Sgrafitto Kill by Caroline Huber '26.
BY CAROLINE HUBER ’26
STAFF WRITER
The rain poured down as Mount Holyoke students and visitors alike congregated in the Chapin Auditorium for the inaugural Mount Holyoke College Students for Alternative Music show. The free event, which featured local bands across the genres of emo, shoegaze and punk, began at 7 p.m. as show-goers entered the sprawling space.
First, Western Massachusetts four-piece emo-gaze band Bugslam played a set that featured songs from their 2023 EP “This is All There Is” and other unreleased music. The band, who cited their inspirations as including Title Fight, Whirr, Modern Color, They Are Gutting a Body of Water and Country Westerns, enthused the audience to dance, at times creating an enthusiastic but nonviolent pushpit.
Vocalist and guitarist Jason Frankel’s impassioned vocals harmonized with the bass of Lulu Harding and the guitar of August Ellis, led by the measured drumming of Helena Andrus. Bugslam’s performance incorporated melodic and rhythmic elements with moments of vocal grit and wailing bass.
Frankel said he appreciated the mix of new and old faces in the crowd, noting he “met a lot of cool people from Mount Holyoke … but it was also nice to see some old heads sticking around for us.” Maya Levy ’24, who attended the show, wrote in a statement to Mount Holyoke News, “It was a blast and I genuinely could not have predicted dancing and moshing for two hours straight … it was amazing to finally interact with other [Five College] students in the alt[ernative] music scene.”
Following the first set, three-piece skate-punk band GDI played to a responsive crowd, notably inciting an enthusiastic circle pit and the most aggressive atmosphere of the night. The band’s set featured the vocals and bass of Sean Ferus, guitar and supporting vocals from Steve Lobenstine and drumming by Luc Poirier. Poirier cited Tool and Suicidal Tendencies as inspirations for their drumming, while Ferus mentioned the influence of bands The Strokes and Descendants.
The triad played their original music, including their self-titled song “GDI',’ alongside covers and unreleased tracks. The dissonant vocal harmonies of Ferus and Lobenstine emulate the style of 90s rock vocalists, with catchy choruses mixing with intense drumming.
Poirier noticed the lively, dancing audience, saying they specifically appreciated “a guy … doing a two-step, but his body was angled at a 90-degree angle.” Ferus said he liked that “people were going hard. Everybody was moving, which was sick,” while Lobenstine noted that “the overall vibe here is amazing.”
Levy said a highlight of the show was “definitely when people started running around in a circle pit [during the GDI set]. It was so cool to see people from the other colleges mosh with us and then take the care to pick each other up when someone falls.”
Closing out the night, three-piece punk band Sgraffito Kill played an upbeat set. The band's performance combined the melodic and lilting vocals of Gray Abshire with the consistent yet rollicking bass of Devin Hecht and the energetic and metal-inspired drumming of Pearl Sapirstein ’26. The band mixed their original narrative-driven songs with covers of Pretty Sick's “She” and Soft Cell's “Tainted Love,” which the audience joyfully sang and danced along to.
Sgraffito Kill demonstrated their musical range with pieces that journeyed across their riot grrrl, classic punk and metal influences. Frankel said he thought it was “good to see them kind of doing their thing and really flourishing, and it was good to be in the pit too because everyone was really kind of volleying that energy back and forth.” Harding said she “love[d] the kind of riot girl vibe they go for … It just makes me feel very, very seen… they killed it, and all the [other] bands killed it too.”
Abshire said they particularly enjoyed it when “I started shredding and went down on my knees and went all the way back and everybody yelled … that was so much fun … We were so silly with it. This was such a silly show. I love shows with silly vibes.”
Pach Pacheco ’25, MHCALT’s events director, said the motivations of the club were “to create a safe space for different people who also are into this kind of music and different genres … We want to host shows as much as we can this semester and just bring … a very cool new scene to Mount Holyoke because I feel like we've been kind of missing that.”
Pacheco said that the club was “going to be hosting a lot of very cool shows and events this semester and next” and encouraged those interested to follow the club on social media @MHCALT.
Levy said they hoped to see “more bands from Moho and the other colleges, people who just wanna jump onstage and play some music, people who just wanna dance no matter who’s onstage, and a longstanding active alt[ernative] music scene at MHC!”