Anytime I interview a band, I try not to ask them how they came up with their band name, because 100 percent of the time, I already know — they were just sitting around one day and somebody suggested it and so it was. I didn’t have to remind myself not to ask Nashville-based power pop group Diarrhea Planet why they are called Diarrhea Planet for this exact reason.
Diarrhea Planet, as you might expect, were never supposed to be a successful rock group. The concept for the band was as ridiculous as their name — drum, bass and four guitars. For a punk band, that seems like a recipe for disaster.
“It was a total trainwreck at first,” said one of the four guitarists, Emmett Miller. “The first gig we had with this lineup was at the Springwater in Nashville, which we joke you’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, but yeah it was a total disaster.”
The band must’ve seen some promise in going on, because they practiced until they made it work, according to Miller. Their recordings have also improved in quality. The first full-length Diarrhea Planet record Loose Jewels was tracked in a bedroom, and the lack of distinction between guitar parts sounds like multitracked fuzz but is actually just the four separate band members playing at the same time. Fast-forward to the professionally recorded 2013 breakout record I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams, and you’ve got arguably the band’s first recording on which you can fully distinguish each instrument.
Incase you forgot over the course of reading this article, the band’s still called Diarrhea Planet. Their music’s gotten the attention of the likes of Rolling Stone and they’re called Diarrhea Planet.
The six-piece met at Nashville’s Belmont University, a school known for commercial music. Though according to Miller, “Nashville had its commercial roots in country music.” Even as a bit of a contradiction (“It is hard to get shows as a Belmont punk band,” Miller said.) they were able to make up for it with their dramatic “pop music through the filter of hard rock” approach to music, and of course, their energetic stage presence.
Diarrhea Planet plays at The Highdive on Friday with Single Player.