Meet Fishfly, a Detroit punk band obsessed with fighting cryptids, working class satire
The band is the latest to emerge from Hamtramck's blossoming punk and psychedelic rock scene.
After spending the better part of the past decade immersed in the Michigan independent film community, a trio of suburban Detroit friends saw an opportunity to bring their theatrical and creative instincts to Hamtramck’s blossoming punk music scene.
Sporting Ghostbusters-inspired jumpsuits, they call themselves Fishfly, and so far their live performances have included a staged curb stomping of famed cryptid Mothman and a sacrifice of an “alien baby” the band insists looked an awful lot like Baby Yoda.
Costumes with a winged insect logo, stage names and their no-nonsense approach to pest control are all part of creating a fully-immersive live experience band members Nick Vasseur (vocals), Sam Carroll (guitar) and Matt Szakal (drums) say. Beyond that, they hope their stage antics get a rise out of people.
“We are constantly talking about how we can change and evolve Fishfly as a concept, while still keeping the core punk values that we want to portray,” Vasseur said. “We do plan on kind of stepping outside those bounds in different ways that we hope not only inspire people to make their own music and listen to us, but just listen to music in general. We also want people to hate it. I think that would be great. We want people to get mad at us.”
While the band’s members collectively boast resumes that include experience in filmmaking, acting, writing and illustration, Fishfly is their first collective foray into music.
With previous experience acting, writing and scoring films, Szakal said he bonded with other members of the band who had similar experiences in the film industry over their mutual respect for the Hamtramck punk scene that had gotten its footing post-COVID.
Bands like Toeheads, The Stools, 208, Prude Boys, Shadow Show, Mod Lang, Fen Fen and Sugar Tradition have laid the groundwork for an exciting era of punk rock, the band says, blending elements of classic punk with psychedelic rock and primal rhythms made popular by foundational Detroit garage bands like The Gories.
Growing up with early exposure to Detroit’s punk scene as a bar kid at the Traffic Jam and Snug, Carroll said a face-melting live performance from Toeheads in 2022 was all it took to convince him to move beyond film into the world of music.
“I think it's very clear there's a lot of really fantastic bands that are coming out of that particular neighborhood,” said Carroll, 27, who has experience in film and as an illustrator.
“(Toeheads were) the most perfect band to start off with, because those guys hit you at a gut level. I was floored from that point onward and then I started to realize there were all these other bands in this larger community that were all communicating.”
Fishfly are the latest band from that scene to create a buzz, breaking slightly from its sludgy core sound on their debut Boogieman EP, which was released on Oct. 1. The band marry elements of traditional '70s and ‘80s punk, Detroit garage and rockabilly with the boys’ aforementioned penchant for cryptids and mythical creatures.
The Boogieman EP melds the paranoia and fear surrounding these fabled creatures into a modern context, incorporating elements of dark humor and blue collar career disillusionment across five break-neck songs that run a total of 10 minutes. They’re delivered via Vasseur’s wail and cadence that’s reminiscent of Detroit hardcore legend John Brannon, while Carroll’s riffs chug along and compete with Szakal to see who can play faster.
The band cites a wide range of both musical and theatrical influences in their sound and aesthetic, insisting bands like Devo, The Monks, Negative Approach, Thee Oh Sees and Amon Düül II and filmmakers David Cronenberg, David Lynch and John Waters are one and the same from an inspiration standpoint.
While those inspirations are all unique in their own way, Szakal said they all share a similar “outsider” status the band tries to hone in on.
“Popular music isn't going to identify with a lot of people, so, there's always going to be an underside to what the popular market is,” Szakal said. “I grew up being interested in weird stuff - like weird movies, weird music, outsider artists, regardless of whatever I was watching or listening to. I'm also interested in those philosophies of blue collar things. I feel like the popular zeitgeist is centered mostly toward upper, rich people. I'm more interested in seeking out movies, music, art in general, that has a blue collar experience.”
Fishfly have no problem tapping into the absurdity of all of that on the Boogieman EP, documenting run-ins with everyone from Bigfoot and Mothman to the monster who gets too drunk at the office party and the guy who drinks uncontrollably to forget about the crushing stress of making ends meet.
“Even getting drunk at an office party, like, that’s a kind of monster,” said Vasseur, 25, of Sterling Heights. “It all kind of cycles back into our message. We're really writing songs about the human condition.”
While those topics are inherently dark, Carroll says the songs are satirical in nature and aren’t meant to be taken too seriously.
Without a stereotypically hard upbringing to write about like many punk bands, Fishfly instead relies on its observations to bring humor to the typical suburban existence they’ve known all their lives.
“I think when you think of punk, you think of squalor and struggle and we really didn't come from that,” Carroll said. “But what we had in trade was the fact that we could satirize a lot of what we were exposed to, which was ultimately a very suburban culture.
“I think that's why we also really hone in on cryptids. There was an era when conspiracy theories like that were fun.”
The band want to continue honing in on its universe of theatrical punk and cryptids while exploring how they can make their live show a more fully-sensory experience.
How all that will come together remains to be seen, Szakal said, but it’s clear Fishfly are on the same page in their quest to make the scene aware of these frightening figures that lurk in the shadows.
It’s the whole reason they got into this line of work.
“There's been a big perspective shift for at least me, where it's like, if I'm going to do this for a living — and even if not for a living — if I'm going to do this during my living, I want to do it with people that I want to have fun with, that I enjoy doing it with and that I can actually have similarly-minded conversations with,” Szakal said.
Fishfly will be playing on Oct. 27 at Flipside Records in Berkley with Exorcist and EKG. The band’s Boogieman EP is available now for purchase on Bandcamp.