Subtle Body Tape Release Show
God's Auto Body
5522 Baltimore Ave.
Philadelphia
Jan. 23, 2026
God’s Auto Body has my favorite atmosphere of all of the venues I frequent right now. Being in there makes you feel like you’ve walked into hell, but the cool hell that people talk about where you realize that all of the people who are actually fun and nice and kind are in this shit with you, and so maybe it means that you are cool too. It’s the kind of place that reminds you that all of this DIY shit is a little too serious sometimes, and we’re supposed to be having fun.
I got to the show late because of a previous engagement as a new young band I’d hoped to see called The Angies were playing. They rocked it. A few sips of wine later, I was up front getting ready to watch Subtle Body. The lights were low and burning a hazy red as fog and my own vape smoke filled the air, perfectly suited to the sensual and graceful performance of singer Bo Spiller. Later on, I heard them say to my friend Ashley, who is one of the geniuses behind God’s, that they definitely try to inject a lot of sexy into the band’s vibe. Those efforts were clear as day to me, as they assuredly were to everyone else in the room. Subtle Body are decidedly goth rock. It’s noisy at times, bass-driven and melodic at others, and moody always.
For a lot of the time I was watching them, I thought about the fun-hell concept, and how fun it is to sin. The place felt and looked a lot like the dens of godlessness that religious fanatics and various other conservatives try to verbally illustrate through their guilt-trips. We’re not supposed to be able to have these spaces. We’re not supposed to be able to have the conversations that we do in these spaces. We’re not supposed to have the thoughts and inclinations that lead to biting off the fingers of masked federal agents who roam the streets stealing children and murdering innocent people. Sin in the face of authoritarianism, in the face of repression, feels good as hell.
After Subtle Body played, the show was over. I talked to Ashley, as well as my friends Nasrene and Augusta about the 440 Hz standardization of 1939, and whether or not it may be a tool for social control. While that shit may not be true, there’s a lot of interesting conspiracies about it floating around the web. Below's a link to an article explaining some of the science and history behind international standard pitch. You can do further research from there if you’d like.
A Brief History of the Establishment of International Standard Pitch A=440Hz
The point is, we aren’t supposed to have the freedom of dissent, and it seems like more and more is being done to restrict avenues that lead to it. The hell we live in has been pretty fucking uncool, and we have to preserve these inclinations within ourselves as well as the places that nurture them if we or future generations want to have any chance of one day clawing our way out of it. We have to continue to question, to research, and to say “No, I won’t accept this,” and “Fuck you.”
