FEATURE: Spotlight: Die Spitz — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Die Spitz

__________

I am writing this…

before 12th September, which is when Die Spitz’s debut album, Something to Consume, is released. Rough Trade have shared some words on it, which I shall get to in a minute. This quartet follow their 2023 E.P., Teeth, with an absolute gem. Hailing from Austin, Texas, Ava Schrobilgen (vocals/guitar), Chloe Andrews (drums), Ellie Livingston (guitar/vocals) and Kate Halter (bass) are a band to behold. Quite rightly getting so much buzz and attention! By the time you read this, there will be reviews out for Something to Consume:

“Absolute gem of an album from Die Spitz on Third Man. Ferocious, versatile, raw, and unapologetic. It has the same thrill as hearing Hole for the first time.

When the Venn diagram of passion, friendship, identity, and artistry collide, it can feel as if fighting words are spitting from your veins. And as postmodern society crumbles, Die Spitz giddily bounce between a dozen different ways to push back.

If the world of rock music were an ice cream shop, the Austin quartet have sampled each flavor, flipped the freezer over, and started dancing with the employees they helped unionize.

On their debut album, Something to Consume (via Third Man Records), Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston, and Kate Halter fight against the inescapable consumption that surrounds life. "There's a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming," Livingston says.

And as the foursome trade off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting in concussive bursts, Die Spitz have created their own little pocket of the world where we can all stand on the edge together”.

I am going to end with a live review from a show in London where Die Spitz killed in London in the summer. A five-star review from LOUDER. I am coming to a few recent interviews with the group. With Something to Consume shaping up to be one of the best albums of this year, Die Spitz are also one of the most important bands around. Original and with incredible chemistry, they are both an incredible studio group but sensational on the stage. They have all the components to go very far in the music industry. The first piece I want to source from is The Line of Best Fit. Hailing a phenomenal and future-legends Punk quartet from Texas, The Line of Best Fit note how Die Spitz “abide the ‘separate but together’ approach, allowing space for each of their personalities to burn brightly”:

“Deciding on the moniker ‘Die Spitz’ – which, aptly, is German for pointy or sharp – during a Fireball whiskey-induced session, the quartet gained prominence with their evocative, mosh-ready sound. Taking inspiration from bands such as Black Sabbath and Nirvana to create distinct hits such as “Hair of Dog” and “I hate when GIRLS die”, the group have used their shared experiences to hone their sound into punchy, unapologetic rallying calls – as they put it, with the aim of inciting mayhem.

Previous EPs such as The Revenge of Evangeline in 2022 and Teeth in 2023 are a testament to this fact. Both hold nothing back, with Evangeline showcasing the band’s tenacity for anarchic and hell-raising punk, while Teeth artfully employs gruesome lyricism and power chords to connect with audiences over themes of female rage. It’s no surprise that the latter album won Album of the Year at the Austin Music Awards in 2024. Since then, the band have harnessed their experiences and expanded their process so that their debut LP, Something to Consume, builds on what came before it – using it as an avenue for experimentation in both their sound and lyrics.

“We have a lot of respect for each other,” De St. Aubin tells me, “so we’re not overbearing and trying to control the process of anyone’s writing. I think that’s why it comes about so naturally.”

“We don’t only write the song ourselves,” Schrobilgen, who had been resting her voice up until this point, says, entering the chat by sitting down on the arm of the sofa. “We bring it to the band and then we let them give their two cents and write their own parts for their instruments and all of that.”

Their debut with Third Man Records, Something to Consume finds the band experimenting with the various music genres that inform each of them individually. In doing this, Die Spitz have created a kaleidoscope of defiant, melancholic, and celebratory music that weaves together the multiple strings of alternative subgenres they grew up admiring, effortlessly telling the band’s story so far.

Hitting ears on 12 September 2025, Something to Consume also enables De St. Aubin, Halter, Livingston, and Schrobilgen to unfurl their wings and express themselves in various other ways. Girlhood is a spectrum and Die Spitz depict this in a very relatable way. This is evident in tracks such as “Punishers”, which De St. Aubin wrote after taking inspiration from the 2000 cult teen classic Twilight, creating a melancholic sound that is deeply romantic in its lyrics and evokes the blue-hued filtered imagery distinctive of the first film.

Being able to perform and travel with each other has been a huge highlight for the four women. It’s for this reason that their live shows are so energetic and memorable, like their set at Mohawk during SXSW Marshall Day 2025, which saw Livingston sing whilst sitting on Halter’s shoulders as she played bass. There is a love and trust that runs deep between the members of Die Spitz, giving them all the confidence to experiment and express themselves individually and help shape the image and sound of the band, making them a powerful group both on stage and in the studio”.

As with all of my Spotlight features, I am interested to know how other people view them. What they say in interviews. I can give my views on their music and, months or years back, I would have reviewed an album like Something to Consume. However, I feel collating interviews gives us a good impression of the artist and where they are. It brings me to the penultimate interview. This one is from FADER. A band who, they say, are on the right side of history with their music and are a wrecking ball against oppression, Die Spitz cannot be ignored. That’s what I meant then I said they are important. They are using their platform to put out music that is not just needed right now in terms of what it is saying. Their messages and music will affect and inspire people now but will also be remembered and quoited years from now. Perhaps a more casual chat with some, let’s say, mix of trivial and serious questions, I like the responses Die Spitz offer:

“What’s a motto that you think everyone should live by?

Eleanor: Go through life grabbing it by the balls.

Ava: Fake it till you make it.

Kate: Wipe front to back.

Chloe: I used to tell myself “expect the worst to get the best.” It was a motto I made up as a kid which essentially means that you should keep your expectations low so that you’re never disappointed.

What’s your favorite song to play live right now and why?

