Consensus Madness is a band out of Chicago that plays 1970s influenced punk with the energy of 80s hardcore. Although formed a few years prior, they burst onto the scene in 2023 with their self-titled EP and ‘2023 Demo‘. Their members are a staple at Chicago area shows, which they often book, attend or play in other bands at. One of my favorite groups now, I was able to interview lead singer Sarah in February of 2025.

The first question is who is in Consensus Madness?

I sing, I’m Sarah. My husband Bryan plays bass. Jeff plays drums and Scott plays guitar. This lineup has been together probably a year and a half, two years at this point. It’s a fun lineup. Jeff has been in a lot of bands around the Chicago area and beyond. He’s from Michigan originally and also plays in Wild Thyme. Scott is from St. Louis, but he has lived in Chicago for a long time now too and also plays in Canal Irreal and has various solo projects.

Bryan has always been a Chicagoan and he’s played in a hundred bands. Currently he’s also in Primitive Teeth and is working on a new hardcore project. So everybody’s busy and has multiple projects going on. It’s fun, this is a good and creative time to be playing. We’ve all known each other for a long time. I think that helps with having a sort of a short hand between us, which is nice.

How did Consensus Madness start?

I wasn’t in Consensus Madness at the beginning. Bryan started it with our friend Nick who now lives in Nashville and another friend of ours, Kevin, who plays in Cel Ray. [Consensus Madness] was a project that kind of got started during the pandemic. Bryan just wanted to do a straight up punk band and was thinking about playing guitar and I was going to play bass maybe. But I just didn’t have the time to commit to it when they got started. But then as the pandemic went on and on, he started thinking that I could sing for the band if I was interested. I had been singing in a hardcore band so I did want to try to do it as it is a little different for me. I know that these styles of bands are not that far apart, but this definitely feels very different, singing in this band.

So I’m glad that it worked out and that I actually did take on the singing duties instead of bass because the band is better off for that. I’m okay at bass (currently play in Flesh Commodity), but I’m still learning. But yeah, I think Bryan was just ready for a change to do some straight up punk stuff, which we all love; that old, early era of punk.

What does the name Consensus Madness mean to you?

The name came from an episode of the podcast Radio War Nerd where I believe John Dolan was talking about the Iraq War and the whole “We have to go in there and get all the weapons of mass destruction”. Even though there was a lot of evidence saying that these weapons didn’t exist, everybody just went with the program. John Dolan said it was “consensus madness”. Everybody knew this wasn’t the case, but because there was someone powerful pushing that dialogue, everyone in the government just went with it even though it was wrong. So I think that was the intent. We see that behavior all the time. I mean, we are living through it. We’ve lived through it many times before, sadly it’s still an evergreen problem.

How long have you been around the Chicago punk scene and how do you think it has changed over the years?

I moved to Chicago in 1999, so I’ve been here for quite a while. I started going to shows immediately after I moved here. I came from Buffalo originally, which is a very small scene comparatively. It was wild to see how big it is. I like a lot of different kinds of music, a lot of different subgenres of punk and hardcore and things like that. I remember the first week I was here, there were four shows that I wanted to go to. I said, “My god, I want to see all these bands.” I remember going and I didn’t see any of the same people at any of those shows. Coming from a very small scene where you didn’t always just have a beatdown hardcore show or an Oi! show or a punk show. All of those bands had to play together on a bill because there weren’t enough people or bands to support them individually. It was very eye opening for me to see that you could have such a very distinct set of people going to certain types of shows and I feel like that’s still the case. There’s a good group of people who definitely go to a lot of shows outside of one scene that they’re really into. It’s amazing to be able to come to a place of this size and get that variety. The scene over the years has changed and it’s wild. I was talking to somebody about this because I went to a show on Saturday night and I didn’t know anybody. They’re all so young and there’s so many kids that come out now.

I think there’s a few reasons for that. This is a time where there are a lot of people who are feeling very anxious about the state of the world and aggressive music just generally speaks to them. But I also think there are a lot of bands that play these types of music or these subgenres that are getting to that next echelon. I jokingly heard people calling it Scene One and Scene Two. There’s people who do go on the Taco Bell tours and have professional tour booking. So some kids might not know about a DIY scene or culture but see some of these bigger bands and then they figure out “Oh, there’s stuff like that happening in my neighborhood!”

There’s also kids who were just starting to hear about cool music and developed their own interests and tastes during the pandemic. Now they’re old enough to go out to these shows. So, I there’s a lot of different things happening, but it’s really cool that we’re in that spot now.

