Pinning down Itchy-O has always been one of the hardest jobs in the Denver music scene, as is describing the 50-member act without shredding a thesaurus.
The band’s reputation for raucous concerts — often shocking unsuspecting music fans with elaborate, percussion-driven pop-up shows and occult themes — precedes it. That gives the Denver group a mystique that goes beyond its shadowy, carefully controlled image, and its spot-on Dead Kennedy leader (and part-time Boulder resident) Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label.
For its 10th anniversary, Itchy-O is taking over the Mercury Cafe with its wildly popular Hallowmass performances. As of this writing, the five-night, 10-set run is not yet sold out, with tickets still remaining for the Oct. 31 and Nov. 3-4 dates (including all-ages and 18-and-up options).
The shows are “both a sanctuary for the Radical-Avant community and a journey into healing, through rites of reflection, adoration and dissolution, building to a percussive blast of cathartic bombast,” as the band writes on its website. In other words: spiritual catharsis. This year’s “Echoes from the Āoth” shows also call for donations to an altar, which will be burned after the run of shows (on Nov. 5).
Like a good tabletop role-playing game, Itchy-O arrives with fully formed lore. In addition to the members’ sundry black attire — ski masks, tall hats, light-up shirts, etc. — and pyrotechnics, its online presence sets a tone of solemn weirdness. Promotions for the Hallowmass shows, for example, invite fans to “traverse the veil” and promise “sonic alchemy,” a “dance of euphoria,” and “a nexus of souls.”
With shows at festivals and venues across the country, as well as Red Rocks and other massive Denver stages, Itchy-O has shown no sign of slowing down.
We caught up with the secretive band, which gave this interview over email, about its 10th anniversary, artistic evolution, and how tightly it controls every aspect of its theatrical persona. When asked, the band attributed these answers to Tokyo-based Benjamin Beardsley, described as the Itchy-O’s “resident bard.”
Q: What are some surprising things the band has learned from Hallowmass over the years?
A: Hallowmass has been an ever-evolving process of discovery. Our first Hallowmass – nine years ago – was at the behest of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which invited us to create an immersive event. For that first event, we designed stations of reflection on life and death, a spectrum of absurd and provocative, to prepare members of the audience for a participatory rite of release.
Q: What was the reaction like?
A: We were amazed at the openness to the experience. It affirmed a kind of calling to address a pervasive emptiness and disconnection at the heart of our modern culture. With permission and a little guidance, people are hungry for a deeper shared experience that acknowledges and celebrates the changes we are all always navigating. Influenced by Dia de los Muertos and the All Souls celebration in Tucson, we created an all-inclusive immersive ritual around honoring as well as releasing the past. We like to say it’s become a place where impermanence meets catharsis.
Q: The band’s theatricality is leavened with an earnestness that I really appreciate. What does Hallowmass mean to the members?
A: This event is as much for us “behind the curtain” as it is for our fans and followers. Alicia Cardenas, the proprietor of Sol Tribe Tattoo and Piercing, was a major force inside itchy-O for several years. She was at the helm of building and facilitating the altar from the very first in 2015 until her tragic murder in 2021. It was important to her that this rite of release be inclusive and available to all. Stepping up to ensure her legacy is honored here has become very important to us. We are excited that this year’s altar will grow over several shows with the opportunity for patrons of the Mercury Cafe to stop in and contribute throughout the run as well.
Q: What kind of changes or tweaks are part of this year’s events?
A: The most obvious change is that we will be bringing our hyperbolic bombast back to the Mercury. Hallowmass has always been held in larger, mid-sized venues – 1,000-plus. Last June, we drew over 4,000 to the Levitt Pavilion, so this will be a much much more intimate experience than folks have seen in some time. Many of us also have very personal and even sacred ties to the Mercury Cafe so, this feels very special to us. Weddings, memorials, rallies, first experiences and lasting memories. It’s an important space for all of us in Denver.
Q: How often has Itchy-O performed at the Merc, and how do they fit everyone into the space?
A: We have performed at the Merc several times over the years. The coziness of the space and the epic nature of what we bring offers opportunities for full sonic immersion in the world of the show. It will be intimate, immersive, intense and up close with the performers. We’re limiting the number of tickets per show and will focus on drawing our guests into the exocosm of the itchy-O. (Note: The band uses a lowercase “i.”)
Q: What’s big and coming up right after this?
A: On the heels of Hallowmass, we will be debuting the music of our Söm Sâptâlahn, a custom heptatonic gamelan we crafted with the School of Mines in 2021, at a planetarium here in Colorado before the end of the year. We also have three new major avant-rock pieces we are finishing up. Both projects are being produced by legendary record producer Michael Patterson, who has engineered and produced for NIN, Beck, Diddy, Moby, She Wants Revenge, Notorious B.I.G., Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and a slew of other amazing heavies.
Q: Have you seen Itchy-O’s influence elsewhere in the Denver or national music scene?
We had Brothers of Brass crash our show at the Fillmore last year, which was awesome. In the early days of Itchy-O, most of the shows we did were clandestine “crashings” of this sort, so we were thrilled to see another band do the same to our headliner set. We’re still at it, too. We just crashed Lafayette at their last Art Night Out of the year. The world needs more of this kind of spontaneity.
Q: Who are some like-minded artists, musical or otherwise, here in Denver?
A: Hahaha … we have a habit of absorbing the “like-minded” into our flock. Some of the folks here in town we love riding alongside are Munly and Lupercalians, who also have their own mythology, legend and lore, that they operate within. Musically, Native Daughters are a band that are tight as hell and mesmerize instrumentally. We are also obsessed with N3ptune and the bold vision and production they, and Rusty Steve, are bringing to their shows. Just this last spring, we did a little live collaboration with them with itchy-O joining the opening of their set at the Bluebird and N3PTUNE playing as a surprise special guest for our Intergalactic Masquerade the following night at the historic Oriental Theater.
Q: Why aren’t there more acts like Itchy-O? Why is the energy and mood so hard to duplicate?
A: The scale, the mythology, the Āoth – our fan base. As we alluded to, our project is about restoring the raw power of myth and symbol to its rightful place in culture. We are concerned with co-creating in a way that resonates throughout the community. A lot of groups are focused on trying to make it in a materialistic paradigm. Our primary concern is elevating our beloved community, rather than clambering for personal recognition, “likes” or “followers,” which is so common in this socially mediated, hype-driven age. What we deliver in people and production power is also really hard to monetize. We’re a large collective of artists on a shared mission … . That’s rare, too.
Q: Why the disclaimer in the press release about not calling the band by specific genres? Has that been an ongoing problem, and if so, why do you think that is?
A: People like heuristics. We provide a fat, rich, percussion-heavy experience that some have reduced to the label of “marching band,” which conjures an anemic version of what we deliver. Our roots are in a primal-future festival with a heavy rhythmic flavor. We are much more chaotic, immersive, and mythic than that label allows for.
Likewise, we have occasionally been branded Satanists or Satanic, which only makes any kind of sense from within a certain kind of Christian paradigm. Satan has no place in the itchy-O exocosm. There is no Satanic character in our lore. We celebrate life in this universe, the dissolution of ego, loss, transformation, interdimensionality and community, with rites and symbolism as communities have for time immemorial. While we have nothing against Satanists or Christians, the label just doesn’t fit our identity as avant-primal-futurists.
