Negative Blast: An Interview With Rain Pesebre Of The San Diego Hardcore Deviants

As a fifty-plus-year-old, rock and roll lifer, I still never fail to get excited when I discover a band that knocks me on my ass and blows my face off upon first listen. San Diego’s hardcore, garage, punk and roll incinerators Negative Blast are just such a band.

From the moment I heard the raging, d-beat, rock and roll insanity of Trauma Bond, the first single off their blistering, face-melting debut, 2023’s Echo Planet, I was one hundred percent on board.

The band – Rain Pesebre (vocals, lyrics, drums), Alex Jacobelli (guitars, producer), Pat Callaway (bass), and, after a rotation of drummers that included Sam Rich (Del Vipers, Riverboat Gamblers), Drew Montoya, Pesebre himself, and Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless, Rocket From The Crypt, OFF!), now-permanent drummer Hunter Martínez (Decent Criminal/Human Issue) – deftly captures a perfect balance of aggression and listenability. It’s why it found its way into many people’s ears, gaining a huge and well-deserved buzz in the worldwide underground in the process.

Echo Planet’s visceral sonic intensity, obvious musicality, coupled with their combustible live shows, had plenty of people, like me, extolling their virtues going forward. The band did not waste much time, striking while the iron was hot with 2025’s Destroy Myself For Fun.

Which, while also an end-to-end, redline, garage punk, hardcore, rock and roll, powder keg, found the band coalescing, as they continued to evolve this very distinctive brand mayhem they collectively wield. I recently had the opportunity to ask their intelligent, inimitable, frontman, Rain Pesebre some questions, and was grateful he had the time to answer them for The Sleeping Shaman.

We all floated around the local punk cliques and played shows together in our previous bands…

Rain, hello! We at The Sleeping Shaman appreciate you taking the time to answer a few questions for our readers! Can you tell us about the genesis of Negative Blast? I’ve read you and (guitarist) Alex Jacobelli are old friends, but how, and when did the two of you decide to form Negative Blast? As well, are you both San Diego-area natives?

I’ve known Alex since around 2009 or 2010 when I contacted him to record my Green Day ripoff band at the time called Kids Say the Darndest Things (later renamed Linkletter). He had just started his recording career, and I was his first client. He would go on to record tons of other bands and projects of mine, and we have just been friends since then, nerding out on recording, personal approaches to music and the lifestyles around being creative, and especially gear.

COVID had its way with the world, and I had mentioned to Alex that I wanted to yell in a band again, since it’d been years since I fronted one. Alex had riffs in his back pocket, and we set up a few jams to flesh out ideas, where I would hop on drums to supply the beats while we’d sort out song structures. Pat Callaway – bassist who toured with Alex in their previous bands, Lewd Acts, and Hour of the Wolf respectfully – had moved to San Diego from Chicago two weeks into us jamming, and the chemistry was undeniable. We cranked out a batch of songs that became our first release, The First Four Months, and we have been rockin’ together on that wavelength.

I was born and raised in south San Diego (National City/Chula Vista) and Alex is originally from north county (Escondido). We all floated around the local punk cliques and played shows together in our previous bands, though since the regional rivalries existed between some of our areas, we didn’t get to really mix in until much later.

I know you’re a drummer yourself, and if I’m not mistaking, you wrote and performed most of the drum parts on your face-melting debut full length Echo Planet? How did you hook up with current drummer Hunter Martinez? Did you play shows or tour with his former bands Decent Criminal or Human Issue? Additionally, what eventually happened with Mario Rubalcaba? Was he just too busy being in so many bands? Admittedly, I think I first heard of you via his Instagram page.

Yes, so I’ve been a drummer since I was 13 and played in a number of bands growing up in San Diego (Cold Stare, Stopping Power, Haruka, Dictator). When Negative Blast first started, we just wanted to move with fluidity in regard to writing and recording. My drumming is featured on The First Four Months, Echo Planet, and a few songs off of our newest album Destroy Myself For Fun. We knew that the issue of finding someone to play live with us would be challenging and that we’d cross that bridge once we got to it. Sam Rich and Drew Montoya also played with us for different stretches at a time, and Drew even recorded drums for Infested on Destroy Myself For Fun.

Pat sent a message to Mario [Rubalcaba] over Instagram; he liked the tunes enough that he decided to hop on the kit with us for a while. Mario played with us for a good stretch of time when Echo Planet came out, and his drumming is featured on a split we released with the band SWEAT from LA. It was a trip having someone that was so influential to our overall sound actually be playing with us, since he’s such a prolific player.

