The Inner Workings of Rising Band Komodos

New York City band, Komodos, is founded on post-punk influences, a garage band sound, and DIY ethos. The band is composed of Taran Dugal (vocals and guitar), Hunter Boivin (guitar), Ben Baumann (bass), and Kabir Dugal (drums). Komodos released their latest single, (But, I Like It), on August 23rd. Similar to their other releases, the band's sound is fueled by reverb-drenched guitar, forward-driven drums and bass, and ever-lasting vocals that match the vigor of each song. We sat down with Komodos ahead of their September 13th show at The Mercury Lounge, on lucky Friday the 13th. 

Photo via Tori McGraw (@afterr.hourrs)

Can you talk about originally how the band came together?

Taran: Well, so me, Kabir, and Hunter moved here together with the intention of playing, and then we found Ben a few months later on Craigslist actually. And then I found out that I went to college with his brother. So that's kind of how we formed. 

Hunter: I think that kind of checks out with the timing. We had another member, there was a fifth member for a little while.

Kabir: Taran had been playing in college all the time. We played a few shows in Boston together. Hunter and I were just friends. 

Hunter: We'd known each other for a couple of years, from school, but we were living together during Covid. Had a lot of free time and he had the drum kit. I took one of our roommate's guitars and then Taran moved to Boston as well. That was kind of the first time all three of us played together. There wasn't much to do. 

Kabir: And then we split up again. And then we were all in our respective places.

Hunter: I remember the phone call, dude, you called me. I was in Florida in the Keys, and I got a call from Kabir and he's like, “you should move to New York, and we're going to start a band.” And I was like, “okay, actually I could kind of do this.” And then that's what we did, a few weeks later we were here.

Taran: We were looking for a reliable bass player for the longest time and just nothing was working. We found Ben on Craigslist. I remember he texted me and I asked, “send me some shit so I can sus you out.” And Ben sent us some shit and I was like, “this is fire.” 

So what did your ad say?

Kabir: It had a really cool picture of us playing Arlene's Grocery. Remember? 

Taran: I think it was just like, “bassist wanted for garage rock band.”

Ben: I was just scrolling. I was looking for just people to jam with. My girlfriend at the time was like, “all right, this sounds like you're just going to go get murdered somewhere, but I guess go do your thing.”

Taran: We didn't interview anybody else. Nobody else came over. That was the only person we even met in person.

Hunter: Yeah. I think none of us were too thrilled about the idea of auditioning people.

Taran: We got tapes from this dude in Texas. He was like, “I'm going to move there dude, I swear.” And he's still not here.

What's the origin of your name?

Taran: I used to get a lot of graphic design things when I was scrolling through social media and I've been thinking of a band for years. I always had the idea of wanting to do a band in the city. I never knew what to name it. We had some shitty names prior on a notes app. It wasn't going to be any of those. They never passed. They were all awful. And then I just saw a poster one day that said “Komodo” on it, and then there's a sick picture of a Komodo dragon and it just looked so cool. I was like, “oh that would be a sick band name. I could see that on top of a flyer.” 

Kabir: It was just the coolest one. We had a whole discussion about how you could name your band anything. 

Hunter: The thing is, your name has no bearing on anything most of the time. And then only once people start knowing who you are, does the name seem so normal.

Taran: Yeah, basically I just saw it and I was like, “that looks sick.” That's kind of all it was. 

One of your last singles, “Deliverance,” was really interesting because I felt like it was a lot more lyrically focused as opposed to some of your other songs, which felt more instrument-driven. It’s especially noticeable the way the instrumentals flow with the lyrics. Walk me through crafting the song, what inspired it? What was the process like writing it? How did everyone's part fit together?

Taran: It's so funny because the lyrics came second.

Ben: The lyrics came the day we recorded. 

Taran: I'm glad it sounds that way. I think that's how I want our music to sound.

Hunter: The first inklings of that song were some loops that came from another guitar. I think the verse of the song, the pre-chorus, and I guess the chorus as well, was a kinda weird six bar thing, weird timing. So it had a weird feel to it. But I brought it to these guys and then we were workshopping it first. They were like, “okay, why is it six bars?” We straightened that out and then yeah, that's the very beginning.

Taran: This was over the winter last year. Me and Hunter came up with those guitar parts first and then we jammed all together. We drove to Rockaway that day. Then we came back home and we jammed on the song for a while, and we wrote the chorus that day. Instrumentally, just the two guitar parts, and we sent it to these guys. 

Kabir: You [Hunter] think of things in a completely different way than I think of writing rhythms. 

Taran: I don't even remember when vocals came. We have a rehearsal space in East Williamsburg, and I think usually my melodies just come from playing live together because I'll jam on my own acoustic. I think it must have just happened when we were playing together. 

Hunter: I think this was one of the ones where you kind of one day just sent us the melody, and we were like, “oh wait, that's cool.” But yeah, we had kind of been with the instrumental stuff for a little while. It had germinated, and then one day we got the message from Taran, the voice memo. 

Taran: Then the lyrics didn't happen until the day we recorded. I had cadences in mind already. So I have words in my head. They just happen, and sometimes I'll change them and sometimes the song will follow from the words that I'm already singing because I think this sounds good. Purely sonically. I had it 85%, 90% done for maybe four months, and then we were like, “oh, we're recording it.” And I was like, “oh, I should get that last line down.” So I really sat down and tried to think about how I wanted to tie it together.

Ben: I remember not knowing what he was going to do until the day we went to record. 

Hunter: It was also funny. I think this is one we'd played at shows and you would just sing. You would kind of just riff on it for the live sets, so we didn't even know what the lyrics were probably until maybe a few days before recording it. 

