November 6, 2025 — Interview by Olivia Siegel, Photos by Taylor Leslie
It’s the night before Halloween and the Howdy Gals head to Great American Music Hall for a night of Psyched Fest 2025. La Sombra is opening up for San Francisco doom metal legends, Acid King. The pit is filled with their local fanbase of skater bruhs and the rhythmic nod of metal heads. La Sombra sets the tone for the night, orchestrating heavy build-ups and breakdowns of coiling energy, fast drums and flying hair.
Taylor Leslie Photography
Liv: I saw that you recently came out with a new EP, Hyymns. How would you like people to listen to it for the first time? What is the ideal setting?
Aiden: As loud as possible.
Sebastian: Just hook it up to whatever loud system you have, honestly. Piss off your neighbors with it.
Aiden: Just don’t listen to it on your phone. Other than that, I don’t know. Pick somewhere nice to listen to it as well. A meadow.
Sebastian: Enjoy yourself. Yeah, go to a meadow. Clear your mind.
Liv: So a meadow with the biggest speakers you can find.
Alan: Fuck that dude, get a ghetto blaster, bomb a hill.
Taylor Leslie Photography
Liv: I really like the song BGF.
What does it stand for?
Sebastian: Beach Grunge Foo. We wrote it about the homie John who moved down to Santa Cruz, who is just, like, a huge grunge lord, always wearing flannel, smoking a stogie.
Alan: Picture him being born with a cigarette in his mouth, drinking a cappuccino. He’s got Kurt Cobain’s hair.
Aiden: He writes a lot of poetry.
Sebastian: And he moved down to Santa Cruz and we were bummed because we couldn’t skate with him as much, so one of our homies coined the term the Beach Grunge Foo. And so that’s where that came from. Shout out to Brody…
The Beach Grunge Foo
Taylor: Does he know this song is about him?
Sebastian: Oh, yeah. He tells everyone. He introduced all three of us. That’s how we all know each other.
Liv: So you guys met because of the Beach Grunge Foo?
Aiden: Yeah. The Beach Grunge Foo. We said he was part of the band for a long time because…
Alan: He is.
Liv: What can we expect from La Sombra in the future?
Sebastian: We’re actually working on our full debut album with our homie here Taka. We just hit the studio with them, recorded two songs. Working on an album, merch, more rolling papers, hoodies, more shows.
Liv: Top three influences.
Sebastian: I mean, Sabbath for sure.
Alan: It’s kind of crazy. We all have very different backgrounds.
Aiden: I didn’t play or listen to almost any Doom metal before we formed this band. Smashing Pumpkins was good for drums. And then we just kind of combined our styles from there.
Sebastian: I was super into Monolord, Electric Wizards, Sleep.
Alen and I broke down over that. Alen has his own set of influences. He listens to a lot of old blues and a lot of his sound really comes from that. And Aiden, he’s a fucking heavy handed drummer and plays fast.
And with Doom, that’s not really something you see, but it works.
Alan: We started off as doom, dude, but it got so different. I don’t know what to call it.
Liv: So, fuck, marry, kill, Black Sabbath, Smashing Pumpkins, Electric Wizard?
Sebastian: Black Sabbath’s basically dead, so kill Sabbath. Kill the rest of them…I don’t want to wake up next to Billy Corgan every morning. So maybe run it one time and then…
Everyone: Fuck Billy Corgan hahah. And then marry Electric Wizard. Rip Ozzy.
Liv: How do you describe your music?
The words online are sludge, doom, metal. When your friends ask you what kind of music you play, what do you say?
Sebastian: I usually just go with Sabbath on queludes. But it’s not even that slow anymore.
We have some songs that are slow, then we have breakdowns.
It’s just like, doomy, droning.
Aiden: I mean, fuck. I struggle with that question every time.
Liv: Would you say punk?
Sebastian: It’s some punk stuff, yeah. It’s all over the place. It’s an amalgamation of all our influences.
Alan: Punk, doom, sludge, metal, grunge.
Aiden: It’s a mountain of genres and you’re going to find a place to sit down…
Sebastian: There’s something you’ll like, dude. You’ll find it in there. You just gotta look. We’ll convert you.
Liv: Favorite venue to play in the bay?
Sebastian: Aiden’s Grandma’s garage.
Alan: Art Boutiki. R.I.P. I mean, they’re dying, and they’ll be dead soon, unfortunately.
Aiden: Afterhours, that was probably one of our favorite venues.
Sebastian: Afterhours was a DIY at my university in San Jose. It was in a basement and it had this big ass backyard. So you’d go into the basement to see the show, and you’d come out and everyone would be hanging out and kicking it… It was just a party every time. And it didn’t matter who was playing, you’re going to see your homies. Shout out Ian. Shoutout Afterhours, best venue in the Bay.
Liv: Cool. I guess this one’s a little more for Alan. What’s your hair care routine?
Alan: You’d be surprised. It’s just this bar of soap. You know the Indians, the Sikhs? Sikh people? They got like long hair. There’s a specific bar of soap they use that’s made out of, like, plants and herbs. There’s this market in Half Moon Bay that sells it.
Liv: Best mosh you’ve seen from one of your shows?
Aiden: When we played the Battle of the Bands in Menlo Park at the Guild Theater. That was our first and only Wall of Death that we did.
Sebastian: I was like yo, if you got healthcare, fucking prove it dude.
Alan: That venue was already super bummed with us.
Sebastian: Oh, they hated us from soundcheck. And then we were asked to never play there again.
Aiden: We actually won that battle of the bands and we were promised a follow-up show, but they didn’t want us there. [laughter]
Liv: Okay, sweet. Thank you guys.
La Sombra: Right on. Thank you. We appreciate you taking the time. Shout out Howdy Gals.
Taylor Leslie Photography