Despite fate’s inexorable pull, the gravity of music kept patient hold of Orlando scene veteran Bubba Smith all these years. That’s the symptom of a lifer. Despite protracted dormancy after being in hardcore bands like Nervous Breakdown and Tigerstyle, he’s now back with new band Sketch Factor.
“So I hadn’t played music since my last band Tigerstyle went our separate ways in 2009,” says Smith. “I started writing and recording songs on my own around 2020. A riff here, an idea there. I kept dragging my feet because I wanted Josh Call to be a part of it. He and I always had such great musical chemistry in Nervous Breakdown. I ended up finishing a demo version of the album and needed people to fill out the rest of the band. After Nervous Breakdown got together last January I talked Josh, John D and my friend Cesar into doing this other band with me too. Claudia is a friend of mine that used to work with me and she actually came to the NB show and I was telling her about this new thing I was doing. While we were talking it clicked … wait a minute … you play guitar.”
Now Smith, bassist Call, drummer John Duvoisin (Six Dead Horses) and guitarists Cesar Amin and Claudia Allocca are Sketch Factor, a band so brand-new that they haven’t even played out yet. But they did just unleash a debut EP: Gods of the Black Garden.
Despite Smith’s hardcore pedigree, he shows some new metal teeth with Sketch Factor. Swampy opening track “Fatebringer” lays down that law up front with its Southern sludge crawl, metalcore chugs and savage vocals. From there, “Touch of Malice” and “No Time to Explain” bridge the worlds of metal and punk. Finally, “The Fourth Horseman” rides out on a slo-mo mudslide of noxious doom sludge that could run with both the devil and Junior Bruce.
With only one song exceeding the two-minute mark, this EP packs the nastiness of metal with the concision of hardcore. It’s a formidable introduction to Sketch Factor and a tantalizing omen of what’s to come when they debut live this fall. Gods of the Black Garden now streams everywhere.
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This article appears in June 10-16, 2026.
