Fairbanks, Alaska sits at about 65 degrees north. It is one of the northernmost cities in the world, and is within 200 miles of the Arctic Circle. There is a good argument to be made that tamarack!, a post-hardcore band formed in 2024 in the Golden Heart City, is among a handful of the farthest north hardcore bands in the world.
tamarack! (stylized with a lowercase T and an exclamation mark) is made up of Fairbanksans Malachi Poe (vocals), Asher James (drums), Janis Straatsma (guitar), and Waylon Mackey (bass). The band is relatively new on the scene, but has a number of Fairbanks and Anchorage shows under their belts, an EP on streaming services, and an album in the works.
Poe and James met through drum lessons as seven-year-olds, and played in several grade and high school iterations of their current lineup before adding Straatsma. There was “instant chemistry” with the guitarist, Poe said, and the three shortly brought Mackey, another longtime friend, into the group. The lineup has been unchanged since the spring of 2024, and tamarack’s first show was, true to Alaskan form, on the summer solstice – the longest day of the year.
The band’s name stems from the conifer that grows in the Interior. “It’s a gorgeous tree,” James explained, “and it’s Alaskan.”
“It’s something you can yell,” Poe added. “It feels like something you could scream.”
“We definitely want to be able to do this full time,” Poe, who works as a cook at the local homeless shelter, said. Straatsma restores cars with his father, and James works at a local butcher shop, but the band as a whole wants to focus on the music and turn hardcore into a career.
“When I was younger, this felt like a dream, like I just wanted to play in a hardcore band,” Poe said. “And now it’s at the point where I see that we could make it, it’s just the amount of work it takes to get to that point.”
“This is farther than I ever imagined,” James agreed. “As far as we’ve gotten… is insane to me.”
Their influences range across the musical map. Straatsma prefers prog metal groups like Meshuggah and Gojira, while Mackey pulls from jazz greats like Herbie Hancock when crafting basslines. Poe and James both reference hardcore and metalcore outfits like Norma Jean and Dillinger Escape Plan, and speak with a special fondness about Georgia punkers The Chariot. (When asked who their dream band to open up for would be, the answer was unanimous – The Chariot.)
“We got a DM one time saying that we’re Alaska’s Chariot,” James said, “and it was the best compliment we’ve ever gotten.”
tamarack! played ten shows their first summer as a band in 2024, often sharing the stage with several other groups and members of Fairbanks’ music scene, including EDM and house acts. The band comprises most of Fairbanks’ hardcore scene, according to James, in addition to another group called Colors & Mvmnt, with whom tamarack! has co-headlined.
Venues tend to vary, but the band members are fortunate in that Poe’s father’s company, GripAll Traction Products, has warehouse space for the band to practice and host shows. Otherwise, tamarack! splits time between several Fairbanks bars, including the Cabin and the Big I, though all-ages venues are a priority to the band. Plans are in the works to do some Anchorage shows, and eventually to tour around the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s one of those things that, especially in Fairbanks, people don’t know this is happening,” James said. “Most of these kids… have never been to a hardcore show. [But] people are starting to learn,” the drummer added, referencing the rise in slam-dancing and moshing at Fairbanks hardcore shows from new attendees.
“Every show is a practice,” Straatsma said. The band is constantly working to improve their stage presence and style of performance, and the effects are palpable.
In a digital era, bands are often forced to maintain an online presence to alert their listeners to shows and developments, and tamarack! is no different. “As cringe as it is to have to make a TikTok, that’s kind of what the way is nowadays,” Poe said. “Especially up here, we’re so remote, we have to do anything we can do to get the word out.”
“We grew up watching these bands [in the ‘90s and ‘00s] that didn’t have to do that,” James said. “People were going out to see local shows … there weren’t phones, there weren’t online video games. Now it’s super easy just to stay inside.”
tamarack! has an upcoming show scheduled (fairly uncharacteristically for a hardcore band) at Journey Christian Church in Fairbanks, where the members all attend services. The label of “Christian hardcore” is one to which they don’t exactly subscribe, describing themselves as “Christians that make music.”
