Following the release of last year’s debut album, And Now I’m Just Gnashing My Teeth, the Barbarians of California have been one of the fastest-rising metalcore bands on the planet. Bringing a fresh take on the heavy genre-bending sound made popular by bands like Every Time I Die, the group helmed by AWOLNATION’s Aaron Bruno and veteran rock producer Eric Stenman has found a musical home with bands and fans throughout the punk, metal, and hardcore scenes.
With new singles actively releasing through the end of 2025 and their sophomore album in the works, there’s no reason to think the Barbarians’ momentum should slow down anytime soon. From recently playing arena shows opening up for Deftones to landing on some of the biggest music festivals of 2025 (and likely 2026), Stenman, Bruno, and the rest of the band have clearly found a unique niche of mixing metal and hardcore sounds with their existing pop-rock sensibilities to deliver a crowd-pleasing sound like no other.
Hit Parader caught up with Stenman backstage to discuss the band’s rise, mixing things up in the metal scene, and more.
Hit Parader: What’s gone into the recent rise in popularity of the Barbarians of California?
Eric Stenman: There’s just so much love involved. Any person that throws a like on a social media post or listens on one of the streaming services, it all means so much to me. I made music back in the early 2000s, then I went into the studio side of things, so to come back later in life and be able to write and perform music and get any acceptance of it is just mind-blowing. I appreciate every interaction with every person at every stage.
HP: Barbarians is obviously a heavy band, but it has a wide range of fans, so how does it feel to play festivals where you’re by far the heaviest act?
ES: We’re always walking that balance, because we are very heavy and try to melt faces with the music, but we also have a comedic element and a lot of melody in there. We want it to all make sense and not come out of left field, but we welcome being the heavy band with a twist that can hopefully fit in elsewhere. I don’t know whether or not we’re succeeding in that, but it’s been a blast so far, and we can’t wait to just keep tweaking people’s heads out a little bit.
HP: With so much attention on the debut album last year, what’s the focus going forward for the band?
ES: We’re in the middle of putting out a few new songs, and we’re working hard to get the next record out. We just want more of this music to exist in the zeitgeist because it’s so fun to make these songs as fans of the music. Whether 5 people listen to them or 500,000, it’s just fun to put more music back into the world that you love so much. We’re just focused on more songs and more shows.
HP: Seeing as you played in bands when you were younger and then moved into the studio for a while, what was it like coming back to the stage this time around?
ES: The immediate thing I’m struck by is the instant feedback. It used to be that you’d play a show in Denver and go, “I think they liked us. Those two people in the front were clapping hard.” With social media, you now get instant feedback of good and bad comments — and I appreciate the bad too, because I get a laugh out of it and learn from that. It’s also the immediacy of releasing music, because there used to be so many gatekeepers. You had to go to a real recording studio and spend a bunch of money to get the record done, and then maybe sign to a label and wait six months for the label to figure out their plan. Now, you can literally finish a song and have it out a week later on the same platforms as Metallica and Taylor Swift. That’s a huge game-changer.
HP: What can fans of And Now I’m Just Gnashing My Teeth expect from the new songs?
ES: The challenge for any band is to always sound like you, but with a new spin on it. Obviously, we’re a baby band only on our second record, but it still has to be worth someone’s time. You want them to hear something new, but you don’t want to leave them scratching their head because it’s so different. We’ve all had our favorite bands make records that are just too far off the reservation, and that’s not what we want to do with Barbarians. We want to do what we do, but better. We set a benchmark that we’re very proud of, but we have a chip on our shoulder, and we want to beat it.
HP: At a lot of the big festivals and such, you’re playing to crowds that aren’t necessarily familiar with Barbarians. Is there anything you’d want to tell those people?
ES: I think it could serve as an introduction to people who don’t love heavy music, hardcore, or metal. This could be a gateway drug into those genres, because I think we have a catchier twist, and we want you to bob your head. I love math rock and math metal, but I also like to know where the “1” is and be able to bob my head to it. If you hit a good riff, let me hear that riff some more. Some bands hit it at 4:50 into a song and never go back to it, which makes me sad. I want to hit that riff early and often, and I want people to find at least one part of one song that gets them to bob their head. We don’t claim to be a pure metal band or anything, but we try to strike a musical nerve where we can.
