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The profile · researched 9 October 2026
Brass Against: from a cancelled one-off to a sixteen-song covers machine
A New York brass collective built on Rage Against the Machine and Tool rearrangements, Brass Against released their sixth covers album in December 2025 and spent 2026 working the club circuit with a two-hour set of other people's songs played through trumpets, trombones and a sousaphone.
A cancelled show, a borrowed idea
Brass Against began in New York in 2016 as a protest project rather than a band. Guitarist Brad Hammonds, who leads and curates the group, has said he started it because he felt Rage Against the Machine were needed more than ever during that year's presidential campaign. The plan was a single show built around string players. When the venue dropped out and the strings could not be assembled in time, Hammonds fell back on the musicians he could actually book — horn players, baritone saxophonist Andrew Gutauskas first among them — and worked up Rage arrangements in a rehearsal room with friends drafted in.
The first thing the public saw was not a gig but a video: a cover of Bombtrack, released in September 2017. The response was large enough to turn the one-off into an ongoing concern. Gutauskas then recommended a singer he knew, Sophia Urista, who had competed on the eleventh season of The Voice in 2016, been mentored by Quincy Jones and played the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. With a front voice attached to the horn charts, management and overseas touring followed within a couple of years.
What the recordings amount to
The catalogue is mostly other people's songs. A version of Killing in the Name filmed at Brooklyn Bowl has passed 8.7 million views on YouTube, and their readings of Rage's Wake Up and Tool's The Pot have each cleared a million; an earlier Louder feature noted the Rage cover sitting at two million at the time of writing, which gives some sense of how steadily the channel has compounded. A Rage Against the Machine cover was used over the end credits of The Matrix Resurrections in 2021, which remains the band's highest-profile screen placement.
Originals do exist. A three-track self-titled EP includes Blood on the Other and Pull the Trigger, written outwards from guitar riffs into vocal sketches, with Urista naming Tool, Rage and Audioslave as the reference points and Chris Cornell as her vocal model. But the numbered covers records are the spine of the discography. The sixth, VI, arrived in December 2025: nine tracks running about 46 minutes, taking in Faith No More's Epic, Motörhead's Ace of Spades, AC/DC's Back in Black, Tool's Sober and Jambi, and Portishead's Glory Box, which was issued with a video. Several had already been road-tested on the band's 2024–25 touring before they were cut in the studio.
Daytona, and the joke that followed
In November 2021, at Welcome to Rockville at Daytona International Speedway, Urista urinated on the face of a willing fan during the band's set. Footage circulated immediately, police looked at a possible indecent exposure offence, and the band were barred from the venue. Urista's statement afterwards was flat rather than defiant: she had always pushed the limits in music and on stage, she wrote, and that night she pushed the limits too far, adding that she is not a shock artist and apologising to anyone hurt or offended.
The episode trailed them into their biggest support slot. When Brass Against opened Tool's European tour at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen on 23 April 2022, a sign had been placed on stage reading "NO PEE ZONE – No Urine Is To Be Deposited, Placed, Distributed, Sprinkled, Poured And/or Spread In This Immediate Area." Urista photographed it and posted it herself. The run continued through Manchester, Birmingham, Dublin and London in May 2022.
A roster rather than a line-up
Brass Against is organised as a collective, and its own artists page reads more like a contact sheet than a band photo. Hammonds is listed on guitar as band leader, Gutauskas on baritone sax as musical director. The vocalist column carries Urista alongside Liza Colby, Michael Cunio, Maya Azucena, Amanda Brown, Samuel Hope, Darius Christian, who also plays trombone, and Mazz Swift, who also plays electric violin. The brass and rhythm sections run to trombonists Frank Cohen and Eli Chalmer, trumpeters Wayne Tucker and Oskar Stenmark, Joe Exley on tuba, Kenneth Bentley on sousaphone, Nathan Bell on drums, Zach Brock on violin and Suphala on tabla.
The practical effect is that no two tours are staffed identically, and some nights carry two singers trading the heavy material — a detail picked up by attendees at the Eastside Bowl in Nashville on 18 March 2025. The band's own history lists stages shared with Tool, Prophets of Rage, Lenny Kravitz, Living Colour, Royal Blood, Mike D of the Beastie Boys and Ben Harper.
