Ossi, left, and Bloch have known each other since elementary school, and they both attend the University of Maryland.

“We’re definitely inspired by not quite conspiracy theories, but, like, ideas about how the universe is really structured. … Not necessarily conventional ideas, but …” Alex Bloch starts.

“… These crazy-sounding alternative theories,” Chris Ossi says, finishing the thought.

The two are clearly in sync — the University of Maryland students have known each other since their days at Thomas W. Pyle Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland. Together, they take listeners on a wordless deep-dive into the abyss. On their debut EPs, Examining Interiors and Exteriors 1 and Examining Interiors and Exteriors 2, released July 26, haunting, detached mumbles lurk below unhuman echoes.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Ossi is studying electrical engineering and Bloch is studying computer science. Some of BADTHRVW’s instruments are homemade digital noisemakers involving contact microphones on metal objects, or electronics that have been modified. An Akai MPX16 sampler and a MicroKorg synthesizer round out the kit.

They call their sounds “audio graffiti.”

“It’s kind of like a sound installation. Except, you know, nobody commissioned it,” Ossi says. It’s “drone-y, atmospheric stuff that’s [meant] to create a kind of sensation or atmosphere.”

The lack of lyrics in any of the recordings — most of which are more than 20 minutes in length — contributes to an overall sense of detachment from the physical world. It’s both ethereal and ominous.

The music “does make you a little uncomfortable, it makes you a little on edge,” Ossi says. “It takes you out of a place where you feel very comfortable and familiar and puts you somewhere else.”

But don’t go to their live performances expecting a straight performance of their recordings. Their shows rarely follow a set pattern and are tailored to the vibe of the venue.

“It’s heavily improvised,” Bloch says.

And like the expanding universe that we all inhabit, BADTHRVW’s catalog will continue to grow: Bloch and Ossi say they’re working on another EP.

BADTHRVW plays Aug. 5 at The Dump in Bethesda.

That’s basically what Heavy Metal Parking Lot is. It’s essentially a movie — if you want to call a plotless 16 minutes and 41 seconds a movie — of drunk teenagers making asses of themselves in a parking lot.

But Heavy Metal Parking Lot has the distinct privilege of being a featured exhibit at the University of Maryland for the next year. Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The 30-Year Journey of a Cult Film Sensation aims to tell the story of how a low-profile 1986 video wound up all over the country — at a time when it wasn’t so easy.

Here’s the short version: Jeff Krulik was working for public-access television in Maryland and had access to recording equipment. His friend John Heyn had the idea to go to the parking lot outside a Judas Priest concert and just see what they could come up with. The two aspiring documentary filmmakers recorded about 65 minutes of footage on the afternoon of May 31, 1986, outside the Capital Centre in Landover.

(James Doubek/WAMU)

Heyn edited it down to the most entertaining encounters — almost all of which involve young people in various degrees of intoxication. And because Heyn had a job at a video dubhouse, they “gave out copies out like water,” Krulik says.

In the early ’90s, some of those copies make their way through friends out to the West Coast, and to places like Mondo Video A-Go-Go, a cult video store in Los Angeles. Dubs got into the hands of people like director Sofia Coppola, who wanted to use it in a TV show, and onto tour buses of bands like Nirvana.

It was protoviral video.

“The story we wanted to tell was kind of twofold,” says Laura Schnitker, the acting curator of the University of Maryland’s Mass Media & Culture collection, who is co-curating the exhibit with Krulik. “First we wanted to tell how the film was created, like what equipment they used and what their initial thinking was. And then we want to talk about how the film went viral at a time when there was no internet and no digital film.”

The exploration of this dissemination is one of the reasons the university agreed to host the exhibit.

Additionally, Schnitker says she was able to “sell” her colleagues on the exhibit because it’s very Maryland-focused. Krulik is a University of Maryland grad (’83) and a lifelong state resident. Schnitker notes the Maryland accents of the people in the movie and its documentation of a “really identifiable subgenre” — working-class white Marylanders, with distinct hair and clothes.

Co-curator Laura Schnitker notes the Maryland accents of the people in the movie and its documentation of a “really identifiable subgenre” — working-class white Marylanders, with distinct hair and clothes.

Krulik donated his archive of source material and video to the university’s Mass Media & Culture collection last year. He pitched the idea of the exhibit in anticipation of the movie’s 30th anniversary, and also as another way to celebrate the donation.

The exhibit is nestled in a small corridor between the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s main building and the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. The floor is gray with yellow stripes, in tribute to the parking lot.

You can see the whole thing in about the time it takes to watch the movie. VHS tapes of Judas Priest and Dokken (the other band that played that night) are on display. One wall contains screenshots of the movie’s “stars” and their notable quotes, including such words of wisdom as:

“Priest is bad, man. Priest is Number One in heavy metal, man.”

“Joints across America.”

“I’d jump his bones!”

“Who are you here to see tonight?” “Your mother!”

Krulik especially wanted to “pay homage” to the Cap Centre, Schnitker says, noting its importance to people who grew up in Maryland in the ’80s and ’90s. The exhibit features a brief history of the venue, along with asphalt taken shortly before its demolition in 2002.

Visitors can see a handwritten postcard from John Waters, sent to John Heyn in 1987. “Your film was great — what monsters!” Waters writes. In what must be truly a feat of accomplishment for Heyn and Krulik, the director of Pink Flamingos writes that Heavy Metal Parking Lot “gave me the creeps.”

In what must be truly a feat of accomplishment for Heyn and Krulik, director John Waters writes that Heavy Metal Parking Lot “gave me the creeps.”

That postcard is one of Schnitker’s favorite items, along with a ticket stub from the concert. It harks back to the days when people saved Ticketmaster stubs as mementos. Scannable codes on smartphone screens these days just don’t have the same charm.

There’s also a wall filled with pictures of magazines from the ’90s and 2000s that mentioned the movie. Request magazine in August 1999 referred to “a Wild Kingdom-style study of haystack-haired headbangers like ‘Zebraman,’ drug-legalization champion Gram, and other Jack Daniels-swilling Beavises and Butt-heads in their natural environment.”

Even though it’s a Maryland story, something like Heavy Metal Parking Lot probably could have happened at any Judas Priest concert on that tour.

What makes it unique is that events weren’t “documented to death like things are today,” Krulik says. “It was a real novelty to be in that kind of environment, that place with professional video equipment.”

The exhibit will be up through May 2017, after which it will be put back with the rest of Krulik’s collection in the university’s Hornbake Library. Schnitker and others are creating a digital version to put online.

On a summer day with the semester over, not many students passed by the day I saw the exhibit. But Krulik is hopeful students will take a second to be inspired when they do walk through. Perhaps from some words on the wall: “Heavy metal rules!”

(James Doubek/WAMU)

“Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The 30-Year Journey of a Cult Film Sensation” is on view at the Gallery at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library through May 2017.

Raupp is a 27-year-old Maryland native who works as a certified arborist, having earned his degree in environmental science and policy from the University of Maryland. Both his parents have strong pedigrees in science: His mother is a science teacher and his father is renowned entomologist Michael J. Raupp, also known as “The Bug Guy.”

But Brian Raupp’s main passion in life is hip-hop. He’s a rapper who’s made the rounds at music festivals like Artscape, Epic Fest and Broccoli City, performing under the name Brain Rapp. Meanwhile, his dad makes his own rounds on CNN, PBS, The Dr. Oz Show and WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, discussing the world of insects.

Raupp says he’s inspired by his dad, as different as their ambitions may be.

“He tells me all the time, ‘When I started doing this, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine I’d be on Good Morning America or talking to Kojo about bugs.’ You don’t get into entomology to be that,” Raupp says of his father. “The parallel between the two of us and our careers now… is that I didn’t ever get into rap to be famous. … I just never thought that anybody would really want to listen to me.”

In the four years since Raupp began performing, he’s made significant headway: He’s released three full-length projects, played regional venues and gigged at the A3C Festival, a major hip-hop gathering in Atlanta. True to his background in science, Raupp’s approach to marketing himself is methodical: He realized the value of moderation early on, and now he mainly plays shows that put him in front of new eyes. (He also knows how to make a clever promotional video.)

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Both of Raupp’s parents are supportive. Though, the elder Raupp admits that his son’s foray into rap gave him pause at first.

“Like any parent, I thought, ‘Whoa, after all this time and education, what’s up with this?’” Michael Raupp says. “I was a little concerned about the real odds that this choice could turn into a career that would allow him to pay the rent, put food on that table, and maybe have a family of his own if that is what he wanted to do,” Michael Raupp says. “But I also told him that if he had a dream, then he had to chase it.”

For Raupp, working up the courage to pursue hip-hop took time. He started writing raps at 13, but it wasn’t until he got involved with a hip-hop group at the University of Maryland called The Undergrounduates that he gained the confidence to start recording at 19.

An obvious student of hip-hop, Raupp writes cleverly candid and personal lyrics, each song exposing portions of his autobiography as he pays homage to the artists that inspired him.

On “Hello,” the opening track on his latest project Elevator Music, Raupp addresses the obvious head-on: “Hello, I’m Brain, I rap, I’m white.” It’s not a topic he shies away from, welcoming the opportunity to speak on both race and rap.

“I think it’s humbling,” Raupp says. “People lose their lives over this and I just get to feel uncomfortable because I’m the only white guy in a room — and I don’t feel uncomfortable, actually. The main thing is to always be adding to a narrative instead of trying to drive it, since that’s what white people have always done.”

Raupp attributes at least part of his racial awareness to his upbringing in Columbia, Maryland, a town created with the explicit goal of eliminating class and racial segregation. (It was here that he also met Elevator Music producer Nature Boi.)

Ultimately, Raupp hopes to build a bridge between science and hip-hop, too.

“There’s a social responsibility [that comes with] with being an artist,” Raupp says. “That’s the way I see my part.” He says his audience might not be listening to his dad on the radio or TV, so he’s happy to be the rapper who finds unique ways to talk about science. “It might not be on a record that I get to talk about the environment,” Raupp says, “but I’m going to do it.”

In a way, Raupp is still following his father’s lead.

“He had to go for it,” Michael Raupp says of his son’s hip-hop journey. “I chase my dreams and don’t have regrets.”

But among those few are the staff members of WMUC, University of Maryland’s student-run freeform radio station. On Feb. 2, the station commemorated its love of the hit song with an official “All Star” Day, during which the station broadcast the California band’s ode to self-confidence — plus covers and alternate versions — for 24 straight hours.

“All Star Day” artwork by Leah Schleifer

WMUC DJ Dan Singer claims responsibility for the idea.

“‘All Star’ Day loosely has its roots in a WMUC inside joke, known by some as ‘Shrekwave,'” Singer writes in an email. “We would play ‘All Star,’ ‘Accidentally in Love‘ and other classics from the Shrek movies at radio station parties and drunkenly sing along to them.”

But Singer insists his appreciation for Smash Mouth is sincere. “‘All Star’ was one of my favorite songs as a kid,” he writes. “By the time I got a Walkman, my favorite band was Smash Mouth, and my CD collection initially consisted of mixes of Smash Mouth songs I downloaded off of Morpheus.”

WMUC DJs worked hard to prevent the monotony of an all-day “All Star” rock block. “Some DJs turned to YouTube and elsewhere for Mario Paint covers, live versions and other eccentric renditions,” Singer writes. “I played an Alvin and the Chipmunks pitch-shifted version of ‘All Star’ several times in a row to cope with the madness.”

The station also requested and received a dozen “All Star” covers for the big event. Locals including Aphids, Knuckleberry Finn and Singer’s comedy group Football Is A Sport submitted takes that ranged from the heartfelt to the absurd. WMUC played the covers throughout the day, and put them up for download on Bandcamp.

Biggest of all, though, the station got Smash Mouth on board. Bassist Paul DeLisle gave a 30-minute on-air interview (hear it below) and the band recorded WMUC radio drops.

Singer calls “All Star” Day a “major success,” but he concedes it posed a challenge for the station’s staff.

“I probably listened to ‘All Star’ hundreds of times that day,” Singer writes, “and by the time I began my DJ block at 4 p.m., I felt like I was in some sort of druggy trance where the years started coming and they didn’t stop coming.”

Singer can’t be sure everyone who tuned in loved what they heard, either.

“Like me, I’m sure many listeners and station members needed an ‘All Star’ detox once Tuesday came around,” he writes.