Ramstock is a yearly tradition during Red/White week at Manual. In the week leading up to the rivalry game, student bands perform and their peers vote on the band they like best. The band with the most votes gets the opportunity to perform at the pep rally on Friday before the game. This year, five bands are performing in the courtyard on Monday, Oct. 28.
Angels In The Closet
Angels In The Closet isn’t new to Ramstock. The band played last year, although Jacqueline Tran, their guitarist, and Eva Meredith, their former vocalist, are not returning for this performance. Now, the members are UofL freshmen Emma Gonzalez and DeeDee Mimms on drums and guitar, respectively, as well as bassist Sam Richardson (12, VA) and vocalist Charley Ignatow (12, YPAS)
“We all stuck together after Ramstock and just started finding other people that were interested in being in a band,” Gonzalez said. “I saw from other people on Instagram that both DeeDee and Charley were interested in joining a band. So I was like, okay. I reached out to both of them and yeah, here we are.”
The members of Angels in the Closet have varied music tastes, but they cite Green Day as a big influence overall. They played a Green Day song last year, and are slated to play one this year as well.
“Punk rock is definitely, probably, our main genre influence,” Gonzalez said.
While some of the band members are new, and have different music tastes, they’ve still found ways to become close and make a community with each other.
“I like the connections I make within the band ’cause Emma and Sam have been good friends of mine for a while and then getting to know DeeDee and Jackie has just been really fun and I also just love being on stage and performing,” Ignatow said
In addition to Ramstock, the band has played in smaller, local shows, including one at Cave Valley Kava.
“I feel like it definitely gets our band out there for sure. And I hope that with playing with Ramstock we get to play in the Louisville scene,” Mimms said. “We get to play with those big bands like Anemic Royalty and Deep Above.”
You can find Angels In The Closet on Instagram @angels_in.the_closet.
OUCHH!
OUCHH! has a name that represents their style: riot girl punk, influenced heavily by Destroy Boys. Ashton Bowling (10, HSU), Stella Crigler (10, VA), and Sam Richardson (12, VA) form the band, coming together for their first performance as a group.
“Rewind. Ramstock last year, 2023. It was only like a month or two of me and Ashton being friends,” Crigler said.
Crigler and Bowling became friends in the beginning of the 2023 school year through other Manual students and had previously discussed creating a band.
“Ramstock was kind of like the pushing point,” Crigler said.
OUCHH! formed in Dec. 2023, and as soon as they heard about the “battle of the bands,” they knew they wanted to perform in it.
“I always was like, man, how cool would this be to like, do something like a music genre I really do enjoy? And I’m just the singer, I’m the star,” Crigler said, “It’s a really big thing for me and a really big deal.”
Before Ramstock, they posted an advertisement for a new bassist and/or drummer, since their original one left. Richardson answered the call in a direct message on the band’s Instagram page in late September of this year, and the band began practicing and developing a setlist soon after.
“I was like ‘Sooo you need a bassist’?” Richardson said. “I like that we sound really good. I feel like we’re very compatible, like, musically and that we’re friends.”
Each band member has a unique story for how they started music — all at different ages under different circumstances.
Crigler was recruited for her elementary school’s “Schaffner Singers,” program.
“Middle school, I did choir, and then I got into punk and I was like, this is a lot cooler than choir, and I still like to sing,” Crigler said.
Starting with an electric guitar, Richardson soon quit and turned to bass guitar. Bowling was interested in music and first tried drums before going to guitar.
“I begged my grandma to get me a guitar, she got me one and I’ve been playing nonstop ever since.”
You can find OUCHH! on Instagram @_ouchhh__
S p a c e
“I want our band to be able to generate a type of energy, a type of space, wink, wink, that has something different, but something authentic, we obviously show that we like this music,” Marcell Malone (12, HSU) said.
Malone is S p a c e’s vocalist and founder, making his freshman year dream come alive.
“What I had was a vision, and I pulled it from air,” Malone said.
In search of bandmates, he looked to YPAS students who might be interested. Despite being an HSU major, Malone participates in Manual’s mens and concert choirs. He participated in choir in elementary school, and moved to beatmaking in middle school.
“He [Malone] had talked about other people around me asking them about guitarists and vocals, and so I just said, ‘I play piano, if you need that.’ And he’s like, ‘Yes, you’re in now.’ So I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. But that’s fine, because I enjoy all the music that he’s picked so far. So I’m having fun with it,” Tony Aloise (11, YPAS) said.
