Featuring Brandon Welchez of Crocodiles and David McDaniel from Young Boys, Flowers of Evil present a stripped back form of early punk and hardcore. Their new video “Throw Fists, Not Fits” sums it up the best.Taken from their recently released self-titled LP (that you can stream below), the video, filmed at the band’s record release party at New York City’s Cake Shop, captures the frantic energy of their live performances. Let's just say that it includes a lot of elbows, raised fists and colliding bodies.Welchez, a punk kid from San Diego formed Crocodiles with Charles Rowell from the ashes of jazzy punk combo The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. We had a chat to Brandon about the video and some of his favourites from the 90s San Diego scene.Noisey: The video was ‘directed’ by David Del Sur. What were the directions besides “don’t get the camera destroyed”
Brandon Welchez: Haha. Well, we didn't go into the show thinking we were going to make a video from it. Another friend, Rayan Ayash, happened to film a few songs and then when we decided to make another video he gave the footage to David, our bass player, to make something of. It's "directed" by David in the sense that he conceptualized the general look and feel and then put it all together. It looks very raw. You aren’t going to branch out into claymation or arty Kanye like narratives?
Maybe we would if we had money but for the time being we are making the most of what we have to work with. I get a 90s San Diego scene vibe in some of the songs on the new album. Do you have a favourite San Diego video from back then?
The Gravity Records VHS compilation has some really cool stuff on it but punk bands didn't really make videos per se back then like they do now. Nowadays labels need "assets" and other such unromantic stuff to help sell records through the blogosphere. Back then I think the majority of sales were still earned through a band being good live and touring a lot. That being said, here's some good San Diego stuff on video:I know it's not technically a San Diego band but the bassist Andy Coronado is from San Diego and these guys had a lot of connections to SD and they were on a comp from San Diego label Gravity.And I love this footage. Antioch Arrow put out some killer records.Again, no "music video" for this song but this is a great song.This is the best and most underrated punk band from San Diego. I saw these guys probably 100 times and they shredded at every show. Their LP that Gloom put out is absolutely crucial.'Flowers of Evil’ is available now through Deranged Records.
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Brandon Welchez: Haha. Well, we didn't go into the show thinking we were going to make a video from it. Another friend, Rayan Ayash, happened to film a few songs and then when we decided to make another video he gave the footage to David, our bass player, to make something of. It's "directed" by David in the sense that he conceptualized the general look and feel and then put it all together. It looks very raw. You aren’t going to branch out into claymation or arty Kanye like narratives?
Maybe we would if we had money but for the time being we are making the most of what we have to work with. I get a 90s San Diego scene vibe in some of the songs on the new album. Do you have a favourite San Diego video from back then?
The Gravity Records VHS compilation has some really cool stuff on it but punk bands didn't really make videos per se back then like they do now. Nowadays labels need "assets" and other such unromantic stuff to help sell records through the blogosphere. Back then I think the majority of sales were still earned through a band being good live and touring a lot. That being said, here's some good San Diego stuff on video:
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