Havok Brings Thrash Metal to Gramps

It was at the impressionable age of 13 that David Sanchez discovered Metallica. His life has revolved around thrash metal ever since.

"It struck a chord and inspired me right away to pick up a guitar," the singer and guitarist tells New Times a couple of hours before his band, Havok, is set to play a show in Berkeley, California.

"By 15, I was competent enough to play and sing at the same time. Not much later, I started writing songs," Sanchez continues.

Havok fans should not expect to hear those early attempts at songwriting anytime soon.

"Lyrically, in hindsight, I can tell they were written by a teenager. They were all angry rants at liars and cheaters."

In high school in Denver, Sanchez found a compatriot in drummer Haakon Sjogren.

"He was a Metallica nerd like me. We started off as a Metallica-heavy tribute band. We'd play a little Black Sabbath, Megadeth, and Slayer."

The teenagers would play anywhere that would have them. Basement parties, prom after parties, and coffee shops.

"We'd get weird looks when high school kids would be moshing at the coffee shop, but those were the only all-ages venues that weren't bars."

By 2004 Havok was a full-fledged band writing original thrash-metal songs and recording its first demo. Nearly 20 years later, they're metal veterans, having released five full-length albums. (Sjogren is no longer with the band; he and bass player Marcus Corich left in 2014 to help cofound another Denver metal outfit, Necropanther.) They've learned plenty of lessons on the road, like back in 2009, when Sanchez's vocal cords were put to the test.

"On that tour, our monitors were severely underpowered. I couldn't hear myself onstage, and I lost my voice. I couldn't speak offstage, but when the show started, I had to shriek. That damage forever tweaked my voice."

Sanchez says he never went to heavy metal frontman university to learn how to get his voice to those impossible ranges, but through experience, he knows now how to take care of his instrument.

"I can't drink cold water onstage. That tenses up my throat. I yell and scream before we play like an air raid siren. I try to break it in a little so I don't go in dry."

Miami metalheads can get a chance to hear Havok when the four-piece plays Gramps on July 26.

"We're the co-headliners with Hammerhedd. Each of us plays for just shy of an hour," Sanchez explains. "We roll with the same set each night so we don't accidentally go over time. It's our greatest hits. A couple of songs we love to play, a couple of songs that always go well at shows, then we help ourselves to the Spotify data. It's a very useful thing. You can see your whole catalogue and see what songs people listen to the most."

Havok has some new songs that will make their way to Spotify at some point in 2024. Lyrically, Sanchez says, he's mostly inspired these days by reading books covering philosophy and history. He says many people in the metal community expect his new songs to be about the pandemic. Those expectations had him do a 180.

"People confuse us with being a political band. We're actually apolitical. We're sticking both middle fingers at the whole system. I thought it would be funny to not talk at all about the last few years."

So what did he write about during lockdown?

"One of the songs is about shifting perspectives. The other is about the conservation of energy."

That doesn't mean it's about riding your bike instead of driving, he adds, but about "how energy can't be destroyed or created. I think it's fascinating our energy doesn't disappear when someone passes away."

"That means death is an illusion."     

Havok. 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; gramps.com. Tickets cost $25 via eventbrite.com.