8 Things You Should Know About Already Late

When a rock band features a frontman that’s wearing goat horns, and can easily switch from singing in English to Japanese, you tend to take notice.

This was the case at Arlene’s Grocery last month when Already Late hit the stage.

The NYC-based trio, which consists of (photo L to R) Eben “Hakase” Eleazer (bass, production), Johnnie Noct (vocals, guitar, wearer of horns), and B (drums), has a dynamic live show, and a sound that’s diverse, yet familiar, thanks to their weaving together of a plethora of genres of music.

With one full length album, Little Kid Dreams, and one EP, Overdue, already under their belt, 2025 has the potential to be a huge year for the band.

I caught up with trio after their show at Arlene’s, and discovered the following eight things you should know about them.

 

Already Late’s origin story spans three continents

Johnnie Noct and B were both theater majors at Penn State, and met in an acting class … but that’s not when the band started. Johnnie Noct remembers, “We would always talk about making a band in-between the plays, and movies, like, yo, we should do music and stuff, but it didn’t really happen.”

B then studied abroad in London, while Johnnie Noct studied abroad in Japan. It was in Japan where he met Eben, and they started making music together.

Once back in the states, Johnnie Noct and Eben booked a show at the NYC indie music venue Pianos. After checking out the place, Johnnie Noct immediately gave B a call. “I saw it had a drum set, and amps, and I was like, yo, B, be my drummer.”

B said yes, the trio gelled immediately, and decided to become a band.

Originally named The Late Bloomers, Johnnie Noct notes, “We quickly ended up changing our name a few shows later, because there were like 50 other bands named The Late Bloomers, or some variation of it.”

Just like like, Already Late was born. All it took were trips to London, and Japan, a booking in NYC, and one name change.

Their style of music is all genres … and no genre 

Already Late’s music cannot be confined to any one genre, or even any three or four genres, and that’s just the way they like it.

“I’ve always been interested in every genre,” Johnnie Noct explains, “I think it just comes down to … people put up these walls, and they have these lines that divide music genres, and I kind of don’t see the lines … at the end of the day, music is just what people feel, and what they’re expressing.”

Eben adds, “I don’t think we’ve ever said, ‘This is one thing too many.’ We’ve said, ‘Let’s move this to a different part,’ or, at most, ‘Let’s do this in a different song,’ but I don't think we’ve ever thrown out an idea. We’ll come back to it at some point.”

Their latest single is about the death of the millennial dream 

Already Late released a new single last month titled “Castles N Crumbs,” and for the band, who are all millennials, it represents an awakening.

Johnnie Noct explains, “I feel like we were fed … I mean, I don’t want to speak for other generations, but I feel like we were fed promises, and told that if we did this, if we did that, things would be great … and I feel lied to. So that song pretty much came from the discontentment that I have.”

He continued, adding, “Our first album, Little Kid Dreams, is like all our hopes, and aspirations put into a nice musical jukebox. This next phase is kind of us waking up from that dream, and getting punched in the face by reality.”

The band has played everywhere from NYC to Japan 

Being that all three members of Already Late have lived overseas, it should come as no surprise that the band has been getting their passports stamped as performers.

B notes, “One of Johnnie Noct’s goals when we started out was to play a show in Japan, and he actually made it happen.”

The band found the differences in the indie scenes in New York City, and Japan fascinating.

The scene in Japan, Johnnie Noct says, is “much more organized,” and wonderfully old school. “They keep a lot of traditional things where it’s like, they still buy CDs. You can still hand out flyers, and people will actually show up to things.”

Eben adds that musically there are notable differences in the scenes, saying, “If I had to put them into like words, I would say the Japanese scene is more about traditional musicianship, like just be really good, and then the New York scene is more about be really weird.”

You’ll see a pair of non-musical horns on stage at their show 

As noted earlier, it is impossible not to notice the curled horns on Johnnie Noct’s head during Already Late shows (and in many of their photos). According to Johnnie Noct, it all started with the music video for their song “Loser.”

“We started making storyboards for the ‘Loser’ music video, and I was trying to come up with these characters. I’ve also been writing a book for a while, and it’s like a coming of age dark fantasy, so there’s a bunch of weird types of creatures. One of the types of creatures has these horns. I drew what they would look like, and I was like alright, I got to find these horns.”

It didn’t take long to find a pair, and while they ended up in the video, as planned, they turned out to be something bigger than a one time prop.

“The horns basically represent a rebellion,” he says, adding they “bring in this fantasy element that is very important to me, and I think it’s a great aesthetic to add to the world.”

They founded their own music festival named LoserCon 

“Loser” became more than just a song, and video for Already Late, it became an entire music festival they call LoserCon.

“We’ve had it two years now,” B explains, “Our first one was three days. We invite four bands per day, and just have a plethora of music about how it really feels to be a loser, and reimagining what that definition can be, and being in love with all the parts that society tells you not to (be in love with).”

Completely flipping the definition of loser, and letting loose at the same time, LoserCon is an event where people can feel good about themselves, and find their proverbial tribe.

Niguel is fluent in Japanese 

Midway through Already Late’s set at Arlene’s Grocery the band broke into a song that was completely in Japanese. The musical vibe was as if the credits had started rolling at the end of an anime film.

The song isn’t a one-off gimmick. Johnnie Noct is fluent in Japanese.

“Before I went to Japan,” he explains, “I was really nervous about speaking Japanese, but when I got there, and had to speak it every day for a whole summer, that’s kind of where it pushed me over the edge, and when I became comfortable speaking, and more fluent. Then I just kept with it after we graduated. I kept going back there on vacation, or to visit friends that I made, and I just stuck with it.”

He adds that being married to a Japanese woman, and having a plethora of Japanese speaking friends, “It’s a part of my life, and I get to be exposed to it at every turn.”

Johnnie Noct also has an impressive collection of manga that fills at least one bookshelf in his home.

In 2025 the band plans on living the single life, musically speaking 

“Castles N Crumbs” was the first single release of the year for Already Late, and while they’ve released an LP, and an EP in the past, they’re going to continue down the path of releasing singles for at least the rest of 2025.

Eben explains, “Because the album was like a concept … it kind of all had to fit, but with singles you can just do one concept, and just like cram it all into three minutes, which is pretty sick.”

In other words, if something’s going on in their lives, or in the world, that they want to address, listeners can expect to hear about it sooner, rather than later.

 

For more Already Late, check out their linktree.