“It’s part of who we are,” James explained. “We figure that, whatever’s inside us, it’s going to come out,” Poe agreed.
The band’s debut “weeping & gnashing ep” was recorded live over the space of three months, with an emphasis on a pre-summer release date. The lean, stripped-back nature of the debut reflects the band’s professed distaste for the overproduction that is often a highlight of mainstream metalcore.
“We want that raw, kind of pure passion and energy,” Poe said. “It’s nice to have something out that proves we’re putting in the work.”
“With the EP pushed out, it helps prove we’re committed,” Straatsma said.
The EP, available on streaming services and Bandcamp, clocks in at around twenty minutes, with the longest of the seven tracks running just shy of five minutes. The track titles – “in a time of lowkey anarchy,” “religious dogs institute political orders,” “ballads of polar nights are snuffed out” – cue the listener into the frantic mental state that tamarack! tries to cultivate at their live shows and through their music. A stagedive sense of urgency drives the EP forward as the tracks alternate between dropkicking explosive riffs, pounding high tempo breakdowns, sludgy chugging from Straatsma’s guitar, and plaintive lamentations to the listener. “I can’t take the pressure off my neck,” Poe shouts repeatedly on “religious dogs.” And indeed, the mounting sense of pressure builds throughout the EP, serving as a high energy teaser for the band’s upcoming album.
“It’s time for an album,” James explained. “The EP was songs we were figuring out what to do with.”
The process of writing songs, according to the band, involves all four members in a collaborative mish-mash.
“If you had to pinpoint it, it’d be: Janis comes up with the riff, I’ll play with the riff, Waylon comes in on the riff, and then Malachi writes the lyrics,” James explained.
“Songwriting, for us, is a pretty organic process,” Poe said. “The dynamic [between band members] is really good.”
In talking with the band, hardcore comes off not just as a style of aggressive music or a way to express themselves artistically, but a lifestyle choice deliberately structured in defiance of Fairbanks’s isolation, extended periods of darkness, and brutal winters.
“There’s not a lot to do, and if you don’t find things to do, it can really weigh you down,” Mackey said. “So being able to throw shows in the winter, and give people something to do, and give us something to do, something to work towards, something to keep us motivated, it really helps.”
“It’s Fairbanks – we have three months where it’s just darkness,” James said. “I go to work and it’s dark and I get out of work and it’s dark. And it’s not good for a lot of people’s mental health, especially a lot of these kids… We really want to market [the band] as, instead of staying home and playing video games or scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, just getting out and doing something with your friends.”
“We’re a community focused group,” Poe said. “We want to get out and tour and expand, but it starts with the people that are around you first.”
Mackey and James, who both have Native Alaskan ancestry, also pointed to the unique struggles of Native kids and what hardcore might be able to do for them.
“We have the highest suicide rate in the nation,” James said. “I’d love to give back. At one point we want to do shows in the villages, like do a free show out there and have something for people in the villages to do.”
“We try to put on the most chaotic, abrasive performances, because it’s a healthy outlet to get out those kinds of feelings that are negative,” Poe said. “That kind of primal survival feeling, we want to put that into our music.”
While not a “straight edge” band per se, tamarack’s members try to structure their performances around an ethos of sobriety, positivity, and managed aggression as an outlet – consciously fighting the elements and acting as an antidote to seasonal despair.
The long nights of the Interior take their toll. The darkness chips away at the soul, and the cold worms its way into the cracks. But whatever the season, the wind-chill, or the amount of sunlight, odds are that you’ll be able to find a tamarack! show somewhere in Fairbanks – in a church, a grip-tape warehouse, a garage, or a bar – headbanging against the dark.
Jacob Hersh was born and raised in Anchorage. He is currently studying law at the University of Idaho. He occasionally does movie reviews and writes weird columns for the Landmine to get extra money for beer.