The rise of noise-rock and sludge as popular genres within alternative circles has been something to behold. While Chat Pile is clearly a leader within the scene, plenty of other acts are on the rise, taking the detuned, heavy sound associated with the genre and putting their own spin on it. One such band is Bay Area trio Wealthy Women, whose elegant compositions still vibrate with coarse intensity, mixing Baroness-esque vocals into sludgy guitar riffs.
Children, their debut, is a blistering condemnation of the rise of the manosphere, the current state of politics in the U.S. and abroad, and the relentless quest of the upper classes to divide and belittle the working man through culture wars. “Take It Back” is a veritable laundry list of MAGA talking points, starting with ‘reasonable’ ones like ‘We want small government‘ before the narrator realizes that the fascists they have enabled will come for them, too; ‘Can’t take it back’ indeed. “Shit Breaks” is from the point of view of a domestic abuser, the lyrics sinisterly parroting common deflections: ‘I hate the things you make me do / I’m not a bad guy
/ I get confused’.
The result is an album that is equal parts distressing and inspiring, a rallying call to everyone with a basic sense of empathy to wake the fuck up and fight against the brainwashing of young men across the globe.
Singer and guitarist Peter Sisk, who recently relocated from Dublin to the Bay Area, formed Wealthy Women with drummer Andrew Harms after they bonded at a party over both knowing Pissed Jeans; a fitting origin story for them, as the rough, raw energy of that shared musical interest comes through within their own songs. Bassist Don Doblados joined shortly after Sisk and Harms wrote a few tracks, and the trio was booking shows not long after, mostly due to Sisk describing himself as ‘deadline-oriented‘ and needing a goalpost to get their set together. Wealthy Women‘s first gig was in San Jose at the end of 2024 at The Caravan, ‘the only venue that answered our email,’ Sisk notes.
Sisk, a vehemently outspoken leftist and advocate, took the time to sit down and discuss Children in depth, including the studio process with producer Scott Evans.
Children feels amazingly well-realized and fully formed for a debut album. Had you guys been sitting on the material for a while, or did you just have a super clear idea of how you wanted everything to come together?
All the material for Children was written between October 2024 when we started playing together and September 2025 when we recorded it.
We had most of the songs complete by July and spent the weeks after that getting ‘studio ready’, polishing our performances and working on the little details musically to make the instruments work together as well as possible.
Our intention from the start was to write songs about the current moment in U.S. and world politics. It felt like doing otherwise would have been inauthentic, because it felt as though politics had a more direct impact on our communities than ever before.
I think that the coherence of themes and the fact that the songs were written in a relatively short time period contribute to making it feel like a single body of work.
What is your writing process like? Did you bring everything to the studio totally rehearsed and done, or was there an improv element? What was it like working with Scott Evans?
Scott is amazing to work with. He works really fast, but when you hear the first playbacks and all the instruments sound so huge straight away, it’s really inspiring. He’s also great at getting the right balance between working extremely hard in the studio while also joking around and keeping everyone relaxed.
I especially appreciated him when we were recording vocals. This is my first time fronting a band, and he really helped me focus on delivering authentic performances in a way that added so much both to the record and my own experience.
We showed up to the studio as well rehearsed as possible. In large part that was because we knew Scott was used to working with incredible bands like Great Falls, Kollapse and, although we didn’t know it at the time, Neurosis. The last thing we wanted was to show up unprepared!
We actually did quite a bit of pre-production and demoed the songs in Andrew’s studio beforehand. I hadn’t done serious pre-production on an album before, but we immediately saw the benefits. There are so many little details that it’s easy to lose in the noise and mayhem of a rehearsal that a recording highlights straight away. Working out those little details made a big difference to the final product.
There were some small exceptions to this. The lead parts in “Worst Date” are improvised, which became slightly problematic when we realised we couldn’t double them, but we found a workaround. Some of the parts in “Atheist Wife” were also added off the cuff in the studio since the song was so new. It came together musically two weeks before recording and I was furiously writing lyrics late at night between sessions.
It’s really refreshing to see such a strong rebuke of the absolute deathgrip that toxic masculinity has on contemporary culture, especially in male-dominated spaces. How has that sort of worldview affected your personal lives? What drove you to make this the lens through which you create music?
This became a core part of the album because toxic masculinity was so ascendant in 2025, with the early part of the year in particular feeling like a victory lap for the online manosphere.
It’s hard to quantify the effect it’s had on our lives. I think we’re all lucky enough to move in social circles where toxic masculinity is not tolerated.
Either way, we’re not at risk from the way young men are being encouraged to treat women. It’s our wives, daughters and girlfriends who have to move through this cultural moment with even more caution and anxiety thanks to the cynics and grifters profiting from it.
I think it’s hugely important that men with any kind of platform use it to call out this destructive and hateful movement. I don’t pretend to have an authentic understanding of how it feels to be a woman in 2026, but I know what it’s like to live with the uncertainties and anxieties of being a young man.
Misogyny is not the answer. Women are not the enemy. There’s so many parallels with the demonisation of immigrants by the right, and the goal is the same: keep people as algorithmically angry as possible to distract them from the truth.
Wealthy Women will be touring this November in Ireland, their first run of dates outside the U.S. They also want to note that they book all their own shows, so if you’d like them to play in your city, don’t hesitate to reach out on Instagram.
Wealthy Women is:
Peter Sisk – Guitar / Vocals
Don Doblados – Bass
Andrew Harms – Drums
