We Go Where the Wind Takes Us: An Interview with Sacred Monsters

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I mentioned Sacred Monsters last week when I interviewed guitarist, Fataday Korngor, about playing with the group as well as his work as a solo artist. Needless to say, I’m as intrigued by the music of Sacred Monsters as I am with Fataday’s music. Describing themselves as a “sad girl rock band from Philadelphia,” Sacred Monsters call to mind some of my favorite music from the 90s, including bands like No Doubt and Veruca Salt. To find out more, I dropped them a line.

I recently saw on Instagram that you were heading up to Albany for a gig. Was it part of a tour or just a one-off? How was the show?

We called it a “mini-tour” because we played in Troy, NY (just 15 minutes from Albany) on Friday night and then the next night we drove back to Philly for another show with the same bands at the Grape Room. It was our first time traveling for more than 1 hour as a band together and staying the night. It was a great show and a food truck even had a burger named after us for folks to order. We had a blast and really loved the bands with played with, E.R.I.E and Doctor Baker. Plus it was fun coming back to the Airbnb afterwards to hang out, eat snacks and watch Austin Powers.

Albany is a bit of a hike from Philadelphia. How do you decide how far you’ll travel to play a show?  

We really just go where the wind takes us. We had met E.R.I.E when we played at the Soundbank in Phoenixville (R.I.P to that venue) last summer and we had such a blast with them that we kept in touch with the hopes of having another show together. Thankfully, we made it happen!

I understand that the band got together through Craigslist. What’s the story there?

Yup! So back during the height of the pandemic, I (KP) was feeling very frustrated mentally and musically and I wanted to create, but not just by myself. So I posted a very specific ad on craigslist with the type of music I wanted to create and that’s how I met Nick. We recorded our EP with two other musicians from craigslist without ever meeting them first. Then after the other two members left, Nick and I met Julie through craigslist. We went to my old alma mater of Neumann University to film some videos and Fataday just so happened to be working the camera that day. He followed us on Instagram afterwards and I saw that he was an amazing musician and just had to ask him if he’d like to join and bam, that’s how sacred monsters came to be. 

And what do the individual members of the band bring to the group? I’m thinking in terms of both personality and sound—and how those two things inform each other. What’s the chemistry like?

Gosh, our chemistry is unlike any other band I’ve been in (and I’ve been in a lot lol). Nick is so tight on the drums, it’s unreal. You would never know he started playing drums later in life. Julie’s vocals and knack for piecing together a song is critical to our music and Fataday’s harmonies and guitar melodies always blow me away. I bring in a lot of quirky lyrics and song ideas and I’m always thankful for everyone always amplifying and making those ideas even better.

I’m curious about the “sad girl” portion of “sad girl rock band from Philadelphia.” Is it genuine sadness, or is there an element of knowing irony there? Or a mix of the two?

Oh, it’s definitely genuine sadness. While we have very few (I think one haha) happy songs, a lot of the lyrics and songs stem from periods of our lives where it’s been difficult and hard. Music has always been a way, for me at least, to process those hard moments and to truly move on.

I’m also wondering if there’s some latent anger there. Your song “Britney,” for example, reminds me a little bit, at least thematically, of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl,” in that both songs definitely have a bit of bite, to say the least.

You’re right, Britney was a definitely a song written out of anger. Anger towards my own self because I kept making the same mistake over and over again. Which is extremely frustrating! But hey, we got a song out of it.

The vocal phrasing on “Britney” is interesting. For example, the word “just” sounds like “joist.” What was behind that decision?

Lol I blame this on my south jersey accent.

Ah, got it! You played the West Philadelphia Porch Festival recently. What was that like? How were you received?

Gosh, we LOVE West Philly Porchfest. It such a beautiful day of music. We had such a blast at our porch because we played with Caring Less, who is just an amazing band. It was really exciting, we had a few folks that just saw us listed as “sad girl rock” on the porch fest map and that’s how they found themselves at our porch!! We had a really great crowd that day–a lot of random people stopped that were walking or even driving by.

More broadly, how does being from Philadelphia influence your music?

We all have different roots. Nick and I are from NJ, but live in the Philadelphia area now, so I would say while Philadelphia doesn’t exactly influence our music, the Philadelphia Music Scene is so welcoming and awesome. It was really intimidating not knowing anything outside of open mics, and we were welcomed with open arms by a handful of bands that we had only met on Instagram! It blows my mind to this day how we get asked to do shows on a monthly basis. I wouldn’t want to be a part of any other music community.

What’s on the horizon?

We’ve got some exciting shows coming up in the future, next one being on July 14^th at Bonk’s Bar. But we are working on getting up to NYC for a show and then a possible Sad Girl Rock show in fthe fall. In August we are taking a short hiatus and will be focusing on writing and getting some new merch released! But our big goal, which I have written on our 2023 vision board is to land a show at Johnny Brenda’s. It’s my dream venue to play at in the city.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!

All photos by Nathan Garfield.