The word “supergroup” gets thrown around a lot. No matter the genre or status of the members, the results of these groups are often dismal, but sometimes it works out well. This is the case with Caged View: formed in 2022 when former members of San Francisco hardcore band Allegiance—Duane Harris (guitar), Ross Trenary (guitar), and Mike Quirk (bass)—combined their talents with vocalist Pat Piccolo and drummer Joey Raygoza. After previously releasing a demo EP in two parts, Caged View presents their new EP, New Fuel For An Old Fire, perfectly encapsulates this band.
New Fuel For An Old Fire captures many of the touchstones of punk rock and hardcore. Songs like “Compassion Fatigue,” “Highest Standard of Life,” and “Fact Checking in the Age of Conspiracy,” embody the classic DC hardcore sound. “Time Blind” is about as mellow as this album gets—a little melodic in the middle with a warm ending. However, this reprieve is only temporary before the drums of “Survival Pending” ramp the album back up to speed. “Keys to the City (Noir Still-Life)” may be slower than most of the tracks on this EP, but it is no less heavy. Caged View’s bone-breaking guitars and pounding drums may be familiar to the genre, but undeniably, they do some exceptional work with it. We caught up with Duane and Pat to talk about the new EP
I can see that Caged View is composed of different bands. How did you all decide to start a band together?
Duane: Our drummer, Joey (King Woman, Lies, Skin Like Iron) and I tried starting a band years ago that dissolved before playing a show, so I always had him in the back of my head as someone I’d like to play music with again.
Eventually, we started jamming some stuff that I had written during the height of the pandemic to test the water. This was during the time when people were super sketched out to be inside together, but once life slowly started to normalize again, we recruited my former Some Still Believe and Allegiance bandmates, Ross Trenary and Mike Quirk to play second guitar and bass. Eventually, Pat joined on vocals, who we all knew from his time as the vocalist of Embrace The End and also Beneath The Ashes.
Pat: We have all played in different bands over the years, but have all known, been friends with, and played shows with each other since about 2001. With that, there is a shared history that made it feel easy and natural for us all to come together and play music that we all enjoy and feel connected to. Though some of our old bands are sonically different from one another, and different from this project specifically, it seemed seamless and organic for us to all jam and create music.
You’ve released a demo before this, did any of the songs on New Fuel For An Old Fire evolve from any of those songs?
Pat: In many ways the demos are a bunch of exploring and trying things out, giving us a foundation to build something somewhat different and a little more intentional together for the new ep. We had originally intended to revisit some demo material, but by that time we hit the studio, we ended up only recording new material.
Duane: Just to clarify, while we have two demos online, they are just two parts of the same demo tape. We just didn’t want to release 7 demo songs at the same time, so we dropped them in two different volumes. The physical release, released by New Knee Records is all the songs on the same tape. To piggyback off what Pat said, the demo tracks are certainly us trying to find a sound that works for us, and as the primary songwriter in the band, there were some ideas that I was excited to experiment with, and some others that I’d probably not try again. Either way, it was certainly a great foundation to build off of as we wrote New Fuel For An Old Fire, and I’m happy to see the direction that the band went in. Oh, and I just remembered that there actually is one song on the record that has existed from the demo-era called “Fact Checking In The Age of Conspiracy” that was written back in 2021, but was never completed. We decided to work on it some more in 2024 and it ended up becoming a pretty cool song that I’m glad made the record.
What was your mindset with these songs? Were you aiming for a different sound within the genre?
Duane: My only mindset was writing fun music that’s not necessarily super “hardcore” but more-so on the hardcore-adjacent tip. Caged View is interesting for me, because sonically and genre-wise, I’m still not sure where we fit in or even how to describe the band at times. We can play with fast hardcore bands like Urban Sprawl or Discourage, but we also fit in well with more post-hardcore/punk stuff like No Lights or Minus Numbers, or even something more chaotic like Ex Everything. I suppose that this is all a good thing, though!
Pat: With this project, we really were looking to explore whatever direction sounded cool to us in the moment. Some of the material that Duane came to the table with could have fit into completely different genres, but as we worked through it, we came to a conclusion that if we liked it, we could play it and see it through.
Tell us a bit about the singles you’ve released (New Fuel for an Old Fire and Time Blind) and the latest one Lighting Out?
Pat: New Fuel For An Old Fire, both musically and lyrically, is urgent and a bit unsettled. Lyrically, it’s an urgent reaction to what’s happening in the world around us, and sonically, it’s energetic, bordering on chaotic at parts, but still cohesive and direct. It’s more a battle cry than a eulogy. “Time Blind” is probably our least categorical in sound. It starts hard and has a lot of melody tucked into the rest. Lyrically, it’s probably the most introspective, but its theme is one that touches us all – life and death. “Lighting Out” is probably our most “hardcore” sounding track. Lyrically it’s basically about blowing up your life in small and big ways and then the struggle and time there after, picking up the pieces.
Duane: Regarding “Time Blind,” this song is one that I’m proud of due to never writing music quite like this before. As Pat mentioned, the song starts very aggressive, and then as the song progresses, the verses and choruses take on some catchiness and melody that eventually lead to an outro that I can only describe as something that was influenced by 90’s emo/screamo bands, although I’m not sure if it comes off that way. I even got our buddies from No Lights, Matt O’Brien & Israel Bransan to help on some vocal melodies and a guitar lead in the outro. It came out so cool and I’m really looking forward to hearing what people think of the song.
Are any of you active in other bands right now or is Caged View the main focus?
Pat: I have a pretty busy life outside of the band so Caged View is my main focus, however, my old band, Embrace The End is going to play some shows in the near future, so some energy is going to that as well.
Duane: I have another band called Malinformants, that’s kind of a hardcore/melodic punk hybrid. If you took fast straight-up hardcore with politically and socially charged lyrics and threw it in a blender with some good ole’ fashion melodic East Bay Punk, you’d have Malinformants. Outside of that, Allegiance is gearing up to play again soon, so that’s keeping Ross and I busy lately and is turned out to be a lot of fun playing with those guys again.
Our drummer, Joey stays pretty busy with King Woman, and they’ve gone on to do some pretty cool things over the years. I’m proud of what he’s done in that band. He also has a fast hardcore band called Firearm who play once in a great while and are super cool.
Are there any tour dates beyond the record release show?
Pat: We plan to do some short stints playing out whenever we can. Right now, we are looking towards some PNW shows in the summer. If people will have us, and we can make it out, we are happy to play wherever we can!
Duane: As Pat mentioned, we are currently working on booking a PNW weekend of shows that will likely take place late-summer or early fall with our friends, No Lights. Outside of local shows, including our record release show on May 10th in Oakland, we are going to play shows that our schedules allow. At this point as a band, we’ve played up and down California and I’m sure we will continue to do so, but I know we’re itching to play some other places and help push this record!
New Fuel For An Old Fire is out on GGT Records and streaming everywhere on 4/25/25.