Makes sense! What bands do Consensus Madness look to for inspiration?

Number one would be The Bags, they are one of my favorite punk bands.

I really love Crass and a lot of stuff that’s on Crass Records. We don’t really sound like that, but fundamentally that’s something that’s a big influence for me. I’m a very big fan of The Crucifucks. I do think as far as the band goes, we do have a lot of really varying tastes. So, I don’t feel like there’s any one band or one genre that we are all “Okay, let’s do this.” I mean, we all really love Japanese punk and hardcore, too, but we don’t really sound like that. Generally speaking, things that are a bit on the older side, things that are from the 70s and early 80s have shaped the way I approach songwriting. There’s just so many other things that I love that aren’t really punk or hardcore that color the way I approach things, too. But, we don’t sound anything like those things, Yeah. I really love Zamrock and Sparks and Blue Oyster Cult. I love that stuff, but we don’t sound like that,

I feel like it’s more of the spirit of something. If people are singing about things like, “This is really what’s going on for me right now”, whether its good, bad or hard to manage, that usually speaks to me. I love happy go-lucky pop stuff and I appreciate pop music, but it’s not the same. Also, the Plasmatics, of course, are one of my favorite things ever.

I’ve seen your guys’ sound described as garage punk, first-wave punk, and hardcore. I think I described you as first-wave punk played with the energy of 80s hardcore. How would you describe your sound?

I feel like those are all pretty accurate! That first wave of punk is the thing we think about the most when we’re writing songs. Also, once you’re a hardcore person, or I just call them a hardcore, it’s hard to get out of that, especially when you still have that level of angst. Everybody in Consensus Madness has played in hardcore bands so it’s going to be hard to not hear that in there. But those are apt comparisons. It’s hard to describe yourself, you know what I mean? I think the first-wave punk [description] is the best.

I would say first wave and old 80s hardcore would pretty much be where we’re at.

It takes me a little while to get into the lyrics once I start listening to a band. So I was a bit surprised once I did with Consensus Madness to see lyrics that are borderline anarcho-punk or even Situationist. Did I imagine that or are those important reference points?

Absolutely important reference points. I’m not sure that I am familiar with the Situationist term, but if you could tell me what it is, I could tell you if that’s it. But the anarcho-punk thing for sure. Like I said in the beginning, I feel like so many things and ideas on Crass Records were important.

It’s funny, I’ve had this discussion with a lot of people. Many people might listen to the vocals but they don’t really sit down with the lyrics unless it’s a big sing along chorus. Most people just hear the music first. I have always been the opposite. I need to hear the vocals and I need to know what they’re saying. I always joke about this but there’s bands I love like Llama and obviously the Japanese bands and I don’t know what they’re saying. So I’m singing along in my head and hoping this is not sketchy or hoping they aren’t saying something weird. [laughs] But the anarcho-punk thing for sure. The theme of Consensus Madness also comes from a place of feeling like life can increasingly be lead without a community, and because of that everything else may be tricky and a lot harder to navigate on your own. Its something I think about a lot, so its important to start with that and move from there when I’m writing. As far as punk scenes go, I know it’s never perfect, nothing is like the ideal utopia. But I think most of my friends in punk do try to do better by other people around them. That’s an important part of punk for me. Tell me about Situationism!

The Situationists were a French communist group of intellectuals that were involved in the events of May 1968 in Paris. They talked a lot about the mundaneness and boredom of contemporary capitalism. I was reminded of them with “Let’s Go to War”, which used some terminology that I recognized from the Situationists.

“Let’s kill the mundane, let’s stop the wasting”. That’s the line from the song probably. Yeah, I was unfamiliar with that term, but that really hits the nail on the head. Now I’m gonna have to read into it a bit.

But, I see this horrible capitalist system, where it just gives you little breadcrumbs. People go along with it and are okay for a while. Combine this the horrors of techno-feudalism. So you’re going to hear some things about that on the LP that’ll be hopefully done in the next couple months. But the world feels like we’re trading one rotten egg for another. Sadly, it’s more of the same over and over.

In what way does your experience as a worker influence the band’s message or even sound?

