Spotlight on Panza Foundation's 2025 Bands: Slugg
For the fourth and final blog post featuring Panza Foundation 2025 bands, we spoke with Kristal Mills of Slugg.
Q: I’ve seen your music described as “electro sludge,” which seems pretty accurate and is a unique fusion of genres. What drew you towards those types of sounds?
A: I guess I tend to like heavier things, more aggressive things. I grew up listening to a lot of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. My dad always had music playing, which shapes you and your mind. I’ve always really been interested in rhythm. When I listen to songs, it’s mostly the rhythm I hear, and the drums. I started getting into electronic music around 2017 and going to underground DIY shows. There was a thing called In Training over a decade ago at No Class and it was great. It was this late night thing, and I really enjoyed what I heard, but sometimes I wished they’d make it a little heavier, a little nastier. I hadn’t come across music like that yet. Before that I had made an electronic album that was a lot lighter, more like house music. About seven years ago I bought a drum machine. I’d never used it because I didn’t want to read the manual and finally someone read it for me and showed me how to use it, and I learned that you can buy pedals and adjust the sound, which I preferred. It’s a lot easier to push down on something and turn a knob than go into a computer and select different things. It was a lot easier for me to manipulate things in the moment, easier than anything else I’d used, whether it was a program on ProTools or using the drum machine itself, and from there I just experimented with the different effects that could give me the nastiness that I wanted to hear.
Q: I’ve read that you were previously a math teacher. Do you feel your knowledge of mathematics informs the way you compose or think of music? I’m very much a humanities-minded person but I find the mathematics of music very fascinating and I wish I had more of a grasp on that side of it in addition to the more intuitive side.
A: Yeah, I think because I have studied math for so long that it’s just the way my mind thinks. I look for patterns and can identify and feel patterns easily. I am not someone who knows anything about theory. I don’t even understand odd time signatures sometimes, like if someone says, “This is in 5/7,” it takes me a moment to really understand what that means, so I don’t actually use math in any of my writing—it’s all feeling. But I do think the math part of my mind is involved. When you study math you see logic and you kind of think like a computer in some weird way, and I think that is how I approach what I’m writing. It’s all kind of the feeling, but things are dealt in absolutes in some way, so when I turn knobs it’s either zero or cranked all the way up. With the math mind, I can get bored easily, so I try to make things interesting with transitions and moving things around.
Q: Who would you say were some of your formative musical influences, and who are some of your current favorites?
A: I listen to a lot of music all the time. I love post-punk. My first track on my debut album is called Martyr because I wanted to cover Bauhaus’s “Stigmata Martyr,” so if you listen to that song you can kind of hear elements of that in it, mostly percussive. I write songs with certain songs in mind, but it always ends up taking on a life of its own. So definitely Bauhaus, also Wire, Preoccupations, and Protomartyr. I love The Jesus Lizard so much. The first track on the split I just did with Arms & Armour is very influenced by The Jesus Lizard. The Breeders is my favorite band. I love Kim Deal. There’s also the foundation of the music I grew up on; I feel lucky that there was music constantly playing, anything from King Crimson to The Allman Brothers. When I started exploring music on my own, Radiohead was a big one for me, and Ace of Base and Silverchair. I just love all music. I love to go to local shows and just hear what people make. It’s so cool to see what people that are in your nearby vicinity are making, like, this person lives five minutes down the road and they’re doing some weird stuff on stage that I’m really enjoying.
Q: Do you have any gear that you feel has really shaped the direction of your music?
A: It’s the Slash edition of this MXR Octave fuzz pedal. I think I found it at Guitar Center where they mark things down and it has been everything. It is the Slugg sound. I have it on pretty much all the time when I'm playing. I'll turn on others at different points, but that pedal's always on.
Q: Forgive me for not knowing the title as I’ve only found it in your live sets, but you have that one song that goes “You asshole!” that is very effective for purging anger. Would you mind telling us a little about the story behind that?
