Trenchmouth

Trenchmouth was a post-punk band from Chicago. The group existed from 1988 until 1996. They played around the punk scene but sometimes found resistance to their combination of punk, latin, reggae, dub, and funk influences. The 3 of the 4 core members of the band (vocalist Damon Locks, bassist Wayne Montana, and drummer Fred Armisen) were East Coast natives. The band released 4 LPs during their lifetime.

History
Vocalist Damon Locks was originally from Maryland, where he had played in punk band called Protem with Peter Cortner (later known as the vocalist of Washington, DC's Dag Nasty). Locks met Wayne Montana and Fred Armisen when he attended art school in New York. The three of them formed a band there but Locks quit when he decided to move to Chicago to attend the Art Institute in 1988. Armisen and Montana soon followed Damon to the Windy City. The original line up included Locks, Montana, Armisen, guitarists Josh Kohn and Tom Sweets, and percussionist Chris Kupczak. This grouping existed long enough to appear on the band's first 7", Snakebite, a short-run EP that was limited to 430 hand-numbered copies. Afterwards, Chris DeZutter replaced Kohn and Locks assumed Kupczak's percussion duties.  The band existed as a five-piece briefly until Sweets departed and the line up would remain unchanged until their split.  In 1996, Armisen quit the group.  In 2014, he explained that "It just felt like other bands were passing us by."   Locks and Montana went on to form the long-running post-rock band The Eternals.  DeZutter continued to work briefly with Locks and Montana after Trenchmouth's break up before opting to pursue higher education.  Armisen did a run with the Blue Man Group and later found success as a comedian, appearing on Saturday Night Live and co-creating the TV show Portlandia with Carrie Brownstein (of the band Sleater-Kinney) as well as working as the bandleader for The Late Show with Seth Meyers on NBC.

Main Line Up

 * Damon Locks - Vocals/Percussion


 * Fred Armisen - Drums/Vocals


 * Wayne Montana - Bass


 * Chris DeZutter - Guitar

Early Members

 * Tom Sweets - Guitar


 * Josh Cohn - Guitar


 * Chris Kupczak - Percussion/Backing Vocals

Discography

 * Snakebite 7" EP (Ad Infinitum, 1989)
 * Kick Your Mind And Make It Move! 7" EP (Dead Bird, 1991)
 * Construction of a New Action! Volume One:  First There Was Movement CD/LP (Skene!, 1991)
 * split 7" with Circus Lupus (Skene!/Dischord Records, 1992)
 * Inside The Future CD/LP (Skene!, 1993)
 * split 7" with Bliss (Derivative Records, 1993)
 * Trenchmouth Vs. The Light of the Sun CD/LP (Skene!/EastWest Records America, 1994)
 * Volumes, Amplifiers, Equalizers CD (Runt, 1994) - collection of songs from the first 3 LPs, released in Italy
 * The Broadcasting System CD/LP (Skene!, 1996)
 * More Motion: A Collection CD (Thick Records, 2001) - compilation