I am fully aware that my work situation is 100% better than many other people. I am an office worker and get a salary. I also get overtime which is not the usual course for a lot of people. Bryan’s a house painter. Jeff is a teacher. Scott is an electrician. I think that we all have a healthy hate of the standard “work ethic”. I don’t think any of us hate what we do per se, it’s just the condition of having to do it and being stuck with it. I work for a law firm, so I do get to kind of choose my own adventure a lot of the time (pro bono work, OT, etc.) which is great, but when it’s busy, you can’t turn the faucet off. When there are deals available, you just have to do them. Sometimes for months and months at a time, I don’t get any days off, but that’s my own choice.

But that is a condition of being a person who is trying to support their family, save for retirement, pay all their bills and navigate what’s going to happen. I’m lucky and in a really privileged position. The thing that is the scariest for all of us is that we don’t see those opportunities even being available to everybody else like the younger people behind us. That’s horrifying. You know what I mean? Bryan has run his own business for a long time and really looks forward to playing to disconnect from the grind.

When you think about other countries, the whole health insurance situation in the United States makes me insane. I wrote a song about that on the first seven inch and how the capitalist end of medical care in the United States just boils my blood for many reasons. I have health insurance. It’s not great, but at least I have it. I think everybody’s in the same boat, you’re just waiting for one calamity and then you’re gonna be fucked even if you have health insurance.

A lot of my lyrics, not to jump back to the other question, but they’re about the anxiety that you have as a person who has to work and try to take care of all of the things that you need to take care of as an adult in the United States. But we’ll still try to eek out a little time to enjoy some records, shows or whatever.

Punk has always been about expressing the outsider perspective and about how alienating the world can be. But as I get older, I have trouble distinguishing whether my own outsider views are genuinely outsider or whether I’m becoming estranged from society due to aging. Do you have any thoughts about that?

It’s funny because I feel like so much of my life I just could not understand why people operated the way they did. People I worked with, or people that I went to shows with, or people I went to school with many years ago. As I get older, I realize that everybody’s in that same shit for the most part, the people who are really connected and tied to all these really traditional things that you’re supposed to be; a good family member, a good student, a good worker or whatever, does that for a sense of security or belonging. I think everybody knows that its bullshit to just swallow all of these standards, but it beats alienation. So we’re all navigating that and we’re all fucking weird. More people should just be honest about that because I don’t think they are. I think a lot of people are like “This is the way it is. This is what we should be doing”. If people were a little more honest about it…

That’s an interesting thing about the now, 2025. The curtain has come down on a lot of things. That’s one reason why there is so much animus everywhere because people are saying “I’m not just gonna go along to get along”. Clearly there’s people who are fully on the wrong side of that but a lot of people are very alienated right now because…how could you not be? Nothing makes sense, nothing feels comfortable and everything is tenuous. Things are changing minute to minute, day to day…how do you get a foothold? How do you feel normal?

This is really hard but I try to appreciate the destabilizing nature of the way things are right now for the fact that people have started saying “All right, let me think about this a little differently.” When things aren’t happening in lock step, that’s when people start going “Wait a minute, why isn’t this happening the way it’s supposed to be happening?” Then you can start to see it’s because there’s all these systems set up for me not to feel good, happy, secure and safe.

That was an interesting answer. That was actually the first question I came up with because it’s something I’ve been thinking about especially over the past couple of years. Anyway, I have two more questions. Next one is that you seem to book shows somewhat frequently. Are there any Midwestern bands you feel don’t get enough recognition that you’d like to mention?

God, let me think. I feel terrible with these questions because when you ask me, I’ll think of 10 an hour from now or whatever. There are so many good bands in the Midwest.…Asko, Brainwash Victims, Citric Dummies, the Hell.

Last question I have is: what do you hope to accomplish with Consensus Madness going forward?

It’s funny because this also relates back to me having done this for a while, I feel like it’s all gravy. I feel lucky that we’ve played a lot of really fun shows. I feel really lucky that we put out some cool music that I’m proud of. What I’m really looking forward to right now is just collaborating with people. Yesterday, we had some pictures taken by our friend Thaib and that was really fun. Our friend Martin is working on some art for us. Just like getting in touch with other people who are independently doing art, music, and literature. Being able to be a part of that feels great to me.

If I get to keep doing that, that’s awesome. Because of that time in the pandemic where a lot of things were not happening or happening in a bubble or whatever, everything has been a bonus to me after that. Just being able to see all these cool bands, play with great bands and be involved with a creative community.

Not everybody has the exact same views, but a lot of people do feel disenchanted with how things are going. When we do have this kind of creative community, it is a community in and of itself and it helps with those feelings of alienation.