Caving Grounds can be seen performing at local venues such as The Crib and Kognisjon Bryggeri. They have also toured around the Midwest. (Photo courtesy of Ben Lomard)

MARQUETTE — Caving Grounds, a Hardcore band based out of Marquette, is made up of Dane Branson on bass, Alex Wickstrom on guitar, Brandon Snyder on drums, and Alex Watanen on vocals. They released their newest EP, titled Northern Desolation, in January of this year and have been enjoying tremendous local success since their formation in summer of 2023.

“We wanted to have a name that resonated with home or the U.P.,” said Wickstrom. “We wanted a name that had a hardness to it, and what’s tougher than underground mining?”

The members of Caving Croungs grew up and made music during the early 2000s and were there to witness the heyday of hardcore punk music in the Upper Peninsula.

The early 2000s were a time when hardcore punk music was making waves across the country, a wave that reached all the way to the Upper Peninsula. There the hardcore scene flourished, bourgeoned by a collection of bands and venues and by people excited about the music.

“We had 231 House of Muses, and that burned down, but that was the hub for the whole Marquette music scene, not just punk and hardcore,” said Wickstrom, referencing the music venue that once stood where 231 West Patisserie stands now.

“Right after that burned down in 2004 or 2005 the Merlot Mansion started, and a network of show houses,” added Watanen. “Most of the punk and harcore shows were exclusively in basements at that point.”

After a while, though, even those basement shows began to disappear until, as Branson described it, “the hardcore scene was all but nonexistent for a while during the 2010s.”

“If anything, Houghton kept it alive,” said Wickstrom. “People who kept going even though it wasn’t as popular.”

Something began to shift, though, as the decade turned.

“It feels like hardcore started making a resurgence around the 2020s again,” said Watanen. “The first basement show we played in 2023 was packed and we were like ‘oh, people like it again.'”

“Outside of a genre of music, punk is having something to say and saying it. It’s a unique individuality,” said Wickstrom.

“I don’t know where I’d be without punk,” said Watanen. “I just graduated from grad school, and I think that if I hadn’t gotten into hardcore and punk I’d be a drug addict. For certain young folks, it can be the thing that makes a huge difference.”

“It’s a healthy way to get out aggression, even if you’re just going to shows and aren’t in a band.” said Wickstrom.

“You scream your head off instead of going out and doing something negative,” added Snyder.

The increasing popularity of hardcore music, and of other genres of “angry” music, comes as a reflection of the times: there’s a lot to be angry about.

“It’s uncertain times,” said Wickstrom. “I got into punk in 2001, right after 9/11, and things were political. It turned on a switch in my mind about how things were going, and I latched onto punk at that time.”

“I’ve witnessed the whole shift firsthand. We all have,” Branson said. “We’ve spent our whole lives here, and the changes have happened right in front of our eyes. The way things are going economically, we have a lot to say about that.”

“Some of its nostalgia goggles, but some if it’s real, and has a material impact,” said Watanen.

Northern Desolation as a project is themed around the changing landscape of the Upper Peninsula, and around confronting and dealing with nostalgia for the way it used to be–some of that nostalgia being for the U.P. hardcore scene.

“Longing for the days before the arson took our home and the reality of modern life drained my soul of hope,” screams Watanen in “I Wish it Was 2006,” the fifth track on the EP. “Pass the time watching my world shrivel up and die. Every year, it just gets worse, I can’t escape my mind.”

Key to the project is Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence, which describes violence which occurs not spectacularly and all at once, like a volcanic eruption, but rather slowly and over time, like climate change.

“I was working on my grad school thesis, which is about rural abjection,” said Watanen. “Slow violence was a consideration, and I was already thinking about it while I was writing poetry.

“I had mentioned it to them and wasn’t sure if they were going to bite on it, but the next time we went over to Alex Wickstrom’s house, who does a lot of our sound mixing, he had gotten all these clips of Rob Nixon explaining slow violence and put it over the intro, and we were like: ‘Woah. This rules.’

“There are forms of violence we don’t talk about as being violent, but if the homeless population and prison population are the way they are and everyone owes tons in student debt; you can’t tell me that isn’t, on some level, a form of violence.”

The violence inherent in these experiences, which may not appear violent from the outset, are certainly exposed as violent in the music itself, which is loud, insistent, and unrelenting.

The members of Caving Grounds have found not only an outlet for their anger in hardcore music, but also a way to build community in an area increasingly affected by transient populations and fracturing forces like poverty and gentrification.

“If you’re coming to a show and you’re paying a door cover and buying a t-shirt, you’re directly contributing to the longevity of this scene,” said Branson. “Come on out and be part of it.”

“Don’t be shy,” said Wickstrom. “The community is really friendly, and there are a lot more people looking for bands than you might think. The first person you talk to might want to start a band with you.”