“Hardcore, death metal and deathcore,” are some of the ways junior vocalist Ray Rowser describes his band, Dormitabis. First formed in 2024, the band has performed at multiple venues, recently selling out Austin’s “Mohawk.” 

The idea first came to Rowser at the RROC (Round Rock Opportunity Center) where his friend proposed that they should “Really start a band,” that’s when they started to recruit members, and Rowser started to practice. 

“He was a drummer at the time and we ended up linking with someone from [McNeil], but they didn’t really follow through with it,” Rowser said. “The dude hits up Hayden, and he’s like ‘We should get serious about this.’ Then [we] went through some members and added some but now, I think this is the final lineup.” 

The band consists of five members, two currently attending McNeil. The guitarist Gabe, drummer Jacob, bassist sophomore Hayden Barentine, guitarist Lucian and the vocalist being Rowser. 

“I ended up getting hit up from someone last year telling me about it, so I messaged [Ray], we met up in the school, then he ended up coming to my house and we rehearsed,” Barentine said. “Ever since then, I’ve just been kind of jamming with him and some of my other friends.” 

Barentine started playing guitar at the age of seven, nine years later he began to focus his attention toward the bass. Music is a big part of his life, currently with local artists being the basis of his interest. 

“I really like ‘Katywentmissing,’ I got their jacket at the show the other day, it’s really awesome,” Barentine said. “I always grew up around music and stuff. It’s just kind of my go to thing, something I can do to cope with pretty much anything. It just makes me happy.” 

Outside of the band Rowser plays piano, guitar, violin and participates in wrestling. He first started singing around two years ago before becoming the vocalist and main promoter for Dormitabis, to prepare himself and his voice before every show he has a routine action. 

“I’ll usually jump up, do a couple of breath exercises, slap myself in the face a little bit to get ready, it’s the same thing I do for wrestling,” Rowser said. “I’m kind of the manager in the band, I usually set up the shows. I’ll hit up a venue or an underground show, we’ll get the generator, all the gear and go down there, I reach out to all the bands, it’s not too hard.”

Before shows they agree on the music for the setlist; rarely doing covers, most of the songs they perform are original. Looking through the album they’re currently working on, they aim to choose the songs best fitted for where they are performing. 

“I know at the show we just played, we did cover a song from ‘Suicide Silence,” Barentine said, “Most of the songs we make start off with kind of screwing around. I think most of the songs we made weren’t even fully intentional, we kind of figured it out by just jamming and hanging out.

The band embraces being a part of the local music scene, since its creation Dormatabis has performed at venues including Mohawk, Kick Butt Coffee, The Tunnels, Mankins Crossing and is set to play at the 13th Floor. Through these venues, they’ve faced many different experiences during shows. 

“Whenever I’m performing, there’s a couple of songs I like to put down the mic and go in the pit for a little bit, I have a bunch of bruises and cuts all over my body from the times that I’ve gotten knocked down during our songs,” Rowser said. “[At the] tunnels some dude, he was like, ‘Hey, whenever you’re performing, I need you to call me out saying this guy’s gonna jump.’ I forgot, so he just jumped, and I looked and he really did it, and he didn’t get hurt. He landed on everyone, and everyone was cool with it I guess.”

The band is currently working on releasing a single and music video very soon, and plan on debuting an album at a later release. Besides that, the band hopes to continue supporting the scene.   

“The goal in the long run, it’s to kind of influence later on music,” Rowser said. “Even if we don’t really pop off like that, I want to have the bigger impact on the scene and not only help our band, but help more local bands kick off and see how far they can really go. Because we always love playing with local bands and stuff like that.”