Arrowhead Students Form a Band: Aggressive Poetry

It all started at Jimmy John’s. Waiting for their rides home, Aaron Allen and Gary Griepentrog, two Arrowhead sophomores who share a mutual interest in the creation of music, decided to create a band.

The band’s name is Aggressive Poetry. Their music can be listened to on www.soundcloud.com/aaronallen00. They can be found on instagram @aggressivepoetry, and on Twitter @ag_poetry. The best way to reach the band members is through their email, [email protected].

In regards to establishing a band name, Allen says, “Really, I think that I was watching an interview with one of my favorite bands, and when asked how to describe their music, the lead singer said something along the lines of, ‘well really it’s just weird, and I like to refer to it more as aggressive poetry than rap music.’ As I started to think more about what aggressive poetry means, I realized that it was exactly the kind of music that I wanted to make. The kind that defies the common boundaries we usually have, and is really just aggressive poetry in that it’s an expression of the feeling or state of mind we’re in when we write music. When I pitched the idea to [Griepentrog], he approved, and the name has really just stuck from there.”

“We decided to start a band because we’ve been friends for a very long time, and we both have very different music tastes. I thought it would be interesting if nothing else [we wanted] to see how we would clash musically. It’s a ton of fun to work with [Allen] and to make music in general,” says Griepentrog.

Allen and Griepentrog first met at Swallow Elementary School, as they both participated in band class.

Griepentrog says he began to play trombone in the fifth grade. When he reached the seventh grade, he joined choir class, as he says he enjoys singing. Preceding this, Griepentrog learned to play bass, guitar, piano, harmonica, and ukelele on his own.

Allen learned trombone as well, but soon realized, he says he realized it is a difficult instrument to apply outside of a concert band. As of now, Allen says he’s taught himself to play piano, ukulele, guitar, bass, drums, and trumpet.

Both members of the band partake in in lyric writing as well as music production. Allen says that he focuses mainly on this and programming in the band, as much of Aggressive Poetry’s music is produced on computers.

“Personally, I get inspiration mainly through my everyday interactions with the people around me. I’ve found that when I try to look too deeply inside myself for inspiration, I just get a jumbled mess of who knows what, so maybe that’s a reflection of myself, I don’t know,” says Allen. “But honestly, I’ve found that when you really take time to invest yourself in the people around you and get to know them, you find so many unique and interesting stories, the songs almost write themselves. That being said, I still like to write very introspectively about these experiences, and writing in a way that hopefully will make people think.”

Griepentrog says, “I get inspiration from everything that happens and has happened in the world. I try to be bigger than myself with my lyrics and not only write about events that have happened to me but also events that have happened in the world.”

Both members are high school sophomores, and they say this can make school and music difficult to juggle.

“It’s very hard to manage school and a band. What we’ve done is work separately through the school week and then on occasional weekends we’ll share with each other, and sometimes record something new,” says Griepentrog.

Despite Aggressive Poetry having to deal with school, extra activities, and their band, music is still being produced.

“If we can get people to think about what we’re saying, and think about their own lives and something more, then that’s a win for me in my mind,” says Allen.