Trends come and trends go, but every once in a while you realize you're watching a band that's about to break out. That could be the case with Urban Heat. While they ride the high of their recent (albiet moderate) TikTok success, they haven't forgotten to lay the bricks of a band that can outlast the fleeting trend. Urban Heat expertly blend a wide swathe of genres into an entrancing post-punk package. They carry a rock 'n' roll attitude with confidence and electrify the stage. At Terminus Fest, they proved to be far more than just their online soundbite.
What started as an analogue solo project from Austin's Jonathan Horstmann became a full-fledged live band in 2019, complete with guitars to round out the sound. Since then, they've reliably churned out a large handful of singles and an album in just a few short years, and they've been putting in hard time on the road. They pull from post-punk, synthwave, synthpop, industrial and gothic, forming a sound unique to themselves.
The crowd was eager to lap up whatever Urban Heat was going to serve, and Jonathan Horstmann, with his lean, tattooed torso laid bare, was ready to serve. Opening with heavy, throbbing bass and driven forward by drum machines, Horstmann called out to a disenfranchised generation with sultry vocals and romantic charm. Dance numbers gave way to more blissful, hazy pop songs that built into a bonfire of shoegaze-like guitar textures. The bass guitar served to soften the stiffness of the electronic beats, bouncing and grooving reliably and energetically.
Urban Heat mix the morose with the exuberant; they're a dichotomy of grit and glam. There's a fabulous and romantic to side to Urban Heat to balance out their darker, harsher tones. They tend to explore dark and often hopeless themes through a celebratory sound: "Trust" is an undeniably bleak song bemoaning the hopelessness of our current circumstance, but it's also a major pop earworm. With the forest fire smoke outside reminding us that we're all dancing while the world burns, the crowd gleefully sang along to the line "Trust there's just no future left for us."