The Vassar student music scene appears to be oversaturated with indie rock and folk. That is, unless you get to know it better. If you look a little closer, you will find that there is a rich world of student projects available to meet all of your heavier and more experimental needs. One of these projects is Bedlam, a rock band composed of vocalist and lead guitarist Denver Brown ’26 [Disclaimer: Brown is the Live Events Chair for the Miscellany News], bassist Kalina Sloat ’26, vocalist and rhythm guitarist Walt Schoen ’26 and drummer Duncan Beauchamp ’26. If you need a soundtrack to practice your headbanging, I have good news for you: Bedlam has officially released their first single, “The Tower.” Electrifying and high-energy, “The Tower” is four minutes and 18 seconds of pure post-hardcore catharsis.
Last winter, Bedlam recorded their debut album, “This Too Shall Pass” —set to release this Halloween—at Holy Fang Studios in Hopewell Junction, New York. The studio, run by sound engineer and founder Oliver Ignatius, doubles as a farm and a seasonal performance space. The band lived at the studio for five days between Christmas and New Year during the recording process. “It was important to us because a lot of producers we’d looked into didn’t really clarify what kind of genres they liked to work with,” Sloat said. “He [Ignatius] had a wide range—he was willing to work with rock bands and had the equipment we needed that could handle heavier music.” Brown and Schoen are the primary writers for Bedlam. The duo splits the responsibilities of lead vocals and lyric writing while Brown sometimes takes the lead on guitar lines.
Brown wrote “The Tower” during the summer before the band’s sophomore year at Vassar. Previously, the song was available as a demo on YouTube. It was recorded along with the rest of the band’s first album and released as the lead single on Sept. 28. Brown and Schoen both provide vocals for the song; their voices fit together seamlessly. Alongside Sloat’s agile bass-playing and Beauchamp’s driving percussion, “The Tower” speaks to Bedlam’s group cohesion. The band is unafraid to flex their creative muscles on the track—aside from the genre-standard fuzz pedals and crashing cymbals, Brown added some additional flair to his vocals. “After it gets heavier, I’m basically yelling the vocals through a megaphone the whole time,” Brown said. “I was sitting in the studio recording vocals, and there was a megaphone sitting on the shelf. I mean, we had to use it.”
“The Tower” has historically been a fan favorite for Bedlam concertgoers and has remained in the band’s rotation since its creation. Its release as the lead single is owed in part to the positive feedback the band received early on. “We did our first Mug show in December of our sophomore year,” Sloat said. “During soundcheck, we played the breakdown for ‘The Tower.’ I remember the people around us reacting very visibly to it. Afterwards, Rachel, the former president of StuMu, came up to us and told us how tight we sounded live. That was kind of a big moment of realization for me—like, wow, we’re a real band!”
The band formed just weeks into their freshman year. Brown and Schoen met at the Student Music Union’s (StuMu) annual fall mixer where they played together for the first time. “Very unlike me, I walked up to Walt and started talking to him—or maybe at him,” Brown said. “I appreciated it,” Schoen said. Separately, Brown met drummer Beauchamp at auditions for the Vassar Jazz Ensemble. One night, they decided to jam. Beauchamp invited Sloat, whom he had met at a party at the Town Houses. Inspired by the emo and pop-punk giants of the 2000s, Bedlam slowly found their footing in the Blodgett Hall practice room.
“We were so awkward in the beginning,” Sloat said. “For a while we really didn’t know how to exist on stage together. It was a big adjustment coming from the practice room to the stage, where you can’t hear yourselves as well and the amps are facing away from you and there are people in front of you… One of our goals for this semester, now that we’ve written and released music, is to play more shows off campus. We’re focusing on working on our stage presence. We’re having more fun than we ever have, because we know each other more and we know the music more—we’re trying to harness that energy and use it in our live performances.”
After reaching out to a few venues, Bedlam has officially scheduled their first New York City show at The Delancey on Nov. 8 at 4:45 p.m. They plan to release their next single, “Saint Elizabeth,” on Oct. 15. “This next song, its name comes from a poem by a Vassar poet—I think it represents a very different side of our music, which is why we chose it,” Schoen said.
Bedlam is a senior band, and its four members are from four different parts of the country. However, they see a future as a group. Their social media presence has been limited until recently: now that they have music out, they plan to ramp up promotion. “Being in a band and touring has been my dream since I was a kid,” Brown said. “We’re trying to leave it open and see what happens, if our online presence takes off more.”
Bedlam has proved themselves to be a multi-talented band in the world of live Vassar student music. If “The Tower” is any indication, “This Too Shall Pass” promises to be a rewarding studio album; personally, I am on the edge of my seat. “There’s a lot of different influences on this album: everything from blues to folk to post-hardcore,” Brown said. “I think there’s something for everybody here.”