The five members of Drug Church grew up in Albany, which is, according to guitarist Nick Cogan, extremely bleak and boring. “We grew up partying in the woods and making out with people inside abandoned baseball dug-outs.” Still, he calls it the biggest inspiration for their dirty alt-punk songs, which lifts its aesthetic from '90s bands like Nirvana, Pavement and the Pixies.

On their latest set, Hit Your Head, members Patrick Kindlon (vocals), Chris Villeneuve (drums), Cogan, Cory Galusha (guitar) and Pat Wynne (bass) have moved on from just describing their music in nihilistic ways (i.e., "the sound garbage makes when thrown off a roof into the dumpster your dickhead boss rented for your underpaying contractor gig. Come back in a few weeks and steal the copper piping because there's no other benefit to the job and you're probably getting sick from asbestos, so to hell with it” or "music you can pushpit and stagedive to, so you can forget for a moment that you have eczema and work at Pizza Hut") to just playing these melodic, alienating rock anthems with huge riffs.

Guitarist Cogan talks to Myspace about the evolution of Drug Church.

Hometown: Drug Church started in the greater Albany, NY area.

Homebase: Most of us still live in Albany. Patrick (our singer) lives in San Diego and our bassist lives in New Haven, Conneticut.

How did you all meet and form a band?

Four-fifths of the band was previously playing in a band that was kind of on the outs. I wanted to start a band that was different from what we were currently doing and I knew Patrick had some similar tastes in regards to what I wanted to do. We texted him and asked if he wanted to sing in a band that sounded like seaweed and he was down.

How did you decide on Drug Church as a name?

It was one of the options given by our singer. The other option was "pond", but there was an older Jade Tree band that already had that name.

Were you really into punk rock as a kid?

My father was a huge rock n' roll guy. He took me to my first concert when I was 7. It was Candlebox and Sponge. He bought me my first guitar the same year.

I hear a lot of 1990s grunge in your music. Who are Drug Church’s biggest musical influences?

In regards to bands that have a big influence on Drug Church, I would say Seaweed, Jawbreaker, The Pixies, and Nirvana would be among the more important ones.

As a guitar player, my biggest personal influences are Johnny Marr, Paul Westerberg and Doug Martsch.

Describe your music to someone who's never heard you before.

This is always a tough one. When I attempt to explain our sound to parents or folks who are slightly out of touch, I just say we sound like a fast version of Nirvana with a dog barking as vocals.

Why is your album called Hit Your Head? What does it mean?

When we finished the record, we thought it sounded really dark and that it had an overall "strange" feeling to it. As if it were a bad dream that you would have after hitting your head.

Who would you love to have in your music videos?

We would love to have Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge.

Do you have a crazy concert story?

Our singer really pissed off a boy in New Haven once and when we were scheduled to play there on a tour, it was brought to our attention that this boy would be throwing urine on Patrick during our set. We were down but he never showed.

We mostly just want to talk about funny Internet videos. I wish people would ask us which is our favorite. The answer would be "Jeremy falls". It's this music video that a band made, presumably like a high school band or something. But at one point, they're all standing on their amps (tiny little combo amps) and there's a coordinated jump, and the bass player (Jeremy)....falls.