Pat sent a message to Mario [Rubalcaba] over Instagram; he liked the tunes enough that he decided to hop on the kit…

However, his schedule and projects didn’t always line up with the shows and pacing we were on, and we decided to move things forward with Hunter, who we befriended playing our first shows together when he was in Decent Criminal and filling in for MUTT. He was truly the only other person we considered rocking with because he is such an awesome drummer and an all-around great guy. We have jammed together ever since, playing a bunch of shows around the US and finished a three-week tour in the EU/UK just last October.

Cool enough, Hunter asked me to fill in on drums for his brainchild Human Issue at the end of last year and now I have joined as a member, with a new album that just came out and a tour in May with Leftover Crack under our belt. We have a few more tours on the East Coast to happen later this year, including with the Bouncing Souls in September and at the Fest in Florida in October.

Is Negative Blast the first time you have stepped out from behind the drum kit as a vocalist? You are a natural in that role.

Negative Blast is the fourth band I have fronted. My first band in high school/college was called TANTIVE-IV and I developed a style on the mic during that time, fucking off and aping out with all of our stupid friends. It was more along the lines of ‘90s skate punk like NoFX and Bad Religion and later influenced by hardcore like Kid Dynamite and Gorilla Biscuits.

In the band Kids Say, I was on vocals and guitar. I remember we opened for Joyce Manor when they played San Diego. I have an on-and-off solo project called yujin13. From which I’ve gotten a lot of experience fronting as well. Friends would also form Halloween cover bands, and we’d play Green Day and Descendents/ALL sets that are all floating around YouTube in perpetuity.

One of the things that struck me instantly with Negative Blast was your ability to really capture the listener’s attention. The instrumentation coupled with your voice, cadence and energy are palpable. A description I use when turning people on to your band is a gnarlier, more hardcore version of The Bronx. Echo Planet hit me in a comparable way as The Bronx’s debut did back then. You have played with them if I am not mistaken?

Thanks Marty! We did not really enter the band with the notion of ‘we should sound like X band’ that is so commonplace in punk and hardcore. The songs just formed the way they did from the multitude of influences we each have as individual members. Pat and Alex love downstroke-heavy guitar music from the Ramones to Hot Snakes, and I was introduced to a lot of those sounds playing with them. Hunter and I definitely share a love for some of the more melodic and technical punk like Descendents, but I’m also influenced by the hip-hop and R&B music I’ve grown up listening to in Southern California, which I definitely apply to my cadencing and lyricism.

I think the commonality between us lies in our approach, just a ‘go for it’ type of spirit in a lot of the ‘80s hardcore that we love. On top of that we don’t really shy away from getting weird, which I think is a commonality with bands from San Diego. We have definitely drawn that Bronx comparison from others in the past. A few years ago, we played a weekend of shows with them in LA and Long Beach with Mario on drums. They absolutely tore it up. It was real cool meeting and playing with them for sure!

Destroy Myself For Fun is as ripping and infectious as Echo Planet. I loved the synth intro on opener Fireplay, and the buildup on Futurerock. It was a favorite of The Sleeping Shaman last year, as both myself, and my colleague Reza Mills   had the album in our year-end, top ten list last year. I’m curious if writing for the record began at once hot on the heels of Echo Planet, or was there a break? Are all the songs new, or are any left over from the Echo Planet-era?

There was quite a long break between recording for Echo Planet and Destroy Myself For Fun. We were left in a bit of a limbo on where to take things since being on the heels of a long stretch of shows and outings between 2021 and 2024. Eventually we brainstormed the roadmap for Destroy Myself For Fun over some food and beers and got the momentum going for writing/recording and what ultimately became our Euro October run.

The band has an ongoing folder (aptly called Riff Library) that we pool song ideas into, with a good chunk of Destroy Myself For Fun coming from riff ideas accrued over the years since starting the band. We sort of just took picks on what were the strongest ideas and committed to developing the structures to become the songs that made it on the record.

We like to be thoughtful and open to trying things, but not too much to where it stops being fun. Even during the recording process someone would make a production suggestion that we would run with and eventually become a crucial part to the song: Alex would suggest I do a certain phrasing on vocals, I would suggest a guitar part be played a certain way, and so forth. That is also one of the best things about Alex recording all the material in-house, since we’re just so locked into the flow with each other at this point, and shoot for collaboration as much as possible.

the commonality between us lies in our approach, just a ‘go for it’ type of spirit in a lot of the ‘80s hardcore that we love…

I am curious about your process. Negative Blast has a real blend of listenability and brutality. Songs like Trauma Bond and Bad Trip from Echo Planet and Nuwge and Denial from Destroy Myself For Fun exemplify this. It can feel as though a lot of contemporary punk rock bands seem to dwell in one area or the other. Was this by design, or did it happen organically?

