From Paradigm Summer 2021, Issue 6.2

Great Expectations

A trio out of San Pedro represents a new wave of punks from this storied port town. 

BY KARI HAMANAKA

It’s one of those picture-perfect, postcard days in San Pedro where the sun is out and a cool breeze is rolling off the ocean.

Inside the practice space of hardcore band Unexpected Fetus, Black Flag, Bad Brains and PMA posters hang on the wall. On a table is a small stack of books, including a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. It’s a good setting to drop in on a band that has emerged in lockstep with a broader Harbor Area revival in a town with a well-documented history in punk with bands such as the Minutemen, Toys That Kill, Rotting Out and so many more. Pedro’s history makes for big shoes to fill or even stand beside, but Unexpected Fetus has come out of the gate strong with a 14-song album released April 30 of this year, a day before their very first live show and just six months after forming the band in November 2020.  

“I have aspirations like crazy for this band,” said drummer Grant Granucci. 

“Honestly, I think we’re a sick ass band and I feel like we could go far,” said bassist and singer Eli Ortega. “At first, I was like we’ll jam and record some songs, but now that we’ve played shows and people dig it, I feel like we can do pretty well. I’m not saying we’re going to get big and famous, but I’d just like to hold it down for the Harbor and for Pedro and show that Pedro’s not dead. It’s still ripping.” 

Unexpected Fetus was formed out of some of the members of the now-defunct band Dro Boyz, with a name that stemmed from a spitballing session between Granucci and Ortega as they sought something that would get in people’s faces. 

“I thought Unexpected Sickness would be a good one and then he [Ortega] said ‘Unexpected Fetus’ and we thought it’s probably something a lot of people could relate to,” Granucci said. 

There may be slight humor in the name (their profile image is currently a picture of a Cabbage Patch Kids doll with what look like spikes coming out of the head), but their debut album “No Hope No Future” comes packed with substance from members who mix their high consumption of all things music with reading and lapping up as much information as they can to tackle subjects of suicide, drug overdose, racism and the environment. 

The track “Wasteland” speaks to pollution, “Check On Your Friends” deals with suicide from Ortega’s close friends, “Privileged” was written right after the riot at the Capitol and “Where’s My Stimmy”? you can probably figure out the meaning. 

All of that’s married with guitarist Anthony Saucedo’s strict focus on composition. 

“I agree with all the messages in the music; I’m just focused more on the music side,” Saucedo said. “I like to compose, so I don’t really have something I want the listener to take from it; I just hope they enjoy it.” 

The guitarist, who said he spends most of his free time writing and mixing music, grew up around rap, old school hip hop and classic reggae from artists such as Gregory Isaacs. He got his start in his middle school’s band after getting a guitar and then began going to shows where he first got into punk.

The group’s music and lyrics were created during the quarantine as they jammed out their feelings and observations, smartly preparing something for just ahead of their first show May 1, which memorably had to be moved twice to avoid shutdowns by the cops. 

The album’s title, a reference to MTV’s classic “Daria,” packs the aggregate of tracks up thematically. 

“She was like ‘There’s no future, everything dies’ or something like that,” Ortega recalled of how the album was named. “She’s on the floor and I was like, ‘That’s pretty sick’ and I just put my own spin on it because lowkey in life there is no hope; there is no future. The Earth is dying. Society’s corrupt and everything’s bad, so we’re trying to make something good out of it.” 

Ortega, who got into punk through a cousin, fell further into the scene through skateboarding. But he comes from a family who listened to salsa and la banda corridos, mixed with reggae and funk. His mother used to sing in a church band and it was said his father also used to play guitar in that same band. Much of what he puts in the lyrics has plenty to do with his experiences dealing with racism. His grandfather is from Jalisco. His mother came to the U.S. from Tijuana when she was 15. That history has informed what he writes for the band. 

Granucci, like Ortega, also has a family with a history in music. The avid surfer and lover of travel said his father played in bands his whole life and started a garage rock band up in Texas while in college. Granucci said drums were always around and he began playing them weekly starting around the age of five. He also played piano and said music was always playing in the house, whether it was Black Flag or the Minutemen to The Doors. 

Granucci likened what Unexpected Fetus is putting out there to documenting-whether that’s drawing from personal experiences or what the three see around them. 

“It’s a documentation of life,” he said. “Especially in L.A., so many people look at it as this paradise and, in a lot of ways, it is. But, in a lot of ways, there’s a despair and sadness and tragedy that is oftentimes ignored by the media and the public. We want to be the people to document and, hate to say raise awareness because it’s such a fucking cliché, but just detail the struggles.” 

The three make an interesting point, amid what has clearly been a shift in where people are consuming their news, in talking about bands’ roles in that conversation of disseminating information or, at the least, broaching current events for those who may not be as inclined to read newspapers or watch local news broadcasts. 

“I know it’s a cliché, but I don’t think there is [value in the media] and that’s not stemming from any type of partisan position because I don’t have one,” Granucci said. “That stems from me being someone who likes to learn and I’m not talking about school. I’m not a fucking A student or anything; I just like knowing what’s going on. And when I look at what’s being pumped into the minds of other people, it’s just fucking garbage. And, it’s like why can’t I-because I’m not dumb and I’m not fucking brilliant, but I can listen and learn and take shit in and then put it back out there and not in a super polarizing way. It might not change anything, but maybe someone can hear it and they can get a little more savvy about what’s going on without having to turn on your TV and get two assholes sitting in a penthouse in New York City yelling at each other for an hour. Who wants that”?

“A lot of news companies they’re all sponsored by the left, right, whatever party it may fucking be, and they just want to show people what they want them to see,” Ortega added. “They don’t show the actual facts. It’s not raw emotions. It’s all censored and cut off and cropped to their agenda.” 

In some ways they fancy themselves that uncensored outlet for information-or at least one of them-with the hope that people open their minds, particularly to cultures and others they may see as different. 

“We’re our own news media outlet, telling it like it is: raw and unforgiving,” Ortega said. 

While the three still have plenty of room to ride off their spring album release, they already have three unreleased tracks and are set to record a cadre more so that when Ortega returns to college in the fall, they’ll have a robust catalog to pull from for the future.  

At the end of the day, they acknowledge their music can be taken as adversarial in some ways with an “us versus them” kind of approach, as Granucci put it, but they’re ultimately about something positive: community building. 

“We talk about these issues because we are the same as everyone else at our shows,” Granucci said. “When you come to our shows, there’s no hierarchy at all. What I didn’t have before I started playing shows with these guys is I’m now in a part of a little community where every person I meet at the show, or people who have our band’s stickers on their car, makes you realize there’s just so many sick ass fucking people out there. There’s a lot of support.” 

The point is to help foster and give back to that community in any way they can to make it sustainable, they said. 

“I want to smash close-mindedness,” Ortega said. “I want to smash bigotry because there’s a lot of that in the South Bay area and I fucking hate that shit. There’s a lot of different people here and you can’t have a closed mind with your neighbors who are different from you. Just love one another, respect one another and learn from your experiences.” 

KEEP IN TOUCH

▶ @unexpectedfetus

▶ “No Hope No Future” out now on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Amazon, YouTube

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