Virginia-based post-punk outfit Dayfiction returns with “Divine Intermission”, a gripping new EP that pushes the band further into a sound defined by abrasive energy, emotional immediacy, and atmospheric intensity.
I caught up with the band recently to talk about their early musical experiences, how they got together and making of the making of the new record.
CMM: What was the first music that really made an impact on you all as kids and what artists or bands did you enjoy the most?
Evan: I saw a band called Catfish and the Bottlemen open for Green Day when I was like 10 or 11. They were the initial band that pipelined me down everything, including wanting to write songs and pick up a guitar. I found Oasis in my parents CD box and bought The Verve’s “Urban Hymns” because I liked the album cover. Same thing with The Strokes’ debut. When I entered high school I found Bass Drum of Death. They got me into all of the garage stuff, and self-recording. That same time period, there was a night where my friends were over, and we had all fallen asleep, and a playlist was still running on the bluetooth. I had randomly woken up and Disorder by Joy Division was on. I had never heard that song before and scrambled to go look at my friend’s phone, both to find out what it was, as well as to restart it over and over. I became obsessed with them, and then The Cure, The Smiths, all of that stuff.
Noah: I really was inspired by artists like The Kinks, Ty Segall, Mudhoney, Radiohead, and Devo all growing up. Ty Segall had the biggest influence on me I think, it’s transferred over into how I arrange my gear and play songs.
Jackson: The first huge inspiration for me musically was the ska band Less Than Jake, their bass player Roger is a super super talented guy and his bass lines even as a kid drew me extremely hard to want to play bass.
Hannah: Well for one, Nirvana was the first real band I got into as a kid and Dave Grohl’s drumming and showmanship overall really influenced my maniacal and more crazy style of drums. But as I’ve grown in my playing I have found that more mechanical drumming from bands like Queens of the Stone Age have really influenced my playing. I love Queens of the Stone Age haha.
Mateo: For me, some music that really changed things was Iggy and The Stooges, hearing something so powerful and so simple kind of bridged a kind of gap in the way I perceived music overall. Like all it takes is wanting to do it. Shortly after moving to The States too, from Mexico, I went to like an American culture museum and watched Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf playing blues, making their guitars wail in these great suits and I just remember seeing them play like they were drinking a beer it just appeared so effortless and natural, like they were born already being able to do that and I just thought to myself like I need to see what that feels like I need to do that.
CMM: How did Dayfiction form and start developing its sound?
Noah: Dayfiction first formed in 2023 when I started playing bass for the band; Evan on vocals and guitar and Hannah Johnson on drums. After a while of that and a bit where Hannah was at college and it became a two piece with Evan on vocals and guitar and me on drums, we got Jackson to hop on bass. It wasn’t until then where we even had a band name. We had a lot of songs that we’d been playing for that time, and some we still play today like Eraserhead and Bullet In The Sun, but we didn’t find our sound until we were a full band. Not to mention, the cherry on top when Mateo joined the band in 2025.
Hannah: I was playing in a two piece punk band in high school called Scruffie. And after playing a fair amount of shows Evan eventually reached out to me asking if I wanted to play in his newest project. And after that we just started recruiting our friends to play and over time it became Dayfiction.
Evan: Yeah it was a long process. Hannah and I met Noah through playing a show with each of our bands. He then came to a house show Hannah and I were doing, and after the set, he made me laugh, and I thought he was cool, so I asked him in. All three of us liked pretty much the same music. Particularly garage and surf punk is where we were heavily influenced. I knew Jackson from the last band I was in, and knew Mateo from work. I remember there was one particular practice where I think we started to experiment more with the atmosphere. And when we had that practice, it felt like a different band, a lightbulb moment I guess. And it influenced how I thought about writing after that, and how I thought about the band, as I think all of us did. Much of the newer stuff that I began developing had more guitar parts, but also an acoustic in the mix. I think we also wanted that element of just having more in the live sense, including percussion too, as the recordings are very much that way. There’s just a lot going on. And we didn’t want to be a band that sounded I guess less full or more stripped while playing live.
CMM: You all recently released an amazing E.P. called “Divine Intermission”. What was the writing and recording process for those tracks like? Any particular gear or instruments you used during the recording sessions that helped inspire you?
