The Frights

A boisterous West Coast surf-punk group that started life as an inside joke, the Frights nevertheless scaled the indie ranks from their modest beginnings on San Diego’s Postmark Records—home to their initial EPs and self-titled 2013 long-player—to a berth on the storied Epitaph roster, which issued their 2018 set Hypochondriac.

The Poway, California natives came together in summer 2012 when guitarist-vocalist Mikey Carnevale, bassist-vocalist Richard Dotson, and drummer Adam Lomnitzer, all fresh high-school graduates, began pooling ideas that fused surf melodies, old-school punk energy, indie noise textures, and occasional doo-wop vocal turns into tracks that were simultaneously hook-laden, hard-hitting, and tongue-in-cheek. During a Christmas break from college in December 2012, the trio booked a one-off show simply to test the material in public before shelving it, yet a Postmark representative in attendance was impressed enough to propose a 7-inch release. Accepting the offer, the band delivered the five-song Dead Beach EP in March 2013; two months later Fur Sure appeared, and by year’s end their self-titled debut album was out. Vinyl continued to flow while the group gigged relentlessly, yielding a 2014 single pairing “Tongues” with “Puppy Knuckles” and a split EP alongside Death Lens. Landing on Dangerbird Records in 2015, the Frights had spent months petitioning FIDLAR’s Zac Carper for support slots; Carper countered by offering to helm a full-length instead. He produced You Are Going to Hate This, issued in February 2016, which also marked the arrival of new drummer Marc Finn. Shifting to Epitaph, the band reteamed with Carper for their next studio effort, Hypochondriac, released in August 2018, followed the next year by the concert document Live at the Observatory.