Thank you!  Those songs are setlist staples because of how fun and impactful they are live. The way we see it is that we want to play songs we enjoy listening to ourselves, and that is how we gain the ears of others because chances are they may see or perceive things the way we do. The band, as a whole, leans on a litmus test of whether the songs would be fitting to play at Tower Bar, one of our favorite local spots to play. I suppose the design boils down to what is the most organic for us to pull off given our own individual wheelhouses of taste and skill.

We discussed early on that we would rather write songs that are the most natural for us to pull off live, especially with how driving and demanding they can be running through a 25–40-minute setlist. I definitely apply that principle to the vocals, knowing that I go off the way I do when we play live, we try to go for a ‘less is more’ approach. Also, we like to inject a bit of pop hookiness to the structures without leaning into being formulaic for its own sake. It’s a constant quest to make fun, infectious, pissed off loud rock tunes that listeners enjoy revisiting before their attention spans get hijacked by the miasma of disposable content their algorithm recommends to them the next day.

Negative Blast’s lyrics are both intelligent and visceral. Are you the sole lyricist?

For the most part, yes. There are some instances where in keeping with bounds of what the song needs, the dudes make suggestions for phrasings that make the final version. When it comes to themes and overall craft/vision, I am the one penning the lyrics. Most of the songs cover themes not uncommon to punk and heavy music… alienation, self-empowerment, societal collapse, bullshit politics, and scene crap… yadda yadda, but through my own experience of being a nerdy Filipino kid from San Diego.

English was not my parents’ first language, and I grew up around three languages, English, Tagalog, and Ilocano. My parents wanted me to assimilate so they focused on teaching me English, though their old school discipline and immigrant values stayed the same and built me and my siblings to prepare us to function in a world that takes and takes. I’d like for the songs and themes to reflect the intergenerational anger and struggle to understand a world that is not concerned with understanding. To still let off in the most primitive way but still have a mind to think.

I hear plenty of garage rock and punk in your music, as well as some straight up, rock and roll. Is this fair?

Fair and valid assessment. We’re the California Burrito of hardcore. There is just a bunch of random shit wrapped up in there that just seems to work out, and experienced best when sauced. I always found it intriguing how we can go from one end with pretty melodic songs like Carbon Copy and The King In Vancouver to another end of the spectrum with heavy OogaBooga shit like Nuwage and Trauma Bond.

But yeah, we wear our influences on our sleeves at times, but we’re fans of the decades of shit that we grew up on… Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Black Flag, Queens of the Stone Age, Rocket From The Crypt, all the ‘rocker starter pack’ bands whose merch was all at Hot Topic at some point. Punk and hardcore of all decades and styles. Surf, shit like The Ventures and Link Wray. Anything real and played with love.

Do you have more touring plans for Destroy Myself For Fun in the works?  I’ve seen California dates, and up the coast to Washington state. Any plans for a full US tour, or a European tour?

We finished our Washington/PNW run in March, playing Seattle, Everett, Bleak Outlook Fest in Tacoma and Portland. Nothing in the books just yet, but we are thinking of hitting some dates in August and later on in the year, and another Euro run possibly next year. Definitely want to do another CA run before the year ends.

all the ‘rocker starter pack’ bands whose merch was all at Hot Topic at some point…

I was curious about your relationship with Death Wish Records. I’ve seen Negative Blast music and merch in their store. Are they one of your distributors?

They’re one of our distributors, no real connection other than that!

San Diego is one of my favorite cities in the country and it has always had a vibrant, robust scene. What are your top five favorite San Diego bands?

Switchfoot, POD, Blink-182, Stone Temple Pilots, and Sublime. Honorable mentions are Swing Kids, Run For Your Fucking Life, No Knife, Counterfit (not originally SD, but later SD-based), Hot Snakes, and The Zeros.

Keeping in that vein, what are your all-time hardcore bands, and is there anyone you currently want to champion?

Descendents, Black Flag, Bad Brains, Adolescents, Agent Orange, Big Boys, Gorilla Biscuits, Cro-Mags, Scholastic Deth, Infest, Kid Dynamite, Stretch Arm Strong, Blacklisted, Terror, Bitter End, Trapped Under Ice, there’s some off the top my head, but too many to mention. I guess in terms of current/past-decade punk and hardcore I like Warthog, Big Laugh, Chain Whip, Amyl and the Sniffers, Spiritual Cramp, Midnight.

Please use this space for any concluding thoughts, and thank you Rain for taking the time to answer some questions for The Sleeping Shaman.

Thanks for the questions and see you at the gig!

Label: Three One G | Vitriol Records
Band Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram

Interviewed by: Martin Williams