Opening for Bush would be a dream-come-true for Wasilla’s Antigen

Ian Gallagher, Tyler Kutter, Kyle Worley, and Phill Weeks are not messing around.

With a Battle of the Bands championship to win Thursday night at Chilkoot Charlie’s in Anchorage, the Wasilla-based hard rock outfit Antigen is ready to rock. That said, they’re nothing if not complimentary toward the competition.

“You know, I’d love to win. I would kill to open for Bush,” says Kyle Worley, Antigen’s well-spoken bass player. “Whoever gets it; they deserve it, and I’d be happy to see them go and do it. That’s a cool vibe to have when you go in — you get the jitters and everyone wants to play well. But if somebody else hits it, you know there’s no bad blood.”

The foursome takes on the Jephries and the High Pets for the honor of opening for ‘90s grunge sensation, Bush, which will be performing at the Alaska Airlines Center two days later. Gallagher, Antigen’s frontman, is beyond excited for the chance. He used to stand in front of his mother’s vanity mirror and practice his guitar and rock moves. “I’m not even kidding — I used to pretend that I was Gavin Rossdale because Bush was my favorite band,” he said.

Before Antigen, Gallagher played with other local bands, including hopping on the bass for the blues-and jazz-flavored Wildcat Trio out of Wasilla.

“The best part about that was that it wasn't music I was into, but it really did help me learn the fundamentals,” he said. “I was able to figure out my style from there.”

Lead shredder Tyler Kutter has been playing guitar since high school. After he graduated, he went to work on the North Slope, woodshedding his way to musical mastery during his eight-year Slope tenure. When he got back, he joined a band called My Tomorrow, which is where he met Weeks, Antigen’s heavy-hitting drummer.

Weeks found his way to the drums after he pawned his high school trumpet for a cheap set of drums. Hiding them in a closet, he only brought them out when his mom was out of the house. It all came to a head when a neighbor saw his mother out in the yard one day and said, “Your kid sure is getting better on those drums.” Weeks has been a back line team player ever since, but Antigen is his favorite band to date. “This is the band that I'm really excited about because we all get along really well in music,” he said. “I’m so happy to be involved with these guys.”

Antigen formed out of My Tomorrow when the lead singer left the band. Gallagher joined not long after, and then urged bassist Kyle Worley to join up when Mark Farnsworth from The Quiet Cull moved on. Originally a guitarist, Worley credits his father for his taste in hard rock music.

“I remember Alice in Chains and Ozzy Osborne and White Zombie and all of that,” he says. Worley picked up the bass for the Blue Voodoo Band and joined Antigen not long after.

Antigen takes its songwriting inspiration from ‘90s music and modern rock, says Gallagher. Don’t call them dated, however. “The way we write music in the way I've always tried to approach it — just sort of let it be what it is you know what feels good and what flows,” says Worley. “We all have that common ground that we can stand on, but everybody has got their different tastes and their different styles and the different things that they really dig.” When the band comes together to write new tunes, they each inform the collaboration with their own styles.

“So far, a lot of the songs we’ve written have all been live in the studio,” adds Gallagher. “We’ll come up with a riff, play around with it, and if we like it, we'll play it a little bit more and then other members might add their input.” The finished product is a collaboration from everyone in the band. “I know it drives Phil crazy,” he says, “because we'll sit there and play the same riff 15 times to get it right.”

Antigen hopes to bring its unique, heavy sound and musical vision to the final Battle at Koots on Thursday. The three finalists were selected from seven competitors, including The Dirty Hands, Shy Bones, Chelsea's Biscuit, and Transitions, along with The High Pets and The Jephries.

“It’s cool to go play with these guys because there's not any bad blood between these bands,” says Worley. “There's no ego going on — everybody's part of one another. Every band that played in this battle was awesome. And so for us to move on to the finals is really … cool.”

This Battle of the Bands isn’t Antigen’s first rodeo, however. They competed for a spot in the Van’s Warped Tour last year. While they weren’t selected for the tour, they gained some valuable performance feedback from the judges. “(Alaska Airline’s) Chris Cardenas came up to me after we played and said, ‘You guys rock. I can see you guys opening up for Bush,’” says Gallagher. The details were thin on the ground leading up to the Bush concert; the band wasn’t even sure if there’d be an opening spot, let alone a competition for it.

Finally, KZND’s own Andy Ball posted a statement on Facebook and Gallagher was tagged in it several times. The crew was ecstatic to be able to compete. Once they were chosen for the finals, the band knew it had to buckle down. “We had to really tighten down on our songs, and we really wanted to make sure that we nailed every note, every movement,” says Gallagher. “We really want to show off our identity onstage.”

Opening up for Bush would be a dream come true for Antigen, but it’s not the only thing the band has going on. The group has an EP release party coming up on July 22 at the Valley Revival concert series. The mini-album has five songs on it and will be available for purchase at the show and online via iTunes and other digital retailers soon after. The band hopes to have some killer T-shirts at the release, too.

Further down the road, Antigen is working on new songs in the studio. "They're a little hard, a little soft,” says Gallagher, possibly also describing the band itself. “They’re melodic. It's kind of everything all kind of mixed together.”