990s Brewer had formed the Jack Brewer Band, while Baiza assembled the groovy, high-energy Universal Congress Of.