A major part of Jesuit festivities is the live music that plays outside of the Terry Center at certain events such as pregame tailgates and Ranger Day. One band you may hear at these events is the Results, a progressive metal band composed of four Jesuit seniors and two female singers.
Senior Rowdy Domstead started the band in 2008, his seventh grade year, and the self-labeled “djent” band has played at major area venues such as the House of Blues and the Granada Theater, and it plans to record and release its first album this year. A relatively recent subgenre, djent describes digitally processed guitar sounds made popular by the new wave of progressive metal musicians.
Domstead said he wanted to get involved in music because, “I got Guitar Hero for the Wii for Christmas one year,” and the idea of starting a band “just seemed cool to me. So why not?” His first guitar was a Fender Squire Affinity, and after getting it, he started his own band with a few of his friends in seventh grade. At first, they played in front of students at their middle school, and by 2010, when they started high school, they were playing shows at prominent Dallas stages.
Bassist Dickson Weber said he “met Rowdy freshman year” and joined the band a year later. After four original members left last year, the band rebuilt, “switched gears,” and added four new members. The Results now include Domstead, Weber, guitarist Nick Eastep, and drummer Jeff Fitzgerald, all of whom are Jesuit seniors, and their two singers who contribute to the band’s unique sound: Mira Fountain, who attends Thomas Jefferson High School, and Sara Pursell, a freshman at UT Arlington.
Domstead’s father, Dennis Domstead, is the band’s manager, and in the beginning, he asked friends who owned clubs and bars if the band could play there. From these opportunities, they have “met enough people” that they know “a handful of promoters that [they] are good friends with” who work with the clubs in order to book bands. The Results have now played at Club Dada, Lee Harvey’s, and the Curtain Club.
An interesting factor in playing at these clubs is that the clubs serve alcohol, and much of the audience can drink. However, the band members are not yet old enough. Weber mentioned that he doesn’t “think about it and it doesn’t bother [him]” though because “it’s not something [he wants] to do.”
The foundation for the Results’ music at first came from “standard industry metal bands” such as Slipknot and Avenged Sevenfold, and now, the band is “looking at more obscure bands for inspiration,” including progressive metal groups such as Periphery, Animals as Leaders, After the Burial, and TesseracT.
“We always joke about our music as freeform jazz, but heavier,” Domstead said, but by standard terms, the Results are a progressive metal band. “Djent” is a new term for music, and the band “likes to define [themselves] using that word.” The word “djent” originated from the sound made by a power chord that the guitarist mutes with his palm. This sound is then run through a computer to create the signature finish. The Results’ music prominently features this kind of driving, distorted power chord and pairs it with Fountain and Pursell’s vocals to put a spin on the traditional metal sound.
At shows, the band plays around “four covers and seven originals” each performance, and they have started to record an album. They hope to release it by January or February, but they say it will be finished at least “by the end of this school year.”
The Results’ next show is December 14 at Reno’s Chop Shop. Visit theresultsrock.com for more showtimes and more information.
