We Need To Talk About Onhell

This interview isn’t a formal petition to bring more strippers to dubstep shows… but if you ask Onhell, the L.A.-based DJ known for his wild parties and raves that feature a laundry list of untraditional antics (a life-size Donald Trump piñata filled with magic mushrooms, nail salons, salsa bars, all-gender strippers, etc.), strippers and dubstep are a match made in heaven. In Onhell’s eyes, every party is better with strippers.

Onhell, whose real name is Angel Rubio-Hale, is a longstanding force in dubstep sound and culture. His music dates back to his 2013 Use EP, and he’s toured with the biggest names in dubstep — Zeds Dead, Truth, Eprom, and countless others. Recently, he’s become known for his exuberant parties, which hold no punches in creating the most chaotic, absurd atmospheres in modern-day rave culture.

Onhell is a busy man. Last year, he threw nine Onhell parties, released 2 EPs (“Juntos” with Deadbeats, and “Sandía” with 1985), and 11 total original tracks. The majority of this music, and the parties he threw, happened while he lived in his car — by choice, not by necessity.

Eventually, the weight of building multiple businesses and touring the world caused Onhell to experience some serious burnout. In response, he took an extended vacation in Hawaii, and logged offline for the entire month of January. Now he’s back, and ready to take his music and parties to the next level.

In this exclusive interview with UKF, Onhell details his Hawaiian adventures, gives insight into the fundamentals of a “hot, sexy, queer party,” making “Dubstep for Kids” and what living in a car is actually like for a touring artist.

Read on to discover what’s next for the Onhell project in 2025… including scoring a movie and throwing bigger, better parties all year long.

What are the fundamentals of a “hot, sexy, queer party”?

I’ll start by saying the Onhell parties are pretty tame compared to actual gay parties. There are no glory holes, and there’s not usually people having sex in the open. But we do bring dominatrixes to the Onhell parties, and that’s always such a blast.

I just want my parties to be as wild as possible. There needs to be cock and ass in people’s faces, because that’s really what really stirs the pot. Some of this stuff is pretty out there for the bass music world, but that’s why I love it. I’ve been in the bass music world for a long time, and it’s a very straight community. That’s why I push the limits — I want these events to be a safe space for people to experiment with their sexuality and music tastes. My goal is to create a space for straight people to feel comfortable having a gay experience if they’re curious. And I want gay people to feel comfortable dancing to dubstep all night.

Oh, and also strippers. When the strippers have a good night, everyone has a good night. That’s a good rule for life. 

A lot of the things that go on at these Onhell parties seem sacrilegious — like dominatrixes whipping people (with consent, of course) strapped to a cross. I see some other religious themes in the Onhell project. For example, the cover art for your recent Deadbeats EP, Juntos depicts an angel figure, and the name “Onhell” is the phonetic spelling of the word “angel” in Spanish. Was religion a big part of your life growing up?

No, definitely not. I grew up in Humboldt County, California. That’s the land of the hippies — very far removed from western religion. So whenever I did run into christians or Catholics growing up, I was always so interested in how they lived.  It always seemed so weird to me that these people seemed pretty normal, but at the same time they believed all this insane religious stuff.

As far as the Onhell name — “Onhell” is actually the phonetic spelling of “angel” in Spanish, which is my birth name. I’m half Mexican from my mom’s side, and “Angel” is a very common Spanish name. 

I do have some imagery across the Onhell project that relates to Santa Muerte. In Mexican culture, she’s “Saint Death,” and seen as a protector of people. I fuck with Santa Muerte because she doesn’t judge anybody. She just wants to help people.

I also fuck with the idea of death in general. Death is actually extremely common… crazy fact: 100% of people on earth die. There’s no escaping death. My relationship with death is a bit different than most Americans because I was around death for most of my life, my mom was sick most of my life, and I started taking care of her when I was 13. She was sick for about 10 years before she died, so when she did die it sort of felt like a relief, because she wasn’t suffering anymore. A lot of Mexicans have a relationship with death that’s more positive and honouring of people that die. I like that. 

