With their mash-up of hardcore, melodic garage punk, grunge, and slacker indie, Culture Abuse rose out of the Bay Area in the mid-2010s. Their 2016 debut scored highly among both critics and fans and their well-received follow-up, Bay Dream, showed a greater creative range, but the group disbanded in 2020 when frontman David Kelling confirmed allegations of sexual misconduct. Formed in San Francisco in late 2013 by singer Kelling, guitarists Nick Bruder and John McCarthy, bassist Shane Plitt, and drummer Evan Pierce, Culture Abuse made their first official recorded entry with 2014's Spray Paint the Dog, a two-song 7" release for West Coast indie 6131 Records. Two years later, they delivered their first full-length, Peach, for the same label, and found their exposure rapidly increasing thanks to the key single "Dream On." Signing with Epitaph, the quintet paired up with producer Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Jimmy Eat World, M83), emerging in the summer of 2018 with their sophomore set, Bay Dream. The band's musical muscle and pop smarts were evident on the release, and they followed it up with a pair of 2019 singles, "Goo" and "War Time Dub, Culture City," the latter featuring Virginia rapper Lil Ugly Mane. In July 2020, following an accusation from an anonymous source, Kelling publicly admitted to the allegations of sexual misconduct and emotional abuse that had occurred ten years prior. Distancing themselves from Kelling, his bandmates used their social media platforms to share the victim's story and subsequently announced that Culture Abuse had broken up. ~ Timothy Monger