2 IN THE CHEST
To Honor God and Rock the Nations.
The Trail Begins
The roots of 2 IN THE CHEST reach back to 2005, when the first pieces of the band began taking shape in Arizona. Velvet De Blonko joined in 2007, and over the next several years the music, characters, visual identity, and storytelling concept continued to evolve. By 2010 the band had fully committed to the world that would define it: heavy music wrapped around stories, legends, danger, faith, violence, redemption, and the hard edge of the American frontier.
2 IN THE CHEST was never meant to be a group of musicians standing under stage lights and simply playing songs. The intention was to make the audience feel as though the doors of an old frontier saloon had swung open and something dangerous had ridden into town. The songs pull from the 1800s, mixing historical inspiration with original storytelling, while the stage presentation carries those stories into a dark western world of skull masks, period characters, iron, leather, smoke, and outlaw imagery.
That combination eventually became the band's own description for what it does: Outlaw Southern Metal. It is heavy music with groove, grit, western storytelling and a theatrical identity that belongs to 2 IN THE CHEST alone.
The Family Behind the Band
The current 2 IN THE CHEST lineup is more than a band. It is a family sharing the same stage. Reverend Black Jack McBride handles guitar and vocals, his daughter Mary Ella O'Sullivan carries the bass, and his wife Velvet De Blonko drives the band from behind the drums. That makes the current incarnation of 2 IN THE CHEST a rare multi-generational family band, connected not only by music but by blood, marriage, history, faith, and years spent building the same vision together.
Reverend Black Jack McBride
The voice, guitarist, storyteller and driving force behind the 2 IN THE CHEST concept, carrying the songs through a world of frontier history, outlaw characters and Christian conviction.
Mary Ella O'Sullivan
The next generation of the band, locking the low end to the drums while bringing one of the current stage show's most distinctive characters to life.
Velvet De Blonko
A part of the story since 2007, Velvet supplies the power and backbone underneath the band's heavy western sound and remains one of its longest-running constants.
Reverend Black Jack McBride
Reverend Black Jack McBride stands at the front of 2 IN THE CHEST on guitar and vocals, but the role reaches far beyond being the band's frontman. The music, stage world, characters and historical storytelling grew from a desire to create something that could not be confused with another metal band. Rather than separating the songs from their stories, he built the band so the two would become inseparable, with the Old West serving as both setting and language for everything from violence and consequence to faith, mortality, redemption and the choices men make when there is nowhere left to hide.
His work in Arizona music has also extended beyond his own band. From 2010 through 2018 he hosted the Dust Bowl Metal Show, promoting Arizona rock, hard rock, punk and metal through interviews, event promotion, artist spotlights and community outreach. That same desire to preserve and promote Arizona music later grew into The Death of Local Music and The Arizona Music History Archive, projects devoted to documenting the people, bands, venues and stories that might otherwise disappear.
Mary Ella O'Sullivan
Mary Ella O'Sullivan is far more than the bass player standing beside her father. She represents the next generation of 2 IN THE CHEST and one of the things that makes the band genuinely different. With her father, Reverend Black Jack McBride, on guitar and vocals and her mother, Velvet De Blonko, behind the drums, Mary Ella completes a rare family lineup in which three members of the same family share the stage, the songs, the miles, the work, and the mission. That connection gives the band a chemistry that cannot be hired or manufactured, and Mary Ella's presence has helped turn 2 IN THE CHEST from a long-running musical project into something that can actually be carried forward from one generation to the next.
On bass, Mary Ella provides the low-end weight underneath the guitars and locks tightly with Velvet's drums to help create the heavy groove at the center of the band's Outlaw Southern Metal sound. Visually, she has also developed one of the most distinctive characters in the current 2 IN THE CHEST presentation. Mary Ella appears as an 1800s-era nurse, wearing a period-inspired nurse's outfit, an apron marked with a red cross over the breast area, a nurse's hat from the period, and the skull mask that ties the band's characters together. The result is not simply another musician dressed for a metal show, but a character who looks as though she belongs inside the same dark frontier world as the songs themselves. Beneath the costume and theatrical imagery, however, remains something even more important: she is a daughter standing onstage beside both of her parents, helping carry forward a band that has survived changing lineups, changing times, and years of Arizona music history. Mary Ella is not simply part of the current chapter of 2 IN THE CHEST, she is part of what gives the story a future.
Velvet De Blonko
Velvet De Blonko has been part of 2 IN THE CHEST since 2007, making her one of the longest-running pieces of the band's story. Behind the drums, she provides the force that holds the heavier side of the music together, giving the guitars and bass a foundation built on weight, movement and groove rather than speed for speed's sake.
Onstage, Velvet appears behind the kit in a skull mask and dark stage clothing, without a hat, giving her a stark visual identity that fits the band's frontier world while remaining distinctly her own. As the wife of Reverend Black Jack McBride and mother of Mary Ella O'Sullivan, she also completes the family core that now defines the band. Years of rehearsals, shows, changes and setbacks have made her more than the drummer in the lineup; she is part of the foundation that allowed 2 IN THE CHEST to keep moving forward.
Those Who Rode the Trail
The current lineup is only one chapter of a much longer story. Over the years, other musicians stood beneath the 2 IN THE CHEST name and helped shape what the band became. Their place in that history matters.
Kimby the Mason McDaniels — Rhythm Guitar / Backing Vocals
A longtime rhythm guitarist, trusted friend and brother in music, Kimby was part of the band through an important stretch of its development. Although he is no longer part of the current lineup, his contribution belongs in the history of 2 IN THE CHEST and will not be erased simply because the lineup changed.
Jameson Jack Coburn — Lead Guitar
Jameson was part of the five-piece era of 2 IN THE CHEST and brought lead guitar into that chapter of the band. A lifelong friend and musical brother, his playing and presence helped shape the band's sound and journey during the years he rode with it.
Four Records. One Long Trail.
The recorded history of 2 IN THE CHEST now stretches across four albums, each representing a different point in the band's evolution while remaining tied to the same frontier storytelling and heavy musical identity.
Songs such as “Mama Cried” and “Davy Crockett” are part of a larger body of work in which the story behind the song matters as much as the riff itself. The band continues writing and developing new material while carrying the four-record catalog forward.
Christ Is King
The skulls, gunsmoke, frontier characters and heavy music are part of the world of 2 IN THE CHEST, but they are not the foundation beneath it. The foundation is faith in Jesus Christ. The band does not hide that conviction, and its mission is simple: use the gifts it has been given, tell the stories it believes are worth telling, and honor God while doing it.
The Fourth Rider
Beyond the Band
The story of 2 IN THE CHEST is connected to a larger effort to preserve Arizona music history. Through The Death of Local Music book series and The Arizona Music History Archive, Richard N. Ornelas / Reverend Black Jack McBride has been documenting the bands, musicians, promoters, venues and stories that built generations of Arizona music.
The website is the doorway. The books hold the complete story.
Visit the Arizona Music History Archive Get Volume IThe Trail Is Still Open
2 IN THE CHEST has survived different lineups, different eras of the Arizona scene, changing technology, changing stages and the kind of years that can bury a band if the people inside it stop believing in what they are doing. The band is still here, still writing, still building, and still carrying the same idea forward: take the stories of another century, drag them through heavy amplifiers, give them flesh and character onstage, and make the audience feel like they have stepped into a world that belongs to nobody else.
To Honor God and Rock the Nations.
