On a hot Saturday afternoon, I sat in the parking lot outside Historic Crew Stadium with my old Macbook flipped open and my iPhone on speaker. On the other end sat four dudes from Los Angeles, having just checked into their Columbus hotel and huddled around a speaker phone waiting to speak with me about their appearance the following morning at Sonic Temple Art and Music Festival.
The weekend before, Return To Dust made their festival debut at Welcome To Rockville.
Festival thoughts
“I can’t speak for the rest of the dudes but honestly, for me, it didn’t feel as nerve racking as I thought it would be,” said vocalist and guitarist Matty Bielawski on their Rockville debut. “It just felt comfortable having so much stage to play on and the sound was so good and the fans were just eating it up. It felt really good and comfortable to play. Now that I’ve popped the festival cherry, I’m just into playing Sonic Temple and it sounds fucking awesome.”
“It was really cool to be playing on and sharing a stage with bands like Helmet,” added vocalist and bassist Graham Stanush. “It was just really, really cool to be playing with bands we look up to.”
Drummer London Hudson has played Welcome To Rockville before and had a far better experience.
“This time around, was so much better,” he said. “Last time I was there it was storming like the whole time so no one got to play. But it was not miserably hot the day we played, which was so nice.”
“The whole time I was playing it down,” said guitarist Sebastian Gonzalez. “I didn’t want to get so nervous and amp it up and then mess up for something. I didn’t realize until halfway through the set that ‘Oh my God, I am playing Rockville!’ and there’s like a jumbotron showing me and a lot of people so I felt like I was playing even better.”
Return To Dust opened the final day of Sonic Temple with an 11:20 a.m set on the Citadel Stage the morning after our interview.
“We have a super early timeslot this time so I don’t think there will be as many people,” Bielawski said. “I think it’ll be really chill and really fun.”
Forming Return To Dust
Bielawski and Stanush grew up together in a small town in Texas. The duo played in and around the same circles in high school, with both picking up their instruments around 16 years old.
“We didn’t play full band — we would just pick up acoustic guitars and play, like, folk covers,” Bielawski said. “We just found that we really liked singing together and liked our sound. We’d do these open mics around town but then we went off to college and went our separate ways.”
While in college, the duo came upon an opportunity through another mutual friend from high school to go to California. There, they met their producer Jim Kaufman who ended up being the catalyst for the band to form.
“He gave us the opportunity,” Bielawski said. “He was like, ‘I will produce you guys an album if you drop out of college,’ and we took his word for it. We dropped out, moved across the country and got a little dinky apartment.”
Through personal and worldly events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the duo began writing songs intent on not moving back home — something they’d see as a failure.
“We ended up growing this really long relationship with Jim and picking up London and Sebastian along the way and it really molded the sound of the band,” Bielawski explained. “All of us have kind of grown into what the sound of the band is through listening to the same music, hanging out and just playing a lot — just being brothers.”
The story of Gonzalez joining the band is quite unique. As the band was rehearsing in their garage, they heard a knock on the door just to be greeted by a 16-year old Gonzalez on a walk with his mom through their West Covina neighborho0d.
“His mom was like, ‘Oh, we heard you playing and Sebastian plays guitar,’ and we were looking for a lead guitarist so me and Matty kind of looked at each other and wondered if this is the guy,” Stanush said. “We started rehearsing with him and the rest was history.
“We started playing guitar at 16, but he was already a guitar master at 16. It was pretty cool, he just landed in our laps perfectly.”
As for the band’s sound, it is a modern day blend of grunge and hard rock.
‘Belly Up’ and record release
In the lead up to their debut album release, Return To Dust had the song “Belly Up” go viral, earning over 3 million streams across various platforms.
The guys laughed, stating that part of its virality is due to it being compared to a Gojira song. Still, they said the song’s success is a great turning point for the band’s confidence.
“Up until that point, we hadn’t had a reaction to our music besides friends and family, but these are just random people that stumbled across a video that is playing ‘Belly Up’ and they are generally enthused, building the core of our fanbase,” Stanush said. “We have a lot that we owe to that video and the viral moment that that song had.
“It’s been nothing but good, honestly. It’s the first time we really started to feel confident about what we create and that we’re on the right track.”
Their self-titled debut record released on May 3, just before the pair of festival performances, though the first single came out almost exactly one year before with an EP somewhere in between. From the first single release to debut record, Return To Dust has earned praise from fans and veteran musicians alike.
“We’re on a high right now as far as the band is concerned,” Bielawski said.
First US tour
The band let it slip that they were announcing a tour with Sevendust the Tuesday following Sonic Temple, which we now know is slated to begin its run on September 13 at Hampton Beach Casino in Hampton Beach, Massachusetts. The tour will also feature 10 Years and Horizon Theory.
In preparation for the tour, Return To Dust has been onboarding support staff to help as they venture out on their first US run.
The day after their Sonic Temple performance, Return To Dust released the music video for the song “Face Down” which can be seen above.