Eleanor: "American Porn." I feel that song pretty intense when we play, especially if there are creeps at the show.

Kate: "Big Boots." This song didn't make it on the album because we had too many good songs but it always gets the crowd moving. Also I get to slap the bass.

What’s your favorite song to play live right now and why?

Eleanor: "American Porn." I feel that song pretty intense when we play, especially if there are creeps at the show.

Kate: "Big Boots." This song didn't make it on the album because we had too many good songs but it always gets the crowd moving. Also I get to slap the bass”.

NME made no apologies when they called Die Spitz the “most exciting new rock band on the planet”. It is no exaggeration! I am relatively late to them and have only really known about them for weeks. However, the Texas four-piece have a loyal and passionate fanbase that is growing larger and larger. The band have a series of U.S. dates and some Canadian gigs. I am not sure if they are coming to the U.K. next year but, having been here before and wowed critics and fans, there is going to be demand for them to come back soon:

“Something To Consume’ also hangs together better than it ever should because of the bone-deep chemistry between the quartet. On the surging ‘Red 40’ and ‘Riding With My Girls’, their camaraderie seems impenetrable, like being confronted with a collective ‘fuck you’ from a bunch of people in their bulletproof early-twenties. It’s also deeply aspirational. You want to be a part of their team, headbanging at the lip of the stage as Livingston stomps a fuzz pedal half to death with a red cowboy boot. “I think that’s the foundation of friendship underneath our band – the collaboration that comes from that closeness,” Schrobilgen adds.

The roots of that friendship run deep. Halter, Livingston and Schrobilgen have been tight since they were kids, and began playing music together in what would become Die Spitz when Covid ran roughshod over the usual avenues teenagers have to spend time together. In a recent interview with the Line of Best Fit, they described De St. Aubin’s introduction almost in terms of pulling someone in from a life lived in parallel — different schools but the same town, same obsessions. “I think we all have similar moral compasses, similar ways of viewing life,” Livingston observes now.

Recorded with producer Will Yip, whose work with Mannequin Pussy, Nothing and Scowl seems to cover a decent amount of Die Spitz’s existing real estate, the record sounds huge, but it deliberately doesn’t sound in any way clean, precious or formulaic. You can see the dirt beneath the fingernails of every riff, glom onto the intention behind each rib-cracking kick-snare hit. “Some of the albums he’s produced are my favourites of all time – I’m a huge Title Fight fan,” Livingston says. “He made it big. It needed to be big.”

At every available opportunity, they also ramp up the chaos and theatre, adding an appropriately visceral dimension to lyrics that already read as all-consuming. In their hands, love is a dependency, apathy a lurking threat. On ‘Voir Dire’, perhaps the record’s most outwardly political song, it’s like De St. Aubin is done with it all, crushed by the rinse-repeat machinations of late-stage capitalism and American politics in protecting the dudes at the very top at all costs. “It’s easy just to fade / Disappear into the dim-lit corner that you’ve made,” she sings”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana for NME

I am going to end by heading back. Only back to July, and LOUDER’s review of Die Spitz. Playing their first London gig at the Downstairs at the Dome. Even though they played that show on 10th July, LOUDER ran their review on 18th July. However, their insistence that everyone needs to see the group and order Something to Consume echoed by so many others. There is no doubt that Die Spitz are among the greatest new bands of the past decade:

“Die Spitz's arrival in London to play their first ever UK gig coincides with the announcement of news of the forthcoming September release of their debut album, Something To Consume, on Jack White's Third Man Records. Here's a tip, pre-order it or pre-save it, or do whatever you need to do to hear it, because the Austin, Texas band are going to be stealing hearts and minds in a big way over the next 12 months and far beyond, and you will want to be on board asap.

Originally, the quartet - vocalist/guitarist/drummer Ava Schrobilgen, drummer/vocalist/guitarist Chloe De St. Aubin, vocalist/guitarist Ellie Livingston and bassist Kate Halter - were booked to play the 150-capacity Shacklewell Arms in east London tonight, but when that show sold out in a heartbeat they were upgraded to the Downstairs at the Dome, a room with twice the capacity. This too is sold out. And it's easy to see why the buzz is already building on the group. While the streaming numbers for their debut EP, 2023's Teeth, are not remarkable, their reputation as a fearsome live act has been amplified from a whisper to a scream over the past two years, thanks to tours with the likes of Amyl and The Sniffers, Viagra Boys and Sleater-Kinney, plus some wildly exuberant showcases at the SXSW festival in their hometown. And tonight, with the crowd drawing closer to the stage with every passing minute, and the energy levels in the room multiplying with each passing song, Die Spitz are nothing short of fucking awesome.

Tonight's setlist is balanced between songs already out there (the pummelling Hair Of Dog, the raging I Hate When Girls Die, the slow-burning, seething My Hot Piss), and those earmarked for inclusion on Something To Consume: the much darker-than it-sounds Pop Punk Anthem, the toxic relationship-dissecting Punishers, the punky Riding With My Girls. There are no dull moments, there's very little pausing for breath, and there's zero filler. Every so often Livingston or Halter will jokingly flex their muscles, in classic body builder poses, but you don't need the visual prompts to hear that there is no excess fat on these songs, or to know that Die Spitz won't be making themselves smaller for anyone, anywhere, as they take on the world”.

I am going to finish here. I am surprised there have not been interviews from publications like Rolling Stone or The Guardian. However, when Something to Consume is in the world next week and it picks up a raft of inevitable five-star reviews, Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe Andrews, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter are going to be firmly under the spotlight of the biggest corners of the music press. I have heard them played on BBC Radio 6 Music here and there is a great deal of anticipation and affection in the U.K. An explosion of popularity and excitement in their native U.S. For anyone who has not twigged why Die Spitz are being hailed as the best band in the world right now, that is going to change…