Live: Elephant Gun @ Das Fun Haus

Every once in a while, ISU feels like a "legitimate" college town. Every time I've been to any larger university, it seems like there are constant live music performances that stray away from standard bar-band territory. Most Big Ten school campuses seem to have a real DIY sort of atmosphere among an at least measurable part of the student population, and ISU just does not have that at all. There's a tangible atmosphere of complete and total apathy surrounding campus here, and it goes way beyond the sports teams. It just seems that people can't really give a fuck about anything - Kanye West couldn't even sell out Redbird Arena (though ticket prices were somewhat to blame), and the Smashing Pumpkins show at Braden Auditorium has generated barely any buzz around town despite selling out.

Live music - at least the kind that I'm interested in experiencing - is a definite rarity here in Normal. Thankfully, some very close friends of mine as Das Fun Haus (myspace.com/dasfunhaus) are working very hard to change that. This past Friday was the second show that they've had in their basement, and from what I've heard both times have been a rousing success.

Friday night was dubbed "Alt-Country" night at the Fun Haus, which I guess is a fair enough name for what went on display. Admittedly, I wasn't too blown away by the show until Elephant Gun came on, but for the sake of fairness I will mention the other two bands as well. Bridges Burning (myspace.com/bridgesburningnow) were two local kids with acoustic guitars with the general shout-along Against Me!-ish sound that I just really can't get into at all. Some girl who was shouting along also really got on my nerves, which admittedly has nothing to do with the band themselves. Mayhew the Traitor (myspace.com/mayhewthetraitor) are a three-piece who play some dreamy, jangly folk-rock that erred on the side of jam-band one or two times. I was into it.

There was a decent-sized crowd at the house, but not many people were in the basement until Elephant Gun set up, at which point it became pretty packed. The crowd itself was a rather interesting mix - your usual art major hipster types, hardcore/metal dudes, and "normal" looking college kids - but every single person in the room was very into it. The show flier described Elephant Gun (myspace.com/elephantgunchicago) as "think Uncle Tupelo, and if that means nothing to you then think about what happens when kids that have an appreciation for Hank Williams have an equal appreciation for The Replacements," which I don't entirely agree with, but still gives a pretty good idea of the general sound. The band incorporates a rather normal 3-acoustic guitar, bass, organ, multiple singer setup - occasionally featuring trumpet, tambourine and harmