Ana Armengod is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist who captivates with breathtaking works of pointillism, powerful poetry with many layers of meaning, and a fierce roar while fronting the East Coast/Pittsburgh area, no-holds-barred punk band De Rodillas. There is an intricate thread of realness, grace, and humanism to her work, even when at her most fierce. She truly comes off as a Punk Rock polymath.

De Rodillas released the super-charged, street-savvy Implacable EP last year, and I thought it showed interesting growth from their demo. Armangod is also the author of the truly moving book Seventeen Years Of Slumber (F.I.N.E. Editions here: https://fineeditions.org/store/17yearsofslumber).

 

Morgan Y. Evans for Ghost Cult Magazine: Hello! Thanks for doing this today. Since this is mainly a music blog, before we get into other stuff, I wanted to ask you your recollections on when you first related to or got into Punk music.

 

Your amazing book Seventeen Years Of Slumber mentions Sin Dios and a song that chants “No Pasaran” near the end, for example. I love the way you use language and imagery or symbols in your written or visual work to sort of stack glimpses of your life or aesthetics, sort of also like journaling. You really get a sense of family, longing, nostalgia, regret, desire for a better world, all types of joy, and pain from it. Did you always see art or music as transformative and/or transportive, or more as a way to carry your story with you? 

 

Ana: This is a really good question. I definitely feel like everything I do is intertwined; whether it is playing in a band or making a film, it’s all connected. Empathy is a big theme in my life, so I do feel an obsessive responsibility to make other people “feel” whether it is regarding pain or happiness or just getting a basic understanding of what others go through, that sentiment, and imagery is there. 

 

GCM: Being a Multidisciplinary artist, did you ever hold back? Or was that not an option? I remember foolishly never pursuing fine art or even self-taught painting as much as I wanted, even though my folks both came from that background. I felt like starting in bands in the 90s that I had to give everything just to music or I wouldn’t “make it”. The truth is that everything is often more multidisciplinary than ever, nowadays!  

 

Ana: I didn’t have an option, making art is something I have no control over, just its production.  I didn’t study fine arts, I studied film in my mid-twenties, and then I did my masters in Filmmaking, focusing on analog and experimental film practices. But not being an artist was never an option for me, when I was a kid, I painted, I wrote stories, I wanted to play music, I have my parents to think for, they created an environment that was surrounded by culture even when we were extremely impoverished. 

 

GCM: This is such a silly question, but it is funny to me. We have an almost opposite weather trajectory in that I grew up in freezing ass Upstate, NY and you were born in Sinaloa. I live in SoCal now, and you are in PA I think, right? Is it hard I guess to ever feel completely home somewhere that has weather drastically different from where you grew up? I mean, I guess it snows in the mountains in Mexico. You seem to travel fairly often anyway, no?  

 

Ana: I HATE the cold, my body is not built for this weather, and every year I resent what it does to me, as if I were being purposely hurt by the environment rather than me making a terrible choice of living so far away. I live in Philadelphia now, which is pretty new. My husband, who is the drummer for the band Poison Ruin, is rooted in Philly, and I needed a change from Pittsburgh and didn’t want to live in New York again, but I wanted to be close enough to both of these places. 

GCM: De Rodillas is one of the best punk bands around these days. Your newest release Implacable has an undeterred confidence. How did you find one another? It reminds me a bit musically of melodic but gritty bands I love like Limp Wrist or Poison Idea. “Run” reminds me of Black Dots era Bad Brains. Like the best intense live band you’d stumble on. I love the sort of swinging parts in “Quiero Ser Buena,” and then it explodes into the fast parts. It reminds me of some of the nineties Riot Grrrl era punkier bands I liked. How has this been a comfort to you to participate in the last few years? I mean, America is always bad. It is a privilege to say otherwise. But it is nice to have an outlet during the bleaker moments (and happy ones), right? 

 

Ana: In 2014 I moved to Pittsburgh to study film at Pittsburgh Filmmakers which used to be one of the best and most accessible places to study analog film, meaning 16mm – 8mm etc, at the time I was married but didn’t have “permanent status” yet, this led to me getting eventually deported and displaced, which was an extremely painful experience. Upon returning to the USA my husband and I separated in a really terrible way, I was left really traumatized by it all, so while I was working at a coffee shop in Polish Hill in PGH, John our guitarist and the writer of our music owned the record store above, he was a place of solace for me, he was at the time the only other Mexican Punk I knew there and so quickly we became best friends. That was a big element of how we came to be, John who also plays in Peace Talks is constantly writing riffs, and I had a lot of anger and a lot of things to say, we had other amazing friends start the band with us Cassie Staub, who was our bassist, was a big reason for how we came to be. 

Writing music with De Rodillas is really fun, because all the songs are different from each other. “Quiero Ser Buena” is a song that is very interesting to me, because when John wrote it, I was left with a huge “Well what do I do with this?” and while listening to it I realized it reminded me to Spanish-speaking rock that I had grown up with, think early Alaska, or Delirios Krónicos “Danza Ondulante” when we wrote that song,I knew folks in the USA wouldn’t like it, or get it. I felt like I was writing it for my friends in Mexico, and when we released the record they were the first ones to reach out and tell me that was their favorite song, Dani Alvarez who played in Heterophobia was the first one to comment on it, I felt so seen by them. 

I think that playing music is a privilege. I see this band—and being an artist—as a responsibility because I have a platform that allows me to speak out about the things that matter to me: injustice, pain, creating awareness, and helping someone feel seen or understood. These things are very important to me. 

