Latter Lets It Rip at Drkmttr Tour Kickoff

Latter at Drkmttr, 8/12/2026
Photo: Victor J. Reed

Latter almost didn’t make it to the opening stop of their latest tour on Aug. 12. Luckily for Nashville, the band drove 12 hours through hellacious storms on what is normally an eight-hour trek from Chicago, pulling into town just in time to watch folks file into Drkmttr.

Yammer Jaw at Drkmttr, 8/12/2026
Photo: Victor J. Reed

Before Latter could make their way into the venue, local boys Yammer Jaw opened with a set punctuated with bursts of frenetic energy, sliding between shreddy, technical guitar and hard-hitting rhythms. Yammer Jaw is made up of members of bands (both active and defunct) that have made their marks heavy and dark on Middle Tennessee, including Waxed, Sheep Shifter and War Brides. Chris Clark and Stephen Small, formerly of Sheep Shifter, offered high-speed guitar riffage and traded vocals while War Brides’ Richie Townsend beat the shit out of the drums. Ian Sundstrom, who’d later get behind the drums with Waxed, added vocals and bass. These guys have been playing out for a while, but released their first single “Cuckin’ Round” at the end of July. The band’s debut record Burth is due Sept. 18, and a few days following its release, they’ll be back at Drkmttr playing with Iron Lung on Sept. 22.

Dan Spencer at Drkmttr, 8/12/2026
Photo: Victor J. Reed

Dan Spencer and his band The Love Cuts may have been the least heavy outfit to play that night, but what they brought fit the bill. Spencer, who said he was debuting a new bowling shirt for the evening, played a “fast as shit” song called “Signs” that dates back to 2016. The band delivered a broad spectrum of their music, but largely strayed from gloomy material and opted for more rock ’n’ roll songs like “Fat Vampire” and “Eternal Platitude.”

Outside after Spencer’s set, I rolled my eyes listening to a guy talk loudly about a woman “taking her tits out,” but later Latter singer Meredith Haines, also an artist and teacher, connected the dots for me. Just before their final song, she left the stage appearing to have suffered a nose bleed. After a minute or so of the band raising a righteous cacophony, Haines reappeared wearing a hospital gown and wielding a handsaw raised to the ceiling. Sawing away at the gown and thrashing wide-eyed and topless on the floor, she growled and screamed her way through “My Body Is My Sickness,” the titular song of ferocious rage from Latter’s 2024 LP.

Leading up to this, highlights of the set included a driving post-hardcore song called “King of Abuse” from an upcoming full-length. Latter spent their time between tours this year in the studio, and plans to release the new album early next year.

Normally it bothers me a bit how the boys in the room thin out when a woman comes onstage. On the other hand, nobody had to say “girls to the front” for Latter, because they came up on their own. Since I grew up in a very male-dominated music scene, not much brings me more joy than seeing women of all ages all over the room enjoying themselves. (As a side note, I did not know the kids were still skanking, but we love to see it.)

Somehow bare breasts were the least interesting thing about the set. Latter absolutely filled the room with sound: eerie noise tracks, a wicked seven-string guitar, a bevy of perfect early-2000s screams, intense drums and a fucking saxophone. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the short-lived four-piece post-hardcore noise band The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower or my excessive love for Rhode Island punks Downtown Boys, but there’s something about adding a saxophone to the mix that fills in all the nooks and crannies of my brain. Latter is slated to zigzag across the country for the next few weeks with Los Angeles fairy-doom trio Faetooth before heading overseas.

Waxed ended things with a tight 30-minute set, and frontman Luc Richards lost his shirt way earlier in their show than Haines did. The funny-but-true quip about every country band needing a song about a truck also applies to a heavy show. Case in point: Richards and company launched into “Slow Lane,” a dark, sludgy and foreboding tune from the band’s spring release The Continental Way, which he described as their “big nasty truck” song. Fitting the theme of the night marking a confluence of very busy musicians, Waxed and Dan Spencer are headed out on a short run around the Southeast.

For me, this is the ideal Wednesday night lineup to break up the work week. There should be a few songs you could sing along with, about some combination of vampires, the devil, being a sad mean bastard and/or kicking someone’s ass. There ought to be a set you’re going to want to either move to the back for or fight for your life during. (Your mileage may vary, but my age and expensive medical device mean I needed to move for Waxed, though this audience proved to be a bit less rowdy than typical.) You can’t go wrong with a few mostly local guys in a band who are the wild sum of the parts of a bunch of other bands, some of whom don’t play out anymore. (RIP, Sheep Shifter.) But maybe most importantly, there was a band with a woman absolutely screaming her ass off alongside a ballistic buffet of weird sounds — and they get bonus points since nearly the entire front row was filled with women when the boobs came out.