Taran: Sometimes it happens where I'll really feel like I need to write lyrics. And before we recorded, we did our own home demos, and we thought about how shit sounded.

Hunter: Yeah, actually that was a cool one in the sense that there's a lot of stuff in the recorded version of that song that wouldn't show up live.

“(But I Like It),” was released August 23rd, 2024. Give me three words to describe that song.

Taran: We should do it as a band. A few words to describe, “(But I Like It).” 

Kabir: Alright you guys, think.

Hunter: I'm going to throw this out there. But I think it has a journey in part of that song, the beginning of it. I'm proposing journey as a word. 

Taran: I veto. 

Hunter: Okay, that's fine. Let's discuss. 

Kabir: I think it's a good word, but I don't know if it should be one.

Taran: That's so fucking tough. 

Ben: Green. That song is Green. 

Taran: Green. Alright. That's one of our words. 

Taran: I think earnest. The song is just about our process. 

Kabir: I feel like we need a word to kind of refer to the beat and the industrial-ness of it. I don’t know.

Hunter: I kind see what you're saying. There's a choppiness to it. So we have green, we have earnest…

Taran: Ernest takes up to two because I think the meaning of the song is very earnest.

Why don't you talk about how that song came about. What inspired it sonically?

Taran: That was another Hunter [one]. 

Hunter: I think the first [thing] I played was the verse chord that you hear at the very beginning of the song. So that was the first part we came up with. What inspired that? I don't really know. I mean, I think I can see some similarities to maybe some Fontaines D.C. stuff, the rhythm of the guitar part is kind of like that.

Taran: The feeling of that verse is in the chords and it's also in the strumming pattern. There's a movement in the strumming pattern. There's a swag to it. 

Hunter: That was the main part of the song. And then I guess the chorus just flows out of that. 

Taran: So we write our songs together. Mostly Hunter will come up with the guitar idea and we'll go into the studio and we'll just kind of jam on it and build something around it. And I think that's totally how the song came to be. He was playing that, and then I thought of the riff that comes in the intro, which we hit before the chorus too. And we were like, “oh, that sets up the chorus nicely.”

Lyrically where did that come from?

Taran: I always think of my melodies first. So the melody was in place and I was like, “let me find words that can fit this.” I think at that point I was feeling that we work so hard, we rehearse three times a week minimum, for hours. And I'd been feeling really burnt out from doing that on top of my job, on top of other shit too. So I was feeling like I wanted to write a song about that, just how hard we try, how much passion we put into this. Literally it's an overused phrase, but blood, sweat, and tears.

What is a typical songwriting process? Do you just go riff off each other? Does someone come in with something and you work off that? 

Kabir: Basically one of us will come to rehearsal with an idea, a groove, a bass line, some chord progression, whatever it may be. And then we'll just jam on it, and if it sticks then we build something over it. I mean, we have tons of ideas, but most of them don't stick. We just kind of build around an idea based on free jamming stuff. All our stuff is together. No one’s really telling each other what to write, but we do give each other hints like, “oh, maybe the rhythm could be like this.”

Taran: I think it's collaborative. We'll usually think of parts on our own when somebody will be like, “what if you did this instead?” I think the nice thing about writing collaboratively is that we all hold each other in very high regard when it comes to our opinions. So it's like the song is passing through three other filters before the world sees it. If we all sign off on a part, it means that we can really stand behind it. Which is why so many things get struck down in the first place because usually somebody's like, “oh, I don't fuck with that.” And then we just don't pursue that idea.

Hunter: Yeah, it's interesting because we do have pretty varied tastes. 

Taran: It will also happen so frequently where we'll come in and somebody will have thought of something. We just wrote this one song, we're opening with it tonight actually. And I had written the chorus part, at least my guitar part. And then Ben and I jammed on it one day and it wasn't really working. Then Ben came in the next day with this sick bass line and I was like, “oh, that's the part.” It just kind of happens very organically.

One line why people should come to your shows. 

Hunter: I'll just steal something that somebody told me, one of my friends from college. He was like, “I liked going to your show because it felt raw, like you guys really felt what you were doing.” I think that's true. I think we really do stand behind the vast majority of the stuff that we put on stage

Kabir: People should come, if they want to feel something that's super real.

Ben: People come to our show if they like rock music. People should come to our show if they're looking for something to do.

Taran: You should come to, honestly, you should come to our shows if you want to. You should come to our shows if you want to resonate with it and you like it, you should come to our shows. 

New music. What's happening? 

Taran: So we're recording with a literal wizard. His name's Martin Bisi. He worked with Sonic Youth in the 80’s, on their second album. We're recording three tracks with him in October. We don't necessarily know if it's going to be a project and we're actually still dialing in on songs right now. But we went in there and the space had amazing energy. We walked out and we were on cloud nine. I remember it. It was a very moving experience.

What’s been one of the best experiences so far? 

Kabir: The best experience is just every day. But the best part is just playing music every day with your best friends. And that's the best part of my day. I work, I go through this shit and then I get to see these dudes three or four times a week and it's like we get to be singularly focused on making something, and you're just so present in that moment. 

Ben: To see these guys and feel like we're building something. It's just a beautiful feeling to have in the background of your life. And we've all got other things going on, but then we have this one constant thru-line of, we're working on this thing, we're working really hard and it's really fun to do this work. And I fucking love that. 

Taran: Which is why we wrote that song, right? That's what that song (But, I Like It) is about. I think for me it's the little moments. It's little moments like that where we're piecing shit together and it just sounds so good in the moment. And it's so satisfying to keep threading things together. It's all about the music. When the music sounds good, it feels so good and I feel so excited to show it to people. 

Find Komodos on Spotify, and Instagram.

Photos via Tori McGraw (@afterr.hourrs)