Sounds like: Not (or completely) fucking around.
Ogre isn’t aiming to be defined. You could call the three-piece’s sound noise rock, maybe even hardcore—two basses jabbing through a cacophony of pedals and amps, ejecting as razor sharp, with drums erupting in a kind of 360-degree projectile fury. But Ogre isn’t really crafting genre-based songs; they’re more interested in pure sonics, in building a world—one with a somewhat chaotic sound.
“We’re more like a performance troupe, like we’re putting on that we’re a rock band,” Grace Crane, Ogre’s bassist, says.
Ace Jennings, the other bassist, chimes in, “We’re more like theater kids—”
“—I won’t own up to that,” Crane says.
There’s a Lynchian quality to Ogre’s antics, but swap the ominous crooner soundtrack for sounds that feel like being stuck in a parking garage elevator with scratched-metal walls. Ogre is funny and eerie, a little grotesque (we’re still determining what kind of jam covered Jennings as he was birthed from bandmate Nils Niswonger in Ogre’s music video for “Condition Indicator”), a threatening sinister feel to the burbling, distorted sounds that have a sinking pull to them—but again, there’s laughter, too. Technically, there are lyrics involved, but it’s often more about the sonic shapes, not the words themselves.
“I usually will write them close to when we record something, and then I will promptly never zero in on learning them for shows,” Jennings says. “It’s very rhythmic singing.”
Nobody knew what they were trying to build and get at when they began Ogre. They just knew they wanted to play music. Niswonger moved to Portland in 2021 from Santa Cruz, Calif. The city was still somewhat on lockdown, but Niswonger had dreamed of playing in a band and was itching to start one. He put flyers up around town and got a response from Jennings, who had moved to Portland the year before from Florida by way of Northern California. Neither had much of any training or background as a musician—Niswonger had dabbled in guitar but was picking up drums for the first time; Jennings was just learning bass.
“We were both not great musicians at the time;, we definitely grew together,” Niswonger says.
The two started meeting up and practicing regularly, four to five times a week, learning their instruments and what Ogre would be.
“[We] needed something that would set us apart, but to also come [to] it without any of the pretentious band swagger,” Jennings says. “Doing not a guitar-and-drums band, and from there adding stage banter—silly but violently silly, interesting but not pretentious.”
Niswonger adds, “If we work really, really hard, we can make something that sounds—”
“—kind of like music?” Jennings says.
And they did make music—an EP and two albums by 2023. After playing as a duo, they wanted to be able to play the full parts live, so they enlisted Crane, Niswonger’s roommate with whom he attended high school, to fill out the bass parts. Crane was already familiar with the songs since the practices happened in the basement under her bedroom.
“I was listening to Ogre every day, whether I wanted to or not,” she says.
The role was meant to be temporary, but Crane became a full-time bandmate, and the group’s been a trio since, gathering steam in the local scene, going out for short tours. But Portland’s been good to them.
“People here are very generous with resources, there’s not a lot of cut throat going on, everybody just wants to keep the community itself alive, keep it rich, and so if they see something sick, they’re gonna be like, ‘More people need to see this.’” Crane says. “I don’t think I’d want to be making music anywhere else in the world right now.”
“In a way that feels functional, [Portland is] just large enough to feel a sense of anonymity, but just small enough to feel insulated,” Jennings says.
“It’s kind of perfect,” Crane says.
The band’s currently in business mode, getting things together for some upcoming regional runs of shows, putting pieces in place to record a new album. “We really like recording, but what we want to come across is, we’re more performance art based,” Niswonger says. “I don’t know if we’ll ever put out music that’s on repeat. We’d love to some day release a record that captures the live thing a little more, the crazy stuff, the whole bit.”
“That’s our bread and butter, the live shows,” Crane says.
Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW’s journalism today.
Sign up for our Daily Primer newsletter.
