For a band that bills themselves "heavy, queer psychedelic punk+gloom," there's certainly not much gloom on this end-of-summer evening in Bellingham. The members of Pyrocene are calling in on Zoom, sitting around the back of the pickup in the driveway. Eryx (bass, sometimes guitar) and JeanPaul (guitar, sometimes bass) are parked on the back bumper while Bella (vocals) has climbed onto the bed cover.

Well, three of them are visible on camera – Mitchell, the drummer, is off camera due to the phone being in portrait mode. No matter, he makes himself heard.

As has Pyrocene. The buzz around the Bellingham rockers has been growing with the release of their first full-length album Renounced Domination // Wishing Well in March.

We talked about their upcoming Magma Fest performance, the Bellingham scene, being a queer band in the punk scene, and how music keeps them going.

(Interview edited for clarity and to make them sound like geniuses and the interviewer like a dork.)

Tell me how y'all got started.

Eryx: So right before the pandemic, we all were living in the house together. And we (Eryx and Bella) were playing in your high school band, Snow Bitch, together, and then that fell apart with the strains of traveling to and from Seattle. Right when the pandemic started, [we were in] quarantine, so us three were all living together and jamming every day, a little punk house in town here, coalescing into songs and the band. And then I was working at a burger joint here in town with JeanPaul, and we just bonded instantly over music. Got together, jammed three times, but we're like, well shit, this dude's sick.

It's interesting how Bellingham as a scene is kind of trapped between the two worlds of Vancouver and Seattle. I think the old joke is that everything north of the Skagit is actually Canada.

Everyone: Yeah, exactly!

Eryx: That's what makes it work for us. So it's a bit of a bubble that let us develop a pretty unique sound, I think. Both influence us, north and south, and we do our own thing, too.

I wanted to ask Bella — in every video I've seen, you just sit on stage and sing, and if you're not sitting you're standing, then sitting back down again. So I'm wondering about that.

Bella: Yeah... I still do have a sense of stage fright, and I struggle with a few disabilities that make standing up and performing really tricky. I can pass out for seconds at a time while performing. So sitting down keeps me from passing out and feeling dizzy. And then I picked up elements from our old band of where I would go and thrash around and push people over. And so now what I do is I either sit on stage or sit in the background. I often sit in the background because I want you guys (points to rest of band) to be able to be noticed too, but then otherwise I'm crawling in between people's legs or pushing. It has to be memorable, and I still want to have some sort of stage presence that's not just sitting down because I'm disabled. But yeah, I just want to be memorable in some way, I guess.

Talk to me about influences. What's the sort of music that you all listened to growing up? What do you listen to now that drives Pyrocene?

Eryx: All over the place.

JeanPaul: (laughing) Yeah.

Eryx: Yeah, we have some common touch points.

JeanPaul: I grew up pretty heavily on classic rock, and that's a prevailing influence for people. Though sound-wise, I don't know, but I guess we've all connected over a few bands, like Queens of the Stone Age and Bauhaus and stuff.

Bella: Mitchell and I were in a band when we were kids, maybe 13, 14. I had an unfortunate obsession with GG Allin, and so I made our band cover GG Allin songs, but now that I largely stepped away from that. I think we definitely pick up elements of Bauhaus, Bambara, Gun Club, Dead Milkmen.

Mitchell: Yeah, I think we all definitely bonded around, and the band's ethos was formed around punk and metal, but we definitely all pull from very different genres individually.

Eryx: Yeah, and the things that people tell us we sound like? It's like every show, it's a new one. Yeah, I think that tells me we're doing the right thing.

I think you're the first band I've talked to that referenced the Dead Milkmen, which warms my little dead Gen X heart.

Mitchell: That's a good first.

Bella: I grew up on Dead Milkmen. That's my favorite band. Definitely.

You guys consider yourselves a queer band. I hate asking that question because I don't want to pigeonhole people, and who you are is what you are. But I am wondering, given the state of music in the Northwest, half of the bands playing Magma Fest this year have some sort of queer representation. What are you seeing in that sense of how music is affecting and changing inside the LGBTQIA+ community?

Eryx: I think punk music, DIY music, are things that are kind of the outside or in peripheral liminal spaces, that's really also where queer people exist. My experience as a trans gal, I feel like I can really understand liminality just in general. That's a space that we're all super comfortable in.

Bella: I think my big thing has been highlighting that queer people have interests that are not around just being queer. Someone, I don’t know, maybe on Fox News might see Eryx like, "she is a trans girl who does just trans things." It's like, no, she just happens to be a trans girl who is a good musician, and it's queer people doing things, rather than "We're queer people being queer people."