Your parties also include some sillier antics, like stuffing a five-foot Donald Trump piñata with magic mushrooms and letting fans beat the shit out of it. How do you think of something like that?

When Trump was elected in 2020, we protested in the streets in Oakland. Oakland goes hard, if you didn’t know. The protest grew to the point where we were getting tear gassed. Cars were being lit on fire with molotov cocktails. At that point, I was out. A weekly party called Wormhole Wednesdays was happening that night, and someone brought a trump piñata. Everyone was going crazy beating the shit out of that thing. So when Trump got elected again last year, I knew I had to do something like that.

At one point during my set, I played YG’s  “Fuck Donald Trump” and brought the piñata out. The people went fucking crazy. It eventually fell onto the ground and people started stomping on it. But the funny part is no one knew there were mushrooms in the piñata. When the mushrooms started coming out, someone yelled “THE PIÑATA IS FULL OF MUSHROOMS!” Everybody stopped for a second, backed up, and then it was a mad dash to get the mushrooms.

I learned a valuable lesson that night: If you want to see a group of adults act like kids again, fill a piñata with drugs. It’s that simple.

I feel like most of what we’re talking about is pretty mature by design… but “Dubstep For Kids” from your recent Deadbeats EP, Juntos is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. What inspired you to make a dubstep track for toddlers?

The idea came to me when I had an epiphany that dubstep isn’t really a “new” genre anymore. Dubstep has been around long enough that there are dubstep parents now. So I thought, logically, if there are dubstep parents, that means there are dubstep kids too. So when I sent a bunch of tunes to Deadbeats, that’s one of the songs they chose. I was kind of shocked… like, really? You want the dubstep nursery rhyme? Okay, I guess I’ll make a music video too then haha.

I don’t think I’ll do something like this again though; definitely don’t expect an Onhell dubstep nursery rhyme album or anything like that… it was fun, but I’m not sure dubstep for toddlers is really my bag if I’m being honest.

You’ve laid kind of low so far in 2025, and I saw a video you posted on Instagram recently explaining that you spent January relaxing in Hawaii. In that video, you explained that you were feeling really burnt out, and definitely needed a long-overdue break from touring and music stuff. How do you feel now that you’re back in L.A.?

I feel so much better, it’s actually crazy. I think “youthful” is how I would describe my state of mind after that trip. Right before I left, I was feeling insane burnout. But I didn’t realize how fucked up I actually was until I was in Hawaii for a few weeks and finally took a deep breath.

I realized I needed a break when I started questioning my love for playing shows. Because I was planning these parties — I was supposed to do 10 parties in February — and I found myself dodging anything that had to do with those parties. I just wouldn’t respond to emails and I was like ‘Why am I not responding to these people? Do I just not want to do this music stuff anymore?’ My whole life, all I’ve ever wanted is to do this music shit, so I couldn’t understand what was happening. All my friends told me I needed to take a break but I wouldn’t listen. Plus, there’s all these super ‘motivational’ guys on the internet that are like “Are you tired? Too bad. Work harder. Don’t be a bitch.” That definitely didn’t help.

I also come from an immigrant family, so theres a certain feeling of necessity to succeed deep within me. Like, I literally feel it in my stomach. It’s a feeling that if I stop doing the music thing, everything will fall apart and I’ll be a failure. But that fear is so intense sometimes that I just want to escape it. I think that’s why I scroll so much on my phone… but that’s something I’m trying to work on.

Can you walk me through how you spent most of your time in Hawaii? What did a normal day look like? Were you hiking and surfing, or were you mostly sitting on the porch drinking coffee?

All of the above — depended on the day. I was making a lot of banana bread, so I’d go check out the banana trees on the property every morning. I’d cut down all the ripe bananas before the chickens got to them (those bastards). There was a lot of problem solving too. One week a wind storm blew off part of the roof so I had to do some handy work and strap a tarp down while it was pouring rain.

I was also hanging with the hippie community… well, not exactly a hippie community, but a community of positive spiritual people. I volunteered at this one spot called White Paw too. We’d just clean the poi and taro patches. 

That sounds very wholesome!

