This may come as a surprise but telework isn’t relegated to corporate Zoom calls and shared cloud servers. In the world of lightning-fast upload speeds promised by ISPs, creative endeavors can be created and merged from anywhere, as was the case with the beginnings of Stella Crest. Smash cut to current times, and Stella Crest is set to release its first full-length production with an album-release party at Harlow’s in Sacramento on July 24.
The Sacramento-based band began as a shared project between Evan Ferro and Vinny Lariza, who, at the time, were living in Seattle and San Francisco respectively. While living their lives regionally disparate from one another, they began sharing segments of what would eventually become the band’s first self-titled EP, released in 2016. Eventually, the band would come to unite in Sacramento, with brothers Evan and Matt Ferro on vocals and guitar, Vinny Lariza on drums, Ryan Rake on bass and Christian Masse on keyboard. During its history however, songs began as digital collaborations.
“I was touring with another Sacramento band with a band called Middle Class Rut. In between tours, I was just living in Seattle with my now wife … so I started writing some stuff,” Evan Ferro said of the beginning of Stella Crest. “It kind of started as my own, kind of getting back into writing my own stuff and Vinny [Lariza] was living in San Francisco at the time. We passed things back and forth and then songs came out of it and then we recorded the first EP.”
Stella Crest’s music style is atmospheric and heavy songs with the kind of synth and guitar reverb consistent with the post-hardcore genre. This sound provides the foundation for lyrics that explore themes such as UFOs, the concept of God and a popular podcast about telepathic communication, “The Telepathy Tapes,” in the case of songs like “Microlith.”
“It followed nonverbal children and them being able to speak telepathically,” Ferro said. “’The Telepathy Tapes’ hit myself and Matt [Ferro] pretty hard, and with both of us being parents too, that may have had a factor in listening to these stories surrounding kids and then being able to communicate [telepathically].”
The themes of its music aren’t relegated to the telepathic, however, as each song comes from personal experience. The album’s title track, “Megalith,” for example, is based on two individual experiences connected by a ribbon of commonality.