I'm always wary of these questions because it can very quickly turn into a stigma, e.g., "You're a bunch of Asian kids who are playing punk. Summarize for us the current Asian geopolitical situation."

Eryx: I think that's a difficulty of journalism. It's like, how do you put the world into words? That's hard. It's also difficult.

What drives you when you write songs? What are the things you're thinking about? What are those subjects, the ideas that you bring in lyric-wise, and sonically as well?

Eryx: I'm always thinking about love and expansion. Absolution and dissolution. (People) learning to be themselves and becoming one thing.

Bella: Or sex advice.

JeanPaul: We've written a lot of our songs through just jamming at practice. We'll have a little warm-up jam, and sometimes that's all it is, a warm-up jam, but sometimes we're like, that was the coolest thing we've ever played. When we get to recording, we'll try to harken back to that and try to bring the part back alive and make it like that. So there's a free-form looseness to it where we're definitely pulling from what happens naturally.

Eryx: That aspect allows every performance to be about what that day is about in our lives, what that is about for the audience. Touching on the improv nature of our music lets it fill the space of whatever space it's in.

Remind me, you guys have an EP or an album coming out pretty soon?

JeanPaul: We have an album that we released back in March. And that's our most recent group release. And we're still playing the bulk of those songs as part of our setlist, but we're planning on recording in the winter.

Eryx: Yeah, we got lots of new songs on the table. I'm gonna plan to get a few more down and get some sounds. But our most recent release was that full-length album, Renounced Domination // Wishing Well.

Yeah, it's a pretty good little album. Enjoyed it. I agree that it is Bauhaus meets Dead Milkmen for sure. Or maybe Love and Rockets meets... Violent Femmes?

Bella: Again, I was raised on Love and Rockets and Bauhaus.

What's a question that you would like me to ask of you, or you would be thinking I would be asking?

Eryx: Maybe why is music important?

Why is music important?

Bella: I said at least three times this week, to different people who have either asked or not asked, about why art has been important to me. It's the only reason why I'm alive. Other than music, I do a lot of mosaic work, and beyond that, I'm a therapist. Other than those three things, I'm just... not much else.

JeanPaul: I can't answer why music is important, but sometimes, in a non-chore way, it feels like I have to be doing it.

Bella: Absolutely!

Mitchell: Yeah.

JeanPaul: I can be sad on a day and not want to go to band practice, and be like, "Oh, I'm sad, I'm tired, I want to sit at home."

Bella: It's a counter feeling.

JeanPaul: And if I sit at home, I'm gonna be so much more sad, and if I just force myself to go to band practice and I make myself do it, once up there I'm like, "I cannot imagine a world where I wouldn't do this today."

Eryx: It's also human behavior, and it's innate to what we are and how we exist, and it's a way that we can exist as a community.

It sounds like music for you is something that brings energy, something that you get more out of than you put into it. The definition of burnout is the opposite: the more energy you put in, the less you get out of it. So it sounds like when you're really going, being involved is giving you all life.

JeanPaul: Yeah. I probably would have been away from Bellingham a long time ago if it wasn't for the music that I play. It just gave me a spot where I live.

What keeps you in Bellingham?

Mitchell: It's beautiful here. It's very beautiful. The music scene is awesome right now.

JeanPaul: Right now it's just the music. (laughing)

Mitchell: Aside from even just the bands that we know that are our buddies, some of the new talent that comes up every year is really impressive.

Bella: It's weird, the music scene here. It's a giant friend group. There are some old cats, then there are some younger people, and we're almost all in a very, very loose friend group. Everybody knows everybody. Even the 40-year-olds are just as much a friend to the 20-something-year-olds as they would be to other peers within their age group. It's really strange, but it's really cool.

I'll ask you the Narduwar question: Why should people care about Pyrocene?

JeanPaul: Because we're really, really, really loud, and I think we have a really unique sound.

Bella: I want people to want to care. I wouldn't want to have to try to convince anybody to give a shit about us. You can tell me if you like it, but say if you don't, I don't want you here. Not like you're not good enough, but be around things and be around art that you enjoy, because time is limited. If you aren't listening to what you want to be listening to, listen to something else. I don't want to force anybody to be around this.

Mitchell: I think you should care about Pyrocene because Pyrocene makes music for you.

Eryx: Pyrocene loves you. There's space for you in Pyrocene, and if you're watching us play, listening to us play, you're as much a part of the creation, what it is, as we are.

For more information about Pyrocene, visit pyrocenelovesyou.bandcamp.com.

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Pyrocene is playing Magma Fest 2026 on Saturday, October 31st at the Black Lodge. For the full lineup and tickets, visit the Magma Fest page on khuh.fm.