Where they stand in autumn 2026
VI landed first and the touring followed. On 9 December 2025 the band announced the What Better Time Than Now Tour, named after a Rage Against the Machine song they had covered back in 2018, with tickets going on sale the following morning. It opened at the Gramercy Theatre in New York on 23 January 2026, then ran as a tight block through late winter: Jergel's in Warrendale on 25 February, Underground Arts in Philadelphia on the 26th, House of Independents in Asbury Park on the 27th, Musikfest Cafe in Bethlehem on the 28th, then Cambridge, Woodstock, Amherst and Hartford across 4–7 March, finishing at Baltimore Soundstage on 8 March.
As of October 2026 the listings show nine dates in hand, all of them in the north-east and mid-Atlantic. The run starts at The Stone Church in Brattleboro on 27 October and takes in the Homestead in Morristown, 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, the BNH Stage in Concord, Sound Waves at the Hard Rock in Atlantic City on Halloween, The Atlantis in Washington on 2 November, Space Ballroom in Hamden, Elkton Music Hall and Phantom Power in Millersville on 5 November. These are clubs and small theatres rather than the arenas the Tool support slots put them in, and the listings for the autumn dates do not name an opener.
The set as it is played now
The current headline show runs long for a covers act. At the Gramercy on 23 January 2026 the band were on from 9.15pm to 10.55pm — a little over an hour and forty minutes, mostly covers with a handful of originals threaded through. The Baltimore Soundstage set on 8 March documents the shape in full: Cochise, Sabotage, Figure It Out, Stinkfist, Them Bones, Testify, Ace of Spades, Umbra, Forty Six & 2, Grand Canyon, Epic, Guerrilla Radio, Maggie's Farm and Immigrant Song, then a sax solo folded into Find the Cost of Freedom and The Pot, and an encore stitching Lateralus into Killing in the Name and Don't Drink the Water. Audioslave opens it, Rage closes it, and Tool supplies the structural pillars.
The staging is plain and the volume does the work. On the Tool run the group wore white boilersuits and played polished brass under arena lighting; a review of the 3Arena show in Dublin on 18 May 2022 described Urista's raucous presence and golden vocals turning Tool songs into the band's own property, and called the short set a thorough warm-up for the headliners. Attendee notes from the 9:30 Club in Washington on 5 March 2025 single out the sound engineering and the touring horn players' sheer output, with the sousaphone supplying the bass end that a guitar-and-bass band would normally cover. The repeated word from 2026 audiences at the Gramercy is tightness: hard-rehearsed arrangements, played at full tilt, with the vocals carrying rather than shouting.
The show, now
A Brass Against headline show in 2026 runs about an hour and forty minutes — the Gramercy Theatre date on 23 January 2026 was on stage from 9.15pm to 10.55pm — and is built almost entirely from covers, with a few originals such as Umbra and Grand Canyon placed mid-set. The Baltimore Soundstage set on 8 March 2026 opened with Audioslave's Cochise and moved through Sabotage, Stinkfist, Them Bones, Testify, Ace of Spades, Forty Six & 2, Epic, Guerrilla Radio, Maggie's Farm and Immigrant Song before a sax solo led into Find the Cost of Freedom and The Pot, with an encore joining Lateralus to Killing in the Name and Don't Drink the Water. Staging is minimal: no production spectacle, just a brass front line of trumpets, trombones, baritone sax, tuba and sousaphone, with the sousaphone taking the bass part a rock band would give to a bass guitar. On the 2022 Tool arena run the group played in white boilersuits, and a review of the Dublin 3Arena date on 18 May 2022 credited Sophia Urista's raucous presence and golden vocals with making Tool material sound like the band's own. Attendees at the 9:30 Club in Washington on 5 March 2025 praised the sound engineering and the horn players' volume and tone; the recurring comment from the January 2026 Gramercy show was how tight the ensemble plays. The nine dates running 27 October to 5 November 2026 are clubs and small theatres, and the listings do not name a support act.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · theprp.com · metalanarchy.com · setlist.fm · songkick.com · jambase.com · brassagainst.com · brassagainst.com
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
WikiMattPol · CC0
