Bonus Issue: A Night in the Wild and Wonderful World of cumgirl8
Welcome to The Band Bible! I’m truly glad to have you here. If you’re a new reader, purpose of this newsletter is to address, break down, and shine a light on the business of being in a band. Each issue, we do this by interviewing (and celebrating!) someone who is making waves through their incredible work with or for artists, or is an artist themselves. Learning the business of being in a band is something that is often inaccessible or shrouded in mystery, and it shouldn’t be, so I hope The Band Bible is able to play even a small role in helping to change that.
This is the first issue that standard Band Bible format is being broken for, and it’s only fitting that it’s for a group who has made a name for themselves by breaking the mold again and again. There are certain things you just don’t let pass you by, after all, and one of them is the opportunity to cover your local live set of the inimitable cumgirl8.
In a 2019 interview with Paper Magazine, guitarist Veronika Vilim once described cumgirl8 as an “alternate, trance, space world that incorporates art and alternate reality in the 21st century.” The same description could also be applied to the environment the quartet — which is composed of bassist Lida Fox, drummer Chase Lombardo, and guitarist Avishag Rodrigues in addition to Vilim — creates during their live sets. Darkened venues are imbued with their touch of technicolor madness, and the world as the audience knows it is gone entirely.
Just like cumgirl8 doesn’t quite feel like an entity that’s of this world, their music and their shows alike are a haven for those who don’t quite feel like they belong in this world either. But, cumgirl8 creates a new world every time they step on stage. It’s one where we can all belong and belong to, together. On December 5th at The Underworld in London, they captured the crowd and transported us all to their land of elsewhere, and what a lovely place it is to be.
cumgirl8’s sets are markedly theatrical. Thought, time, and care are clearly put into their costumes, which are inventive and fabulous. Props featured heavily (and hilariously) too, and together, these elements served to augment the event from a gig to a show. With cumgirl8, every moment on stage is performed through, not just the songs themselves. For example, the time filled prior to playing “uti,” a track that’s a standout of not only their set but the album it hails from, the 8th cumming, the audience was told they were “about to be taken on a special journey” and asked “if their pussy was okay.” Similarly, prior to closing with “picture party,” a drumhead that said “I was banged by cumgirl8 on tour in 2024” was auctioned off among the audience. The lucky winner then got to join the band on stage. Knowing how to tee up the next song in a manner that’s captivating — let alone fun on top of it — is a skill, and one that shouldn’t be underestimated. Not every musician is necessarily a strong performer, after all, and it’s easy to let the energy temporarily drop between songs. cumgirl8 doesn’t do this; the transitions are an extension of the energy they infuse into their songs, and those transitions are more bold and creative than simply asking the crowd how they’re feeling over and over. Their ability to make all moments on stage sparkle, not just those where they’re playing a song, show that they know how to curate an experience in full. This cements their status as not just strong performers, but thoughtful performers at that.
As alluded to earlier, cumgirl8 performed the hell out of “uti” — a track that’s the seldom-seen cocktail of camp, relatable, and cathartic. Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention how novel it is to simply have a fun song out there about an infection that disproportionately impacts women (for whom the lyrics “Ow ow ow ow Azo Azo” will hold particular resonance). The track is a noted showcase for Lombardo, who steps out from behind the drum kit to assume vocal duties. Her performance gives the song its heat and anger, and her lunging towards the crowd each time her part came around helped to fuel the fire that it brings. Another set standout was “Karma Police” (no, it’s not a Radiohead cover), which saw Fox and Rodrigues jump into the crowd for the song’s second half — all while still never missing a beat in their performance. “Karma Police” and “uti” are explosions of energy that invoked the same from the crowd, yet this was even the case with tracks that are more mellow in nature. For instance, “ahhhh!hhhh! (i don’t wanna go)” falls under this category, yet its deeply relatable subject matter ignited an electric response nonetheless.
The fun cumgirl8 clearly has performing together is palpable and infectious, and they share such a strong sense of synergy. When you watch cumgirl8, you’re not simply seeing Fox, Vilim, Lombardo, and Rodrigues onstage together. There’s a sense of them having become cumgirl8, which feels deeper than the name of their band — it feels like a collective identity of which they all comprise a part.
Their set concluded with another drumhead auction after “picture party,” and when they went offstage after the winner claimed their prize, it didn’t feel like a gig just finished. Rather, the moment was more comparable to when a film cuts to credits, or when the stage curtains finally drop after the cast of a play has taken their final bow. There was that sense of coming back to yourself, back to your world and the world, after having temporarily been elsewhere. Experiencing that moment made me realize that this usually doesn’t happen to this degree at gigs. It’s rare for a band to engage in worldbuilding to such an extent that reality itself feels wholly suspended while they’re onstage. This is yet again a skill, and one they’ve continued to master.
Furthermore, to state it simply, cumgirl8’s sets feel important. Culturally, we’re still very much at a point where artists are pressured to be as palatable as possible. In other words, they’re urged to be safe, watered down, and digestible — basically so other people have a higher likelihood of profiting off of their work. The existence of cumgirl8 grandly and gloriously flips this narrative on its head. They’re completely boundless, and their success highlights how refreshing it is to see a band incorporate play, politics, experimentation, and whatever the hell they want into their work while doing so unabashedly. cumgirl8’s music defies traditional genre labels, but their ethos makes them the most punk band of all. They buck all notions of convention and have clearly remained steel-focused in the pursuit of being exactly what they want to be, saying exactly what they want to say.
Now that’s what a hardcore band really looks like.
Leaving a cumgirl8 gig, after having spent time in their wild and wonderful world, you want to be a little more boundless too. You want to be little a more ruleless, a little more ruthlessly yourself. cumgirl8 has an ability to make audience members walk out of a venue with a neon colored handprint on their hearts, one that wasn’t there before. Some of their world, wherever that is, has now bled into yours — like when the Darling family can still see Captain Hook’s pirate ship looming in the clouds after the children return home from Neverland at the end of Peter Pan. Thanks to cumgirl8’s knack for bewitching a crowd, we were all able to leave The Underworld, look up at the damp Camden sky, and find our own pirate ship in the clouds.
To keep up with and learn more about cumgirl8, click here to visit their website. Special thanks to Annette and Billy at 4AD.