A: This entire project was concurrent with a spiritual journey after a really sad experience that shed light on my perspective in my life, where I had victim consciousness instead of realizing that I have power in situations. There’s a lot of pressure and it’s very difficult, but the freedom to make choices in life is very empowering. I was doing silent retreats and a lot of meditation, focusing on healing, spending a lot of time in nature, and building a connection with myself that I felt was fairly severed. I’d done things like rage dances that are very cathartic, where you’re just learning to tap into your emotions, feel them and release them. When I started to make music, I just wanted something hard and nasty, but when I really started to write more was in the middle of this spiritual journey. That song sounds like a breakup but it’s literally about an experience at a job. It was right when I decided to leave my corporate career because I’d been doing that for almost ten years at various companies and I saw how they treated us. You feel trapped because you think you need that amount of money that they pay you. I had an experience where I just was fed up and I started to realize I could choose something different, which becomes more apparent when you realize you deserve better. It was after a meeting with my manager during the financial crisis a few years ago and they were continuously asking us to take more and more on and I was like, No, I’m not taking more on, and they decided to do certain things to make that very difficult. It was the frustration of just not being treated fairly in a lot of situations where I felt like I gave a lot. I took a break from work and went over to my machine. I was just pressing buttons and I played a beat and just in a joking way was like, “You fucking asshole,” just kind of making fun of how upset I was by everything and being silly. I like to do something where I say the same phrase over and over, so I kept saying, “This is fucking bullshit!” It just kind of morphed into different things and as I was doing it, I just felt better. Everything felt lighter and it kind of felt funny. When things initially happen, I cry and then get angry, and I was trying to find ways of using my anger creatively. I was like, Why do I care about this job? Why do I care about any of this stuff? You start to challenge your beliefs around things and that’s when I was like, Yeah, I'm not gonna do this anymore—I’m not giving all my time and energy to these companies. It’s fucking bullshit to have to sit 40 hours a week in front of a computer and give all your energy to something you don’t care about and then have none left for the things you are passionate about and good at. The “fucking assholes” are those people that have drunk the Koolaid and manipulate you into squeezing every little drop out of yourself so they get their new title or their raise. Sometimes I’ll play that song and I’ll be going through something else totally different, like a relationship thing or a friend thing, and I’ll play that song. So it can take on different meanings, but that was the origin of that song.
Q: How would you describe your creative process and artistic journey?
A: Anything I write is kind of stream-of-consciousness, whatever I’m feeling in that moment. My artistic journey has been interesting. Even when I played in a band for a long time when I was younger and when I played music in high school, I never called myself a musician or an artist. I just played in a band and went to shows because I liked that stuff. I was studying math and wanted to become a teacher. I was more focused on trying to make a career for myself to have stability in my life. I had to take care of my family and I also left home and was on my own from a young age. Even though I had people who helped me, I had the feeling that all I had to rely on was myself. When I look back, I was an extremely creative child. I was doing performances on the playground in like third grade for my friends. If you want to get to know yourself more, look for things that you really enjoyed doing as a kid, things that you actually like to do, and those can give you some hints as to what you can pursue or put your time into and learn about. It’s important to stay true to yourself and know yourself. A lot of my journey has been the more I know myself, the more I pursue creative things. There have been many times in my life where I had to force myself to do things because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do, and the other kids I knew that were creative, some of them ended up doing drugs and struggling with money and to me, either of those outcomes would be 100% unacceptable in my life. So I think I might’ve been a little misguided on what you could do as a creative. I thought I had to get a degree and a typical job because I wanted to avoid anything that might negatively affect my life. But when you do start to make a lot of money, you realize it’s actually not enough and the trade-off is too high of a price to pay. My journey has also been dealing with insecurity and imposter syndrome—still making music because I want to make it, but being scared to show it to people, constantly questioning myself or feeling like it’s silly, like I’m too old to be doing what I’m doing. Luckily, I’ve already tried the married life with a good career, so when I'm panicking and have thoughts around “You need to grow up, get a real job and settle down,” I can challenge that because I have that data point and have learned it’s not for me. I’ve developed enough confidence and trust in myself to take care of myself and pursue the things that I love.
Q: What are your thoughts on the Cleveland music scene?
