As No Right look ahead to a debut full-length, we meet the band’s formidable vocalist Sierra Stark to chat about music as an outlet, the change in the Bay Area hardcore scene (for the better) and more…
When things are messed up in your life, it’s rarely a bad idea to start a band. Even better, you could start a hardcore band and really dredge some shit up. Aged 19, having never set foot on stage before, No Right vocalist Sierra Stark did just that. The first song they released in the spring of 2016 bore their name – it was a mission statement fit to peel the skin clean off your skull. ‘Told me you don’t give no love for free, but you see in a child’s mind that’s not fucking comforting,’ Sierra howled right out of the traps.
“At that age you start realising things about your childhood,” she says, beanie pulled low during an early morning Zoom call. “That time was a lot of processing, learning to live with certain things, learning to let go of certain things, and learning to stop putting up with a lot of things, too. A lot of that comes from my home life, and that’s also the main reason why I decided to be straight edge. On one hand, your parents set a good example, and then on the other hand, they set an example of what you don’t want to be.
“I got to that point where I was working through all these things and I thought this was the best outlet that I could use. It can be really isolating to be in your mind all the time. There’s nothing I could do to deserve that type of treatment or, like, having to live with someone that unfortunately is dealing with addiction and other mental illnesses. I think it was just almost like therapy for me.”
Sierra, who is based in San Francisco, had been a fixture of the San Jose scene for some time by that point, her path crossing with guitarist and engineer Charles Toshio, whose resume now features records by Gulch, Scowl and Field Of Flames. Once the two had decided to pool their resources they discovered a sharp creative understanding and a common language that allowed for piercing words to be matched step by step with unrelenting sonic savagery. By talking things out first, unpacking years of trauma as friends, they were able to write No Right in a matter of minutes. “I think I was trying to process my feelings and it was just coming out, you know, in pieces, but he was able to put it together and say what I needed to say,” Sierra observes.
Since then, No Right have only grown more powerful. Their most recent release, two minutes and 20 seconds of cataclysmic noise called Exempt, featured on Volume 5 of Triple B Records’ America’s Hardcore compilation. Here, Sierra’s performance has gone up a couple of notches, with a full-throated roar answering chaotic guitar chug, D-beat sections and a killer mosh call as she proclaims, ‘I won’t go out this way.’
It’s clear that the frustration and isolation of the pandemic has been poured into its housing. Sierra felt that particularly keenly given her geographic dislocation from her bandmates, who are all in San Jose, and the scene she feels most at home in, watching on as her friends’ bands blew up online amid the clamour to fill the space left by the axing of gigs. “For some people, it was great, because it was motivation for them,” she says. “There are people who wrote and put out entire LPs in that time. But for me, I felt like I lost so much motivation because the main part for me was that live experience, playing shows and the energy and everything.
“The comp was that motivation that we needed – I can’t play shows, but we have a deadline, at least,” she adds. “So that was like the one finger holding on to the little thread of hope. We are chopping away at an LP, that’s our goal. We might do a two-song sampler or something, but our next release we’re hoping for a full-length.”
When Sierra discovered hardcore in her teens, she found the same release that she took from a lifelong attachment to sports, mainly volleyball. “At school, I always felt isolated,” she says. “I was always someone who could easily make friends but I felt like I never had my group. High school is cliquey. I was always playing sports, which was huge for me, because since, maybe, third grade I’ve had depression and anxiety. I would say the physicality of shows functions in the same manner.
“I’ve learned a lot, just being able to function in everyday life, because of playing those sports, whether it be teamwork, leadership, or being able to take a loss and keep working towards this goal, no matter where you started from. I’m pretty sure I'm always the shortest one on the team. So that means I’ve always got to work that much harder just to keep up with people. I think growing up with that mentality has helped me in other ways, too, even with the band, being able to just keep going and pushing no matter what, when people are talking shit about us, thinking we suck, whatever it is, you know?”
Back at the start, Sierra took that accumulated grit and sought to change the picture that she saw in front of her at almost every show: dudes upon dudes upon dudes. She felt pressure to prove herself above and beyond her male counterparts, who were given an easier ride. That wasn’t a problem, but fortunately the sands are shifting for future generations. “In the Bay Area, I never saw a hardcore band with a girl singing,” she admits of her formative years.
“Maybe once in a blue moon someone would be playing guitar or bass. Now, I would say there’s a way bigger percentage of people regularly attending shows who are not men. I've gone to countless shows where maybe I’m the only girl there. It’s kind of weird to think that people just accepted that, or that it was normal. You’d think you'd want your scene to reflect the area that you live in, getting all these points of view. When it comes down to it, sometimes people can, unknowingly or on purpose, be unwelcoming to certain types of people.
“When I was probably still a teenager, people were purposely trying to mosh like, towards me, on me,” she continues. “I experienced being targeted, basically, and it’s a strange feeling. Hopefully, if people have experienced something like that they can find a scene where they don't have to deal with that bullshit. [I hope that] if it’s important to them they will maybe go to a different venue or speak up about it, find their niche in all this, because it can be so positive for so many people. I can say it’s changed my life.”