 

GCM: Here is a very long rant: I believe in unhindered free movement and that both major United States political parties are controlled opposition that have “both” done grave misdeeds and human rights violations. In Border And Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by author Harsha Walia, the practice of commodified inclusion is discussed. Abusing citizenship or temporary work status to limit labor rights and organizing. It is disgusting to see people say “Don’t Come Here” to any human, let alone the fact that undocumented folx still contribute billions to the economy. Now we have things also happening like trans folx from abroad not being allowed to apply for Visas here in the United States thanks (no thanks) to Marco Rubio, as Erin Reed broke the story today as I write this. 

I can’t believe, I mean I can…that we are still exploiting and bothering one another so much as a species through xenophobia and prudish bullshit. Or the de-emphasis on education or culture exchange. It has been proven to be so destructive. I remember the joy of seeing R.L. Burnside and Jon Spencer played a show together when I was young and just loved seeing this older blues cat share a stage with garage-influenced punkers, for example. Something as small as that can change the world! And as for borders…they are mostly made up lines in the sand, yet we still have people trying to genocide indigenous people or control populations and eugenics. It is all linked to markets of exploitation or resource theft, always. Do you mind sharing your thoughts as someone who has navigated this dehumanizing system in ways more sheltered people have not, on the current state of things? Any thoughts you’d like to share? Border policy is intrinsically linked to the police state. As a hippie punk from Woodstock, I always knew it was bullshit. It feels like more people are becoming conservative biased now from fake/amplified crime discourse and manufactured consent pushed by people who want to build private prisons and privatize surveillance. A lot of people are mad too.  

Ana: The reality is that every political party in the U.S. has historically caused immense harm—every single one. For example, while the far right openly pushes for deportations and stricter border security, it was actually during Obama’s administration that more people were deported than under Bush. This contradiction is deeply confusing for many who see Democrats as the “lesser of two evils.” But the truth is, they’re all fucked. Every one of them has, in some way, contributed to making the rich richer and the poor even poorer. 

So much death, displacement—one inhumane act after another. The current administration feels like a fever dream. Today is March 28, 2025, and things feel worse than ever. I’m terrified for my people—and by “my people,” I mean marginalized communities across the world. 

But all we can do is keep working together—because if fear paralyzes us, they win. If we stop trusting each other, if we stop speaking to one another, they win. Stripping us of the belief in a future is one of the most powerful ways to control us. If we stop imagining what’s ahead, if we accept that there’s nothing to fight for, they’ve already won. We have to hold on to the future—because they can’t take it from us unless we let them. 

 

GCM: You talk in your book of going to street markets with your father as a kid early in the morning and how it felt like sort of secret knowledge. Did you get a sense early on that much of the world is transactional? How hard was it choosing what to talk about in your book? 

Ana: When you first sent me this interview, I read through your questions, preparing for the moment I could sit down and give them my full attention. At that time—a month ago—my father was still alive. As of a week ago, he is no longer here. 

I wouldn’t say the world felt transactional to me—rather, it felt like I was learning to navigate a reality outside the norm. And for that, I have my dad to thank. He was a man full of quirks and secrets, with his own unique way of doing things. 

For example, in Mexico, small corner stores—tienditas—are often family-owned, not corporate chains. It’s common to have a tab there because the owners know you; you stop by every day, and they trust you’re good for the money. You could walk in, ask for a kilo of tortillas or a soda, and they’d simply add it to your family’s tab. 

But my dad? He had a tab at Oxxo—the equivalent of having one at a 7-Eleven. That’s just the kind of person he was, lol. 

 

GCM: Your book reminded me…I went to Estonia after my father died. I read Just Kids by Patti Smith on an apartment mattress, and it made me cry and miss New York. My dad said he met her once at a party, and she was kind of snooty. I don’t know. I loved how her writing captured like glimpses into a time or place, but you can never really know it fully because it is hers. I felt a similar blessing reading your book. Like, innocence versus the raw emotion of observation (“I sat there young, with my old age costume…” powerful line). It felt like raw soul material blurring by or someone’s bone marrow in a slideshow. Also, how long did it take to choose the film stills?  

 

Ana: Thank you—that truly means a lot to me. My book was a project of love, written for my father. I’ve always written poems and short stories, so many of the pieces in it were collected over the years. But at its core, it was an ode to my childhood. 

Choosing the film stills was definitely really hard and tedious, I film a lot, and sometimes my style of filming is kind of aimless. I’ll be enamored by something around me or just something catches my eye, and I film. But that means that I have hours and hours of film that I just revisit. All of my practices are very obsessive, so I have some sort of mental catalog of everything I’ve filmed so it made it easier.  

 

GCM: Ok. When you do your insanely detailed and gorgeous ostrich egg visual art, I need to know do you get bad hand cramps? Lol.  

Ana: My hands are totally ruined, often people think I make them with a machine, like tattooing them, or burning them, but it’s just pointillism ink on the ostrich eggs. Thousands upon thousands of tiny dots, one after the other, and the process takes a serious toll on my hands. The hardest part is the glossy shell. If I accidentally touch an area I’ve already drawn, it smudges or erases completely. I’ve spent a week—or even longer—painstakingly working on one side, only to lose it in an instant because I grabbed it before sealing it with setting spray.

Please support Ana’s music, art, and writing at these links:
https://www.anaarmengod.com/
https://derodillas.bandcamp.com/album/implacable
https://www.instagram.com/humanleather/
https://fineeditions.org/store/17yearsofslumber

 

MORGAN Y. EVANS
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