A: It’s incredible. It’s big, way bigger than I knew. There are so many bands! I feel like it covers almost every genre. There’s something for everybody, and I feel like it’s all about kind of figuring out where you fit in. I was not previously aware of the genre “noise” and would not have considered myself to be a part of that. I’d say I’m not fully that, but I am close enough and all the people I've met in that scene, we’re kind of similar. So I feel like I’ve found people that are like me, and I enjoy talking to everyone. Everybody’s super supportive and super talented. There’s just something about the energy of Cleveland. I have no desire, really, to go anywhere else. I like all the venues. I pretty much can see any show anytime I want to, and there’s always cool people to talk to. I don’t think you need anything else. I didn’t really know the Panza Foundation existed before. I’d heard people talk about it before, but I figured you probably had to do something to get the grants, like be around for a while or apply, so I didn’t really look into it. Then I met John Panza. I saw his setup for Arms & Armour and it looked similar to mine, so I was telling him about that, and then he came to one of my shows. I thought these people just wanted to be my friend and thought I was cool. I didn’t know they were scouting or that I was in a selection process!
Q: Do you have a favorite venue to play or a dream venue you want to play someday?
A: I love them all, but my favorite venues are Little Rose in Westpark and Cave in Akron. I love the community there and the sound. Everybody’s just so kind and supportive. I also love the Happy Dog. I’ve been going to Happy Dog forever, and I’ve seen some incredible shows there. I love the Grog Shop too. I started going to shows there in high school and it’s such an intimate experience. There’s always so much energy—it’s just one of the best venues. I actually love them all. There’s so many incredible music venues in Cleveland. I don’t have a dream venue to play at, but what I have a dream of is putting on a dream DIY show where we re-create the wall of sound. I want it to be in a small enough space but it’s packed, and the subs are really loud so the ground is shaking and your bones are shaking, but you can still hear the mids and highs—just a show with the best sound setup and my favorite bands at some weird DIY space for one night.
Q: How did you find out you were selected by the Panza Foundation as a grant recipient? If you haven’t already, do you have an idea of how you’re going to use your grant funds?
A: When I got the text from John, that morning I was feeling kind of silly about my decisions. It was one of those moments where the old programming starts to override you and you panic. So I was feeling a little down that day, and an hour later I got a text from John like, “Would you like to be sponsored by the Panza Foundation? Give me a call for more info.” I was like, “Wow, yes I would! You guys like what I’m doing?” So I learned more details about it and how they serve as a committee to help guide you. We like to believe we don’t need a lot of external validation, but we do. I know I do, and in that moment I needed to know that people saw what I saw and I wasn’t making a mistake. It came when I needed it the most, not even financially but just in terms of feeling seen and valued in what I'm doing. I’ve used maybe half of the money, maybe more. I’ve used it for this tour I’m on right now. I also used it on mastering my album and for merch, and with the rest of the money, I think I want to try and invest in lights. I really enjoyed the show I did for Re:Sound by CUSP where I programmed lights, so I’d like to maybe find a way to make that setup simpler and invest in that.
Q: What’s next for Slugg? Do you plan on putting out an album soon?
A: It’s done and it’s being released by Unifactor, so actually you can preorder it now. It’s part of a batch order, three releases all at once: Slugg, Nothing Phase, and Vedic Dread. It’s all being released on August 9th, so the three of us are doing a big show at the Little Rose Tavern. That'll be my debut album release show. I worked on that with John Panza at Dark Current and we spent a lot of time on it. We recorded it live and then went through and tweaked some things, and the experience was just so fun. I think we work well together. Right now I’m on tour with Acid 87. We are currently in the middle of it—sixteen shows in like seventeen days. We started in Warren, Ohio and we’re playing a show every single night until L.A. When I think about Slugg, what’s next is that I continue to meet other artists in my community and across the country, continue to play shows, and then write and make better music. This is my first solo thing ever so I want to sit on this album and take it in and enjoy it for a little bit, and then probably in the winter I’ll start writing some more again. I just wanna play a lot of shows and maybe collaborate with other musicians.
A: Thank you to the Panza Foundation and anyone who takes the time to read this interview, and thanks to you for summarizing my manic ramblings while I’m driving through the desert and chugging Redbull.
