In the mid-2000s, Seattle was exploding with bands pushing genre envelopes: Schoolyard Heroes, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Kay Kay & His Weathered Underground, Mon Frere, Idiot Pilot, These Arms Are Snakes, The Blood Brothers, and so many more. 

Among them were Minus the Bear, a phoenix band rising from the ashes of beloved Seattle hardcore heavy hitters Botch. Having more in common with technical math rock than hardcore, Minus the Bear carved out a space for themselves with intricate guitar work, buttery time signature transitions, and lyrical themes until then rarely heard outside of hip-hop. 

It was at this time in Seattle’s bizarre 21st century history that the city really felt as though it was growing up, becoming an actual metropolis as opposed to a sleepy, post-grunge port town. South Lake Union was no longer where you went to score smack, hire sex workers, or buy wholesale flowers. The foundations—both literally and figuratively—were being laid for the hellscape currently lorded over by Amazon and Google cucks. 

The release of Menos el Oso, Minus the Bear’s second studio album, in August 2005 perfectly crystallizes this moment of Seattle’s sophisticated sleaze before a single note is ever played. Track titles including “The Game Needed Me,” “The Fix,” and “Fulfill The Dream,” coupled with the album’s Spanish-language title and the name of the band’s record label—Seattle’s Suicide Squeeze—ensured Microsoft wives and WASPy mothers wouldn’t allow their children to listen. All the better for those cutting class on release Tuesday, heading to the Fremont's Sonic Boom to grab a copy. 

The jungle-adjacent beats and synthwork of album opener “The Game Needed Me” have gravitational pull without using aggression, creating comfort and familiarity before lead singer Jake Snider (Onalaska, Sharks Keep Moving) slips in with, “We don’t have money, so we can’t lose it / But you’re touching me like piano keys / You can’t buy that movement.” Speaking directly to the listener, Snider asks—non-rhetorically—“What does it cost for this life of excess? / Would you ever miss your desk’s caress?” The sexualization of work and money was/is a necessary evil Americans tell ourselves and our children constantly to justify selling our bodies and labor (not unlike the sex workers cleared from South Lake Union) to our bosses' bosses for more than half our lives. 

Minus the Bear’s subversion of these horrors throughout Menos el Oso stands to assist in unlearning capitalism, at least on the interpersonal level, and the oozing sexuality of the band’s music is deeply part of that framework of undoing. The difference between sexual confidence and misogyny—especially for cis men—is the finest of lines, a line Minus the Bear approaches but never breaches. Snider’s lyricism and the band’s musicality are key to the music's allure, both of which are needed for the distillation of the cultural moment and dismantling of the patriarchal bog we still, 20 years later, find ourselves mired in. 

Of all the tasteful subtleties setting Minus the Bear apart from their Seattle and national counterparts, it’s the not-immediately-noticeable use of blank space in the band’s songwriting that ushers in seamless emphasis of the music’s intricacies. Bassist and founding member—and one of three original members still in the band—Cory Murchy told the Mercury the most important aspect of his songwriting contributions to Menos el Oso were knowing when not to play. “It really did come down to what I didn’t play," Murchy said, "and how to emphasize the parts that needed a little oomph.” 

A jones for archetypal Minus the Bear is easily satiated with “The Fix”—a proto-booty call track, predating the advent of sliding into DM’s past midnight asking, “WYD? U up?” The nuanced technical guitar work of Dave Knudson (Botch) opens the song, evoking the relentless chin-chin of glasses clinking at a party in the Hollywood Hills, the birthplace of sleaze. The promise of sexual revelry explodes like a nod to the back bedroom when Snider declares, “A swimming pool with no bodies is a problem that we can fix." Dropping his clothes on the poolside chaise lounge, Snider asks, “Are you gonna come in?” 

“The Fix” isn’t a code switch from “The Game Needed Me,” but a doubling down of seeking joy and pleasure in our bodies and in the real world. Pleasure isn’t to be found behind a desk, nor at a party of LA plastics solely focused on the social capital moving that cesspool. Look for what you need within yourself, because it’s there. Look for what you need in community, because it’s there. 

Emphasizing the band being a team and staying locked in was through-line when talking to Murchy, a sense of trust and camaraderie floods the album, and is quintessential during live performances. “It’s one thing to go into the studio and get the whole thing on tape,” Mulchy waxes, “but it’s another thing to pull it off live and be like, ‘We fucking did it.’” 

To celebrate 20 years of Menos el Oso, the band is releasing a deluxe anniversary edition of the album. Expanded from a single LP, the album is getting Suicide Squeeze’s treatment fit for a cult classic: The 11 tracks in their original glory, five unreleased demos, a 24-page photo journal called Los Archivos del Oso, and the album’s D-side features an etching by Murchy.

Minus the Bear start their Menos el Oso 20th Anniversary Tour with a sold out show at Roseland Theater on October 4 with Portland band Kennebec. Preorders for the Menos el Oso anniversary edition are available as a digital download, compact disc, and vinyl LP from the band’s Bandcamp.