Origami Angel are one of those bands that immediately put a smile on your face. With 2024’s Feeling Not Found , the duo’s penchant for catchy hooks and sing-along choruses is perfectly honed into 40 minutes of pure fun. That’s not to say they don’t have a little bit of bite though. Live shows still mean your head needs to be on a swivel or else you’ll end up covered in some sort of beverage. But, even still, you’ll be having the time of your life. Drummer Pat Doherty chatted with us about Feeling Not Found , their fan base’s joint love of Pokémon , and how he wishes he had more people to talk about Dragon Ball with. How has the reception been to playing the songs from your new record, Feeling Not Found , live? It was definitely one of my favorites of 2024 and it looks like the recent tour has been great. Pat Doherty : The tour that we did for the album was really sick. It's really cool to go to the places that we play over and over again throughout the years, where of course everyone knows “Summer City” and people are singing along to that and everything. But it's really special when you release a record that's only, I think at the time, only a couple weeks old, and playing these shows and seeing these people already know the lyrics. It's just like, wow, people still really care. And it's awesome. I can also speak for Ryland on this, it's our favorite release thus far. So it's great to see that it's getting such a warm welcome and reception from our fans. Where did it all start for you with anime? Doherty : I'm a massive Dragon Ball fan. I've watched Naruto . More recently, I watched Heavenly Delusion . Of course, I’ve also watched Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and a little bit of Death Note . So I wouldn’t say that I watch as many shows as everyone else, but the ones I do like, I get really into. I'm going to be real. I was kind of getting bored of Death Note . So I stopped at Episode 13 or 14. Once they switched up the detectives I was like nah I’m out. RELATED: Periphery's Misha Mansoor on His Love of Yakitate!! Japan and The Prince of Tennis How did you find Dragon Ball ? Doherty : I was watching the OG Dragon Ball back when I was a kid. Not Z , but the original. It was a really fun story, with Goku being silly and the sense of adventure it had. Then, like I watched Dragon Ball Z as a kid. It goes from like this story of adventure, like going to chase after the Dragon Balls and all that with some martial arts here and there to this wild scale with the characters blowing up planets. It's just so ferocious. So you watch that as a young kid, and it's like, wow, this is so sick. It’s awesome to see throughout my life, as you grow older, Dragon Ball is something that sticks with you. I've made so many friendships just based off of talking Dragon Ball and all that. We went on tour with this band called Pink Shift, and the first day, we all met up, and I knew the drummer was a giant Dragon Ball fan, so we just started chopping it up for hours on hours. It's like dude this is so sick. I haven't met someone that loves this series as much as me in a minute. It's such an amazing show along with, like all of the other spinoffs and everything too. Did you play the video games as well? Doherty : I played a few of them. I was never really good at them because when I was playing those games, I was a little kid. So instead of actually knowing the combos, I was button mashing. What about Dragon Ball really stuck with you? Doherty : I think the characters are just very well written. I mean, you have this hero in Goku who's not exactly a perfect main character. He's clumsy. He has his moments, and everything he's not Superman, where he's supposed to like to be picture perfect. That's relatable. Then you have other great characters. One of my favorite characters is Krillin, even though I think at this point he's kind of a gag character, but it's awesome to see this dude who is in stature, who knows he’s not the strongest going up against enemies that are much more powerful than him. But he is still giving his all. In fact, you can get great life lessons from this. Even though you know you're up against a challenge that's probably over your head, you still give your all, and who knows, you might come out on top. Absolutely. He keeps trying, no matter what you got to respect that. Doherty : Exactly. All the respect to him. RELATED: LANDMVRKS' Florent Salfati: Anime and Manga are a Big Part of Who I Am Do you bring that energy to the drums? Is that something you're trying to recreate? Like, can I hit this as hard as Goku is hitting Jiren? Doherty : Actually, sometimes. Yeah, especially on the Feeling Not Found Tour. We had a driver who was also a massive Dragon Ball fan. I'm an early riser, so everyone will be asleep in the bandwagon. I'll get up early, and of course we're still driving to the next gig early in the morning. I'll sit up front with him, and just start chatting Dragon Ball . And right before I get on the kit that night I'll think about my conversation with him. It's like, you know what I'm gonna go all out. I'm gonna go absolute Vegeta on this kit if I can that night, if my body's willing to let me do that. That's awesome. I love that. Did you watch the movies as well? Since those had a lot of heavier music in the soundtrack, I'm curious if you saw them and if they led to any sort of awakening for you. Doherty : I didn't watch the movies ‘til later. I remember watching Cooler’s Revenge where they had Deftones in there, and all that. And I think it was on the Android 13 film, where they had more nu metal and all that. I think those soundtracks are the perfect vibe for those movies. Of course, I love all the scores of traditional anime. With the movies themselves though, when they went with like a little bit of a heavy approach, it just really fit the vibe. I vividly remember seeing the scene where Goku is beaten down by Cooler, and then he starts going Super Saiyan, and next thing you know “Change (In the House of Flies)” by Deftones starts playing and I got goosebumps. It was like, it's about to go down. So it sounds like you were probably a big AMV guy too. Doherty : Except instead of it being Dragon Ball , it was a lot of Naruto . I did have a big Naruto phase at one point, too, so it was like the classic Naruto versus Sasuke, in that big body of water. Of course it was usually something like Linkin Park’s “In the End.” It was sick. My thing with Naruto , and I might get crucified with this one, is that I think the villains and the side characters of the series are way better than the main three characters. Kakashi is my favorite character. Everyone in the Akatsuki clan is super cool and have these cool powers. Then you’ve got Might Guy, who doesn't rely on like all the ninjutsu, or like big chakras reserves, but he just fights with his fists. He knows he’s not as talented as everyone but he’s going to work hard to get up to that level. Were you watching these at the same time as you were getting into music? Doherty : It was kind of something on the side. I never really intertwined the two until this past tour. I sit down at the kit, and it's like, I'm feeling like Vegeta or Goku in this moment, let's go hard. But it was its own separate thing where I do this thing, and I'm pretty sure everyone does, where they get deep into one particular thing. For me, it was OG Dragon Ball , at one point it was Naruto , and I lost myself in it. I became obsessed about it. I wanted to know about the characters. I want to know about all the power systems. But that never really coincided with music. RELATED: I Prevail on the Dragon Ball Energy in Their Music Why do you think there is that crossover between anime fans and the type of music that you play? Even Arm's Length, who you recently toured with, are anime fans. It seems to always be around the scene. Doherty : That's a good question. It's always interesting to find out what links a certain demographic group of people with a certain type of music, or like franchise, and all that. I know so many different types of people that love anime. For example, when I was 18, through 22, trying to make a little bit of money in college, I worked a front desk at a gym. And this is like a gym where people took weightlifting seriously. And all of those serious weightlifters loved Dragon Ball . They love Naruto and all that. They kind of like the same music, funnily enough. I think it might go back to what we were discussing earlier. People are learning so much from these shows that they end up having a longer affinity for them. Have you noticed any portion of the Gami Gang being anime fans? Doherty : In our fan base, we’ve got the Pokémon thing going on. We have songs written about Pokémon and all that. A lot of our fans are, you know, massive like to some degree like Pokémon fans. One of my favorite things is for a lot of shows, people will meet us, and they'll be like, “Hey, we brought you some cards.” That's honestly always the highlight of my day. They really care about bringing these gifts to us because they know we like it. So I would say that’s the main anime our fans are really into. I think there's, I imagine there's like some that are big into Dragon Ball and Naruto , and all that. But I don't think my love for Dragon Ball is as well known as mine and Ryland's love for Pokémon . Well hopefully this will get more people to come up to you and talk about it. Doherty : I don't think people realize that would legitimately make my day. Listen to Origami Angel here . Catch them on tour this Summer and Fall .