Evan: Thank you so much for that. They started getting their groundwork last summer. I committed to writing every day. That didn’t always mean full songs, sometimes it was clicking on a drum machine and working until I fell asleep. I would also go to Noah’s and either bring a riff, or a half song I had or we would literally just mess around with structures or ideas. Upon releasing our 2025 stuff, with shows, and the promo and all of that, writing got sidelined sometimes. I tend to get antsy when I don’t have stuff in the works. And we were getting more shows with bands that we looked up to, that were really doing “the thing.” There’s a healthy pressure that comes with that, I guess, to push myself beyond what I usually expected of myself, or to quit waiting around for a flow state. I found that there’s so much that comes out of writing when you feel otherwise less inspired. At least in the means of having love for the exploration of it all; turning on the lightbulb, not waiting for it. Benevolent, Spare, and June were all written in our practice room, where I would leave my phone outside, dim the lights. The walls are blank too. I only brought in an acoustic, a pen and a notebook. I am very easily distracted. I would just write and write. And then once I had the bones of a song, I would start bringing it to the band, messing with drum ideas, the bass, or chords, and start to merge the acoustic “campfire” version of the song with the larger sonic image.
Noah: The writing process involved a lot of me and Evan in the garage at my house, playing the drafts. Evan banged out at least six variations of each demo. The recording of this EP was pretty funny, because we thought we were only recording two songs. We got invited by The Sound of Music, where we recorded, to record two songs with them. After we recorded When Reason Comes to Call and June, we loved the space and environment. Knowing we only had two weeks before we went on a brief hiatus for school, we decided to record the three other songs we had written and do a full EP. Gear wise, I used the fuck out of my boss tr-2 tremolo and ps-5 digital pitch shift/delay pedals. The trem’s super clean and blends well in with the band giving a synth effect. The pitch shifter is something I keep on a lot and is a great delay and chorusy sound, and will be a must-have of mine forever.
Mateo: The recording process for this EP was very fun. It only took us a few days to get all the music, it helped a lot that we had the songs very much down coming in. We recorded in this great studio in Richmond called Sound of Music Studios. It was really like a big hangout; some parts were done incredibly fast. In terms of gear, I think the coolest thing is that in total there’s probably close to thirty pedals all in that were used. I like to think of it all like a big sauce and every one uses all these little things as like ingredients making the sonic kind of sound.
Jackson: My favorite piece of equipment used personally by me on this new recording was the Julia Chorus from Walrus Audio. It’s such a beautiful sounding chorus just to give my bass a little something extra and it helps me blend with the guitars well, the writing and recording process was a blur for me but super fun and an amazing experience.
Evan: I was writing a lot on a 70s Gallagher G-70 acoustic 12-String that I bought from my very good friend. I was looking for one for awhile last year, and he had that one and I just fell in love with it. That thing is awesome, and was also used on the record a few times, particularly June and Benevolent, where we would track it 2 or 3 times both raw and through an amp with a bunch of chorus and distortion. Our pedal boards are pretty wack, honestly. Mateo uses mine and I think there like four different reverb or delay units on it. The favorite there is some Mosky Audio spring reverb that I bought for Noah for his birthday. And then he left it at my house and I wanted it so I traded him my tremolo. I like the spring running into the Boss blues driver, which is the best overdrive ever, and then I would steal Jackson’s Julia chorus which I later replaced when he took it back, with a Clone Theory, acquired when Noah, Jackson, and I got a shopping impulse when we played in Asheville.
Hannah: Well for the drum parts I mainly wanted to play what was created on drum machines but also spruce it up a bit to make it groove more in a live setting. The selection of cymbals that the studio and Evan’s dad had were amazing and they really helped me get into the parts.
Evan: There’s one particular ping ride, I think meant for jazz that Hannah crashes on and it just sounds gnarly. It’s also a really thick cymbal and quite heavy. That one’s cool.
CMM: If the band could score any film director’s movie who would it be and what would the film be about?
Evan: I am not a huge movie aficionado, but I like a lot of Christopher Nolan films, so yeah I would say one of those. Dunkirk is insane. I saw a movie called The Stranger recently in London, based on the Albert Camus novel. I watched and read that for a philosophy class. It was all black and white, and existentialist. I think something like that would be sick. Something by Robert Eggers would be cool too. Anything that calls for atmospheric drony stuff.
Hannah: I would like to score either a historical film or even a biopic. But only a biopic about a specific part of a notable person’s life. I hate the bio topics that try to cover everything. Maybe even an Ari Aster movie, who knows.
CMM: What do you all have coming up next?
Hannah: From here it’s playing shows and touring mainly where we can just get the songs out there.
Evan: Yeah there’s some new songs in the works. I am in New York City right now, so we are going to do shows between Richmond and here, hopefully a lot over the next few months. As well as in August we are trying to book a tour right now, hopefully that comes together alright. Doing The Broadberry in Richmond in August as well.
