The music is heavy like metal, but it grooves. It’s ass-shakingly funky with the head banging weight of doom. This band’s brass section is the core of their sound-not a featured element. The only traditional metal instruments are guitar, drums, and vocals. There’s no bass guitar — the tuba fills in the low end — reverbrating in my bones. Sarah’s trombone and Squirrel’s baritone sax shape the midrange textures, and all three horns are fitted with piezo pickups that route through deep effects chains. This lets the band build layers, drones, and evolving transitions between songs. Onstage they feel like a close family: tight, laughing, and engaged. The drummer is always smiling.

Starting as a noise improv group of Berklee students in 2005, Dylan Foley (vocals, guitar), Sara Honeywell (trombone, vocals), and Mr. Squirrel (saxophone) founded this group. Shortly after, Alison Earnhart (tuba) joined the collective and their newest member Tim Winslow has been playing drums for the band for a year and a half. Found member Dylan Foley says, “I’ve been in many bands with brass players and I’ve always loved heavy music, so this was a natural outgrowth of that.”

When it comes to the Allston music scene Eight Foot Manchild is no stranger. Referencing the early 2000s as “the golden age of Allston basement shows,” Foley recounts from his college days. “I just love the fact that Allston is the kind of place where people will be walking down the sidewalk and peek through the window and pop in.”

On the changes Allston — and by extension, Boston — has experienced over the past two decades since she moved here, Honeywell comments, “I would end up going to a rehearsal space there quite a bit and hanging out and playing gigs when it was Harper’s Ferry, which is now Brighton Music Hall. […] There’s been so many changes there over the years that I’ve been here, but I feel like the energy is still there.”