Violent Change

Early life

Matt Bleyle grew up in Mill Valley, California, where he attended Tamalpais High School.^[6] As a teenager, he discovered punk and hardcore after growing disillusioned with commercial radio.^[7]

His first band, Psycho 78, formed in the late 1990s after Bleyle was recruited as a drummer by singer Bobby Adopted. The band rehearsed in a grange hall across from San Quentin State Prison and opened for British punk group the Partisans.^[4]

The Abi Yoyos (c. 2001–2007)

Bleyle co-founded the Abi Yoyos with fellow Tamalpais High School alumni Shawn Mehrens and Jeff Mitchell, both 21 at the time of the band's peak activity.^[6] The group was originally called Guttersnatch before adopting a name drawn from an African folktale adapted by folk singer Pete Seeger.^[8] Bleyle played guitar and wrote songs; Mehrens served as lead vocalist.^[6]

The Abi Yoyos released a 7" single, The World Is Not My Home, on Risk Records, with songs written between 2001 and 2003 drawing on influences including Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Rudimentary Peni, and songwriter Phil Ochs.^[8][9] In 2006 they released a full-length album, Mill Valley,^[10] and topped the bill at the annual Punk Prom at 924 Gilman in Berkeley.^[6] That year the band completed their first national tour, which included dates across the American South and a stop in New York City.^[6] The SF Bay Guardian described the Abi Yoyos as mixing "folk influences of Phil Ochs and progressive elements of King Crimson with grandparent punkness of the Dead Kennedys," noting the band "openly rep the North Bay: namely, Mill Valley."^[6] The Abi Yoyos dissolved in 2007.^[2]

Other projects

After the Abi Yoyos, Bleyle formed Sopors, described by Aquarius Records as "a short-lived SF band that existed in the same scene that birthed pop geniuses the Ovens," praising the band's "insane catchiness" and "most irresistible hooks" set against "churning lo-fi riffage."^[11] He also briefly played with Yankee Kamikaze,^[1] and participated in the hardcore group Caged Animal alongside Tony Molina.^[4] He contributed to Rat Columns, a project led by Australian songwriter David West.^[4]

During this period, Bleyle worked as a cashier at Amoeba Music on Haight Street in San Francisco, where he met Thomas Rubinstein, who would later co-found Melters Records with Eli Wald.^[7]

Formation and debut EP (2012)

Violent Change began as a series of home recordings Bleyle started in 2011, initially distributed as hand-dubbed cassette tapes that sold out quickly.^[1][7] Tony Molina and Sterling Mackinnon, early members, encouraged Bleyle to take the recordings into a live setting.^[7]

The band's first official release, the four-track EP Suck on the Gun, appeared on Melters Records in October 2012 as the label's inaugural release (catalog: MELT001).^[1] The initial lineup featured Bleyle alongside Molina, Mackinnon on guitar, and Rohit Rao on drums.^[3] A release show was held at The New Parish in Oakland, with support from POW!, Scrapers, and Die Hard.^[1]

Self-titled debut LP (2013)

Violent Change's self-titled debut album was released in early 2013 on Catholic Guilt Records, a San Francisco label run by Michael Harkin, in a pressing of 330 copies on black vinyl.^[12] The album was assembled largely from cassette recordings Bleyle made between autumn 2011 and summer 2012, the majority recorded by himself alone. Four tracks--"I Don't Know Why," "Detention Camp," and two Molina-penned songs, "Word Around Town" and "No One Left To Blame"--were recorded with the full band; Mackinnon also contributed accordion to "Sleeping Fuhrer."^[13] The live band at the time of release consisted of Bleyle, Mackinnon (guitar), Jake Bayley (bass), and Blaine Patrick (drums).^[13]

Bleyle recorded the album in a converted meat-locker rehearsal space in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The SF Weekly noted this location as emblematic of a generation of San Francisco musicians "exiled deep underground, or to the city's margins, where they turn frustration over a prohibitively expensive renters' market into brash and urgent music."^[5] In a 2013 scene report, the SF Weekly placed Violent Change's debut alongside those of Life Stinks, CCR Headcleaner, and Scraper as suggesting "a music scene thriving anew, but darkened and on-edge."^[5]

The East Bay Express described the album's songwriting as centering on "fully realized songs about strange subjects obscured by poor recording," singling out "Word Around Town" for "hijack[ing] the bittersweet melancholy of Nineties' college rock to produce a break-up song with a soaring guitar solo."^[14] The Catholic Guilt Records label called it "a future classic of the pop underground" and "easily our favorite San Francisco album since the Hospitals' Hairdryer Peace."^[12] The East Bay Express later selected "Walmart Parking Lot," the album's closing track, as one of the definitive local rock moments of 2013, calling it "one of the finest local rock statements of 2013."^[15]

A Celebration of Taste (2014)

After Molina and Rao left the project,^[3] Bleyle recorded the band's second album, A Celebration of Taste, almost entirely alone, with contributions from Mackinnon and Blaine Patrick.^[3][16] The 13-track LP was released on Melters Records in June 2014, available only on vinyl and not digitally streaming.^[17]

The East Bay Express described the album as exploring "the sonic decay of magnetic tape and overdriven gear," concluding: "Rather than sounding torn between two styles, Bleyle makes a case for fusing them together. Call it a gorgeous wreck."^[16] The record's cover song--an unreleased Phil Ochs track, "You Can't Get Stoned Enough"--was read by one critic as key to the album's emotional logic, "the sound of a voice crying in the wilderness."^[2]

VC3 (2016)

The band's third LP, VC3, was co-released by Melters Records and It Takes Two Records in September 2016 (catalog: MELT008 / ITT-003).^[18] The live band at the time included Jess Sylvester, Alexa Pantalone, and Stanley Martinez, drawn from Bay Area acts Rays and Life Stinks.^[4] Vice's Noisey music channel described it as "heart-on-sleeve hazy pop," comparing Bleyle's approach to Guided by Voices, Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos, Chris Knox, and Ray Davies.^[4] The Melters Bandcamp page placed the album alongside Shoes' One in Versailles and Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos as a work of "lonesome romanticism."^[18]

The East Bay Express included VC3 on its list of the top sixteen Bay Area music releases of 2016, writing: "Matt Bleyle plays most of the instruments on Violent Change's four records released since 2012, which sets a roughshod rock foundation beneath his arresting melodies... the struggle between grandeur and grime is more compelling than either quality can achieve alone."^[19]

Later releases (2020–present)

Following a seven-year gap between studio albums--during which Bleyle underwent surgeries and the band continued to perform live--Violent Change released the Squandered 7" on Sloth Mate Productions in 2020.^[7] A split record with Honey Radar was released in 2022 on Chunklet Industries.^[7] The fourth LP, Starcastle, followed in 2023, produced primarily by Stanley Martinez, who had become Bleyle's chief creative collaborator.^[7]

In 2024, Bleyle released a separate collaborative LP as Cuneiform Tabs, a correspondence recording project with Sterling Mackinnon (of The False Berries), compiled from eighteen months of recordings exchanged between California and the UK, limited to 200 copies.^[20][21]

Sloth Mate Productions

Bleyle founded Sloth Mate Productions as an independent record label, co-operating it with Stanley Martinez. In 2024, Bandcamp Daily profiled Sloth Mate as part of a feature on Bay Area tape labels, quoting Bleyle on the release show for Oakland group Children Maybe Later's 2022 debut What a Flash Kick! at The Rite Spot, a Mission District bar and venue: "There was something magical about that combination. Maybe it was hearing songs about vampires while people were eating spaghetti."^[22]

As Violent Change