Ningas Tongas could only end with a house show.
The band, along with fellow rockers Fishwives, played their final — for now — Columbia show Friday night.
They’re splitting up, thanks to simple geography. Guitar player Sam Forst is heading to Prague, and drummer Jake Toedtman is leaving for Asheville.
Though the band can be described as noise rock, that doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head — but who needs a genre, anyway? They’re hell-raisers with a deep passion for music.
“I don’t really know what genre we fall under, and I think part of it is not being interested in what genre we fall under,” said Eric Roper, fourth-year English student. “It’s more the drive for a certain aesthetic. I guess we were just trying to come up with something different.”
Even though three-fourths of Ningas Tongas knew each other since high school, Eric Roper, Sam Forst, Colin Barrett and Jake Toedtman didn’t officially start playing together until late 2013.
They’re prolific in the local scene – Barrett and Toedtman make up experimental noise pop group Giant Germ, and Toedtman and Forst work with Anna Ridenour in the punk/surfrock band Fishwives.
Fishwives joined Ningas Tongas in saying goodbye last Friday. With Ridenour off to Istanbul for the semester, none of the band will be in Columbia for long. But they are leaving a legacy, as their first album, "Callaphone," will be out on Bandcamp soon.
Forst and Ridenour aren’t just bandmates — they’re also boyfriend and girlfriend.
“One of the biggest reasons this band happened was because we were dating,” Ridenour, a third-year history and anthropology student, said. “It makes practicing really easy.”
The tight-knit musicians collaborate on their music and work hard on their work, but their live shows leave the most lasting impressions.
Ningas Tongas is notorious for their performances, possibly because audience members leave with ringing ears and, after one particularly chaotic show, pizza on the ceiling of the venue.
Roper reminisced upon one of their Rock Hill house shows. Because of a hankering for Little Ceasars, Ningas Tongas stopped to grab some food along the way and had a pizza left over during the show — as a result, the audience, the walls and ceiling fan was covered in sauce and grease.
“I feel like performance is a big component of the whole project because it’s a full experience, not just sitting at your desk listening to it with headphones,” Roper said. “It’s another venue of expression, as if it were another instrument.”
And while this past Friday’s show lacked the pizza, Ningas Tongas brought a hefty audience eager to bid them farewell.
“We’re just moving apart,” Roper said, “but that’s the way it goes.”