Band: Cinnamon
From: Albany, New York
Their formation story:
(Keefer, guitar): "Originally, the idea started with Sinead (vocals) and I to get a band going in the vein of CCTV, Suburban Lawns, and Pylon. I grabbed the drummer from my other band Sunbloc to get behind the kit. Our then-bass player (Jake) is a friend we know from the local music scene, we had him slapping that thing. We were jamming on that consistently for a few months and it got stagnant for whatever reason.
"That drummer left, time passed, we found a new drummer (Dan) and as we got back into the swing of things, thoughts and feelings on the sound started to shift from the original inspirations into more aggressive, faster hardcore. After finally agreeing on a sound and getting enough music together for a set it was ultimately decided we wanted a second guitarist. We came across Charlie, also through the local music scene with their other band, Bad Impressions.
"We played as a 5 piece with no recordings for the first few months for no other reason than just wanting to get out and play. Jake ended up not being able to do the band relatively soon after the first few gigs. Without bass me and Charlie both played with the idea of switching over but we decided we prefered playing guitar, no bass needed. Sinead, Keefer, Dan, Charlie, that's Cinnamon."
Their sound in their own words:
"Growing up in Upstate New York, I had a lot of friends who were into all the NBHC stuff and got me heavy into that. So with that in mind, I've always been big on XFilesX, Mind Eraser, Soul Swallower, all the Painkiller Records stuff.
"That's where I pulled a lot from for Cinnamon when we eventually switched gears into the faster meaner sound and although we don't sound like them I know Sinead pulls a lot of inspiration from Siouxsie and the Banshees and X-Ray Spex."
Latest release info:
"Recorded by the one and only Will Killingsworth, a pillar of hardcore if you ask me. It was pretty sick to grow up on a lot of the music he has recorded and then get to have some 13-minute nonsense we wrote in a sweaty room be recorded by him. So, basically, after playing a few initial shows we stopped screwing around and took most of fall 2023 to write.
"Dan our drummer has been in a zillion bands (Libyans, Foreign Objects, Male Patterns, Life Abuse) he's close with Will and reached out to him to set it up in Feb 2024. That's essentially it, 9 songs in 13 minutes. Perhaps a bit on the long side but there's always next time."
Future plans:
"We just had our tape release gig on July 5th, which we did in a small practice room for guaranteed mayhem. To Live A Lie put the demo out on cassette which is very sick for us. They obviously have a lot of stuff they've put out over the years that everyone in the band is big on so again very exciting.
"We'redefinitely trying to get outta town as much as possible, get some weekends cooking. And probably getting back to writing more stuff in the fall/winter once the North East starts to become a barren wasteland again."
What other bands from their region should we check out?
Albany has a small but pretty consistent scene currently which is nice. You're gonna want to check out: Prize,, Halo Bite, Sunbloc, Life Abuse, Bad Impressions, Cold Kiss, Flowers For Burial, Spirit Killer, Wet Specimens, Lemon of Choice, Dog Pisser, Grand Street, Carnwennan, Stutter , Coquette, Downloader, and 20 Spiderz."
Demo '24 cassette is available via To Live A Lie.
Cinnamon on social media: Instagram
Tagged: cinnamon
