Music is influenced by many things. From games to comics, great story telling, and being voices to all the moments in our lives, music finds itself a great tool to celebrate the things we love. And we love to see when the things we love influence each other. Southern California band, and customers of Graham Crackers, Black Market Theory, sat down with us to discuss their influences and love of all thing’s nerd culture.
Black Market Theory started in 2015 and is comprised of Evan Elliott (singer and guitarist), Andy McDermott (guitar), and Alex Webster (bass), Marshall Vongena (guitar), and Michael McClintok (drums). Fueled by a love for the rebellious nature of Punk Rock and a passion for geekery, this five-piece band has been touring from San Diego to Los Angles and has put out two albums so far. The band has described themselves as having a metal influenced punk rock sound akin to Bad Religion with a harder edge. Hard to miss references pepper their songs, from song titles and lyrical mentions of Yu Gi Oh cards to wanting to defeat Viltrumites from the Invincible series to classic good vs evil story telling. We spoke with three of the members, Evan, Andy, and Alex.
Evan fell hard in love with Manga when he found the Black Clover series but spoke of his first comic being Sonic the Hedgehog from Archie Comics. It led him to reading such classics as, Watchmen, and V For Vendetta. But his friendship with Andy rekindled the love for comics when Andy exposed him to Invincible. Andy, who was already a fan of Robert Kirkman due to his passion for The Walking Dead, which was incidentally was the story that made him fall in love with comics. Alex got his feet wet with Amazing Spider-Man but was drawn to fantasy and sci-fi literature more with deep dives into Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the like.
“One of the big things with Black Market Theory is paying homage to nerd culture,” said Evan, “(. . .) Because this ultimately, aside from music, this is what shaped all five of us.”
Video games, comic books, anime, manga, will always be “the backbone” of the band, Evan continued, “We didn’t want to sound like other Punk bands (. . .) we didn’t want to sing about stuff you could hear from any other Punk band, we wanted to bring something new to table.”
These guys love to tell stories as much as they love to read them. Currently, Evan is loving the manga’s Black Clover and Kaiju No. 8. Andy is enjoying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Kelly Thompsons, Black Clover. And Alex is diving further into the lore of the world of Warhammer 40,000.
Black Market Theory has a great sound and a great base of inspiration. We here at the Murrieta location are looking forward to what they come up with next, as well as what great books we can get in their hands.
left to right: Andy, Evan, Alex