Noise Noise Noise was a pop punk band from Billings, MT between 2003 and 2013. They gained local fame for their explosive live concerts and wicked sense of humor. Tummy Rock Records out of Bellingham, WA is releasing a collection of CDR/tour only EP's, compilation tracks, split 7 inch tracks, and unreleased songs by the Billings pop punk outfit. Noise Noise Noise has risen from the dead!
by Austin Finn
It is impossible to overstate the importance of Noise Noise Noise. For me at least. Without Noise Noise Noise there would be no Idaho Green, no Porterhouse, no Dreyfest. Honestly, if it weren’t for Noise I probably would have gone to community college in like Arizona to play baseball and gotten a degree in Health and Human Performance or Physical Rehabilitation or something.
To this point, I can look back at my life and separate it in two sections- there was the time before I saw Noise play live, and then after. Yes, I am using messianic language, that’s how incredible they are. First time I saw Noise it was at the FOE in the Heights, I was probably 14, smoking swisher sweets in the back of my minivan with Damon Hartl and Ron Bray, thinking I was the coolest kid in the world. Thinking my band was the best band in Montana. We were even talking about trying to submit to play the Sasquatch Festival that year (we were a cover band).
Then I saw Noise play. Again, I’m sure it sounds ridiculously excessive, but that show was one of the single most life changing experiences I’ve had. In a super literal way. My life was changed forever at that moment- there was no turning back.
When I was that age, I really annoyingly prided myself in being this concert-going purveyor of indie-rock street cred- I saw Rage Against The Machine at Lollapalooza, The Killers in Denver, and the most eye-rollingly obnoxious hipster move of them all- I drove to Seattle with Guthrie Brown and my brother Jordan to see Wolf Parade the same night that the Dead Weather played the Babcock in Billings. For years afterward, when people talked about the Dead Weather show, I would condescendingly declare, “oh, that’s cool…. Yeah… I saw Wolf Parade in Seattle instead; they’re a far better band. Not even close.” (By the way, no regrets- Wolf Parade was amazing).
But I digress. Here’s what makes Noise Noise Noise one of the best bands I’ve ever seen. They seem like they don’t give a shit- and in a lot of ways they don’t, but at the same time they work harder and pour more of themselves into the songwriting and lyrics and music than the most nauseatingly sincere, knit cap-and-vest wearing “songwriters” you can think of. They play hardcore songs better than any hardcore band I’ve ever seen. They play pop-punk songs better than any pop-punk band I’ve ever seen. They play power-pop better than any power-pop band I’ve ever seen. They bounce around so much musically that it makes them impossible to pin down. From a marketing perspective, this isn’t necessarily a good thing. But as a 14 year old acne scarred dumbshit- it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. That show in particular, before I knew what I was watching, they had already played two songs. Seriously. They played “My Name is Chainsaw” and “Edge Crush Test” back to back, both songs being 45 seconds and one minute and fifteen seconds respectively, and having played both of them even faster than they already do on the record, they finished both songs in under a minute and a half.
By the time they played “Coke With Lime” they were just rubbing it in. It was the best show I’d ever seen, and they kept playing banger after banger, firecracker after firecracker- “Missy”, “Discount Dracula”, “Stolen”- it was like a minigun going off for 25 minutes.
Also, they’re fucking funny. Jordan and I always talk about what puts the Beatles on a whole other level than their semi-contemporaries like the Rolling Stones or Cream, etc.- because the Beatles were fucking funny. That’s so important. To be able to not take yourself seriously, and still produce heart-wrenchingly sincere and vulnerable stuff like “Blackbird” or “What You’re Doing” says so much about the artistic substance of a songwriter, and Noise are no different. That ability to navigate seamlessly between making an audience laugh hysterically by one of Joe Krahnert’s patented off-the-cuff, sometimes highly offensive remarks (I remember a time I drove up to Missoula with Noise and, to kill time, we went to a Barnes and Noble- we were inside for no longer than 3 minutes before Nels and Kelly had to physically usher Joe out of the store because he was *extremely loudly* making several less than appropriate comments about Natalie Portman (sub parenthetical- to this day I have no fucking clue why he was making comments about Natalie Portman, there was no connection whatsoever to anything going on inside the store or otherwise that had any relation to Natalie Portman at all, to the best of my knowledge).) and after baiting the audience, going straight into a sing-a-long power ballad like “Losing Strategies” or “The Way You Look Now” takes an incredible amount of talent, and honestly, in my opinion, requires a certain level of genius that’s not really teachable. And then after that, going right back into a song like “S.I.D.”- only the best bands- anywhere, any era- can do this. Shit got so crazy at that FOE show that someone (I probably shouldn’t name them, unsure of what the statutes of limitations are for second degree assault in Montana) grabbed the FOE’s fire extinguisher, ran across the audience area, right in front of the stage, went outside and tried to bash someone’s head in with the extinguisher. Sort of the double-edged sword of alcohol- it turns people into testosterone fueled morons, but luckily it also renders them far less coordinated. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, and looking back, we can point at that as a perfect way to illustrate how insane and high-energy Noise Noise Noise shows were.
They called it quits in 2013, their final show being the closeout to the very first Dreyfest. We are all honored and slightly, if not wistfully, amused at the cyclical nature of that- the most influential punk band in Billings history ended at the exact beginning of our dumb little festival. The spirit of Noise lives on in so many of us, and, very much like the roots of a tree, Noise’s underground, largely unnoticed influence affects so many of us in Billings and beyond, more than they will ever know.
With that said- we are proud to announce that Tummy Rock Records has released a new collection of Noise B-sides, rarities, and a live show, called “Pisspop 2003-2013, available February 12th, 2019. It’s a digital release than can be found on Spotify, Bandcamp, and at tummyrock.com. Tummy Rock is also releasing Noise’s ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHY on the streaming sites above.
Also- Sean Murphy at Dogman Films has edited this music video for “S.I.D.” which can be found here. Enjoy!
MEET THE BAND:
Members from 2007-2013 included:
Joe Krahnert - guitar, vox
Kelly La Croix - guitar, vox
Nels Jensen - drums
Mat Regele - bass, backup vox
Before that (2003-2006), members were shuffled around a lot:
Joel Fulkerson - bass
Kyle Stembaugh - bass
Alex Steele - bass
Ryan Spooner - drums
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Kelly plays in Alter Mitty and he and Nels played in Megagiant.
Nels plays in The Budgets (with former NoiseNoiseNoise bassist Joel) and also Bull Market.
Mat plays with The High Country Sting Band, and Wes Urbaniak.
Kyle went on to form Bust! in Chicago/Seattle.
Alex went on to form The Dudikoffs in L.A.
