Specializing in straight-ahead horror punk anthems, Bat Lords features guitarist Steve Baeza (the Last Years), along with members of Hoodrat, Mr. Nobody, and Accoutrements. Baeza, who sings for the group, writes all of his songs (most clock in at under two minutes) about serial killers, but says that psychotic murder-mongers are just the “jumping off point” for his lyrics, which are mostly about “sadness, despair, death, [and] losing everything in a blink of an eye.”
As to how Bat Lords differ from the Last Years, Baeza says the Lords are “Less silly more brutal. Last Years were like partying ‘til the end of the world. The idea [that] we're in the last years of our existence, so we might as well party and have fun and get fucked up. But the dudes in Last Years took it too far, where all we did was party and the music was second hand. Bat Lords is like that same idea of everything ending, but not expecting it to. Shit just ends.”
As for inspirations, “I write all my songs about serial killers but that’s just kind of a jumping off point. It’s all just basically sadness, despair, death, losing everything in a blink of an eye. No one expects to die or be killed suddenly. It’s kind of thinking, how did the dudes who were murdered by John Wayne Gacy feel? Cuz that was brutal. Shitloads of teenage boys buried in a basement? That shit’s brutal. And think about the families’ despair. That’s intense. All the Bat Lords songs are kinda based around the idea of death and sadness in a sudden way that it’s not fair. The tunes are poppy as shit, and energetic, but I fully realize this life is fleeting. That’s pretty good fodder for a song. But if you listen to our tunes, you probably wouldn’t ever dig that deep.”
Baeza also runs a record label, label, Shred the Gnar (Hoodrat, Sculpins, the Last Years).
In 2022, Andrew Fitzgerald, who also puts out his own music as Mr. Nobody, joined Hugh J. Noble (Slum Summer, Seance Weather) to form a new band called Fine Then. Their album Could It Be Magic, released in February 2022, features guest contributions from Sean Con of Bat Lords, as well as Jacquie Bazinet (The Fictitious Dishes, Sleepy Hollow).