“The real question is why System And Station still isn't one of the biggest bands in the Northwest; as they've proven time and again, they're absolutely one of the most consistent.” - Portland Mercury

Cement Season frontman Ian Powell is a man of extremes. So it's no surprise that his band plays something that could aptly be called space grunge.

Once upon a time, the shaggy, strong, bearded Portland-native was driven to drug addiction by a Hindenburg of a relationship. He recovered in jail. Later, Powell left a band with mounting momentum to run away to Alaska with two women. “I had a lot of fun in Alaska,” he says without regret. He once walked across the country with a group of American Indians. He's hopped trains. In the course of a decade, he shifted from liberal to conservative and back again. He's anything but moderate.

Yet Cement Season’s music—the manifestation of these wrecks and swerves—is characterized by the utmost subtlety and craft. With the Doors and grunge as their Old and New Testaments, Powell, and Berklee-trained, fellow guitarist Shawn Zapata, forge textures that alternately resemble a rain-decayed Northwest wilderness and a Southwest sunset. 

The songs that would become Cement Season's debut record, Never Late than Better, sat in Powell's notebooks for years. They might have stayed there and rotted had it not been for friend and former Cement Season guitarist Jake Shue who convinced the songwriter to dust them off and play some open mics with him at Southwest Portland's 45th Street Pub. It wasn't long before Zapata wanted in.

“The songs were just so dynamic,” Zapata says, a big compliment from a musician who’s done everything from organize the first Northwest Industrial Festival, to play in jazz combos. The multi-instrumentalist mastered guitar late in his career, in order to expand his understanding of music theory and composition. Sporting a beret and pony tail, Zapata exudes musicality and shreds with arena-worthy precision, and with twin Mesa Boogie amps behind them, he and Powell never want for power.

“This shit rocks,” bassist Andy Grover said to himself upon finding Cement Season's ad after a fruitless month of looking for a band. In Portland, he explains, “everybody is either in a punk band or it's like an indie jangly rock band.” The imposing bassist, who stands just over 6'2”, helped solidify the band's live chemistry and complex sound that  complements pop and metal acts alike. Show by show, they have collected a following of fans who, like the band itself, don't completely fit into just one scene.

With 2013 came the addition of drummer Carl LaRue, a hard-hitting 23-year-old with an impressive 15 years of playing and a great deal of performance experience under his belt. Powell has also full dialed-in his home studio, enabling the band to release new tracks online regularly with titles like “Monster Wizard” and “Super Jupiter.”

Since Cement Season started from an apocalyptic place—their name is a reference to Earth's destruction by paving—it makes sense that they've gone exploring into other-wordly sounds. Their music is like a meteor shower in drop A tuning, at once intricate and heavy.  “Sludge as fuck” is how one local sound man put it.

“I like to think we're a continuation of grunge,” says Powell, who in perfect grunge tradition, sings sarcastic zingers with his eyes closed or averted. “We sound like where the genre might have gone if it hadn't crashed and burned.” As no stranger to picking up the pieces and entering unknown territory, he and his Cement Season bandmates are perfect candidates to carry the torch.


Inactive Portland, OR group comprised of Dave Jorgensen, Josh Vasby, Bryan Fairfield and Adam Schultz

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