Walking into a Narwhalz show can feel a lot like walking into a slumber party built for one: a knitted blanket laid out neatly on the floor under a bunch of old Nintendo Game Boys, a pillow decorated with a smiling Pomeranian resting nearby. When Narwhalz launches into his performance, though—driving all his manic energy through the tiny 8-bit Game Boy processors and out the P.A. in glitchy, distorted bursts—it’s more like watching a kid who’s been sent to his room throwing the noisiest tantrum he can muster. There’s a good chance something will get broken.

Born in Vallejo, California, Brian Blomerth, a.k.a. Narwhalz, grew up in Newport News, Virginia. For fourteen years, he attended a Southern Baptist school where they taught that Catholics founded communism and the 60s peace movement was a front for Satanists. “My first band was a Christian hardcore band, Death to Life, with lyrics about beating up draft dodgers,” says Blomerth. “I was only in it for a week, though, before I got kicked out for basically not being Christian enough.” Blomerth began performing as Narwhalz a few years later, when he was a college student in Richmond. “Virginia is a place where no one gives a fuck—that’s what’s great about it. You’re really only entertaining your friends, so I feel like my live show developed into this weird frat fuckfest with a lot of stream-of-consciousness dumbness mixed in from my time in hardcore.”

Blomerth—who makes visual art as bizarre and wonderful as his music—lists roses on pianos, high school gabber, girls being girls and (mostly importantly) the almighty Pomeranian among his various influences. “It’s me using the Pomeranian as a stand-in for my own body and dick. It’s my Ziggy. They take many forms, the same way Wegman used his dogs. The music is made from shitty, yappy instruments. Poms are the same way. I feel the way I draw and the way I think comes through in the way I make music.”

While in Richmond, Blomerth and some of his buddies found an abandoned crack den and turned it into the Church of the Crystal Light, an art gallery and show space that doubled as a church, complete with Sunday services. One notable service had “everyone confessing things to the ceiling light while smoking a snipped-off ponytail out of a bowl.” Buzzkill neighbors eventually called the cops, and they were forced to evacuate. Now living in Baltimore, Blomerth is enrolled in a medical study where he is finally getting to live out his dream of being a paid, professional cigarette smoker. And after that? “I just want to up my game and get to that Special K pot of gold in Berlin.”

Related Links:
Narwhalz : http://www.dotcomandshit.org/