Oh ya, very wholesome. I’m a wholesome dude. People hit me up all the time like “Yo I wanna party with you!” and I’m like… I’m just the little guy who wants to throw the parties for everyone else, you know?

You were living in your car when you were throwing a lot of these parties last year, right? How the hell did you manage that?

Yeah, I through multiple parties while I was living in my car. Granted, I wasn’t actually living in my car the whole time. I would camp in National on the outskirts of Los Angeles National Forest, and I was crashing on friends couches from time to time… but I hate feeling like a mooch, so I wouldn’t stay at anyone’s house for long. 

Honestly, the first couple months I lived in my car, I loved it. And if I was just some kid who was traveling around with no responsibilities, I think it would have been more sustainable. But instead I’m building all these businesses, flying out of LAX every weekend, trying to throw these crazy parties… it was too much.

What was it like building multiple businesses while you’re living in a car? Like, how did you do work?

When you’re living like that, everything is very minimal — including how you work. It’s just you, your laptop, and a coffee shop. You really don’t need anything more than that at the end of the day, even if it’s not necessarily ideal for work. But it’s just like anything else — you think of ideas, and you execute them.

Plus, I was saving hella money. My rent before I lived in my car was $2,400 a month. So after two months of not paying rent, I saved $5,000. I spent that money on a nice camera to film content for my businesses, which was a great investment. Building a business is mostly about actually following through with good ideas.

I will say, living in my car did affect my creativity in a pretty negative way, because I didn’t really have a space to make music. Sometimes I would go to a park or go to a friends house to make music, but even then it usually wasn’t a proper studio. Eventually, I bought a small portable speaker and keyboard, which I set up on a table outside of my car and ran power through my prius with an extension chord. That really helped. It wasn’t all bad; I camped on a beautiful lake in Big Bear for a week and made a bunch of cool music at one point. That was sick.

Music isn’t your only business though — don’t you make salsa?

Yeah I do!

How did you get into that? Have you been cooking your whole life?

Yeah, since I was 12. My mom had a lung disease, and when your lungs don’t work right, that affects everything. It affects your ability to talk, to move your arms, everything. She couldn’t really cook when she got sick, so I started cooking for us. My mom taught me how to cook… but she was a terrible cook. Not because she didn’t know how to cook good food, but because she was a healthy hippie kind of mom. If a recipe called for sugar, she’d use honey instead. If it called for butter, she’d use coconut oil. And don’t get me started about the buckwheat! The result was usually a sandy, non-sweet pile of flavorless food.

Then one day she told me “grandma used to fry enchiladas in oil and sauce instead of putting them in the oven. But it’s really bad for you, so don’t do that.” Of course I had to try it… and they were so fucking good. After that, I learned to cook my own way, with all the “bad” stuff. More oil. More butter. More everything! It was a snowball affect — my love for cooking grew from there. 

Is there a correlation that you draw between the creative process and cooking and making music?

Absolutely. Let’s use salsa as an example. Salsa is a relatively simple thing to make. We can break the flavor pallet into four sections: sweet, salty, spice, and acidity. And you can change how much of those flavors stand out by changing the type of ingredients you use. For example, a red tomato is a bit sweeter than a green tomato, so using a red tomato makes the salsa sweeter. But then you need to balance that, so you add some more salt, and maybe some peppers to make it spicy.

It’s the same thing with music. If there isn’t enough space for the melodies to shine through, you might need to make your bass quieter. But then you also want your drums to punch through, so you might use this little trick called “side compression.” At the end of the day, cooking and making music are both about balance. Once you have the core formula down, you can really play with it.

With all of these things in the pot (pun intended), what are you most excited for in 2025? And what can fans expect from the Onhell project this year?

I want to do more collabs with my friends, and I want to put more effort into the Onhell parties to make something really cool and exciting across the country. I was supposed to do 10 parties in February, but that was too much (and one of the reasons I got burnt out). So maybe not THAT many, but still. 

I’m also working on a movie soundtrack and hope to work on an album soon! Right now, I’m figuring out exactly how I want to move forward with everything I was planning before I went to Hawaii. I feel like I’m in a very primordial state, and things are all coming together.