Aloise started music in choir at Noe Middle School. Since then, he’s learned piano to help practice his songs at home.
After enlisting Aloise as a pianist, Malone continued the search for another bandmate, eventually recruiting Noah Chudgar (12, YPAS).
“I didn’t know I was in this band until like two or three weeks ago because Marcel asked me for a favor if I would play for him,” Chudgar said.
“This past choir concert, I played a hand drum for two of the songs for Cook and I guess Marcel saw that and was just like ‘Let me ask him.’ I’m sure that’s where it came from,” Chudgar said
Levi Maynard (12, YPAS) plays drums, piano, guitar, and bass. But for S p a c e, he is their bassist.
“Levi, I figured out that he’s a Billie Eilish in a boy’s body, because he can literally play anything,” Malone said.
With his passion for music, Chudgar plans to be a middle and high school music teacher. Aloise and Malone both are interested in going into engineering. Malone has been accepted into University of Louisville’s mechanical engineering program.
You can find Malone on Instagram @marcellzworld.
The Thestrals
The thestral is a fictional breed of winged horses from the Harry Potter franchise that is only visible to people who have witnessed death. It’s also the name of Gavin Fulton (12, HSU) and Maya Nanda’s (10, YPAS) band.
“Yeah, we’re definitely very chill,” Fulton said, “We’re very spontaneous.”
When picking their setlist, the band just bounces things off of each other. They decided to add a song to their setlist at the last minute that they hadn’t practiced. When they listen to music on their own, they’ll send songs to each other that they want to cover
“We have pretty different music tastes,” Nanda said, “But because of that we can kind of go through a lot more pieces and figure out what works and what doesn’t work for us.”
Nanda is a vocal major at YPAS, and she’s done training in voice and piano for 11 years.
“I started with piano back in elementary school. My parents forced me, but then I quit to play guitar my freshman year of high school,” Fulton said.
Nanda and Fulton both dive into music on their own. Fulton writes his own music, and Nanda is classically trained as an opera singer. Over the past summer, Nanda went to the Belmont Vocal Intensive in Nashville.
“When I hang out with my girlfriend I just say ‘this is a song about like, whatever,’ And I just play random chords and then if I like it after she leaves, I’ll just record a progression of the same chords and try to add to it,” Fulton said.
For both members, Ramstock is a first. It will be Nanda’s first non-classical performance. For Fulton, it is his first guitar performance.
“It’s ending my high school career with performing, which I’ve always wanted to do and I wanna perform outside of high school, so it’s opening the door,” Fulton said.
Zënith
Zënith rose in August of this year.
“I get a text from Jake: ‘Hey, do you wanna join?’ I’m like, yeah, that’d be awesome,” Jackson Jones (12, J&C) said. “And he said, I got someone named Maya from Manual. I’m like, wait, I’m literally having lunch with her right now. So that was kind of cool and weird.”
Jones, their bassist, is only one fourth of Zënith. The band’s other members are vocalist Maya Romanowski (12, YPAS), drummer Sam Smith, a junior at Trinity High School, and guitarist Jake Stone, a senior at Trinity High School.
Stone was the one who started the band “I was like, man, I really wanna play live here soon. So I was like, okay, I’m just gonna start a band. So that’s pretty much it,” Stone said. “I just wanted to play live again and my girlfriend was also kind of like, I want to go see a show or be playing. And I was like, all right, I guess I’ll start a band.”
Zënith’s big three genre influences are classic rock, country, and indie, although Stone describes them as a “melting pot” of all their different influences.
“We have this really big playlist that we just add songs that we like or that we think would be good, and we kind of just have some practices where we just look through it and just decide, like, what would be cool for us all to play,” Romanowski said.
The band goes through the songs to figure out what’s too hard for their skillset, and what adjustments they need to make. They’ve been practicing for Ramstock since September, but they didn’t form solely for that. The band wasn’t going to do it this year, but Romanowski’s mom encouraged them.
“I kind of threw it at them and was like, we gotta do it,” Romanowski said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Ramstock is after school on Monday, Oct. 28 until 3 p.m in the courtyard. Zënith has a big announcement after their performance.
You can find the band @the_official_arizona on Instagram, Jake Stone @jake_stone.440, and Maya Romanowski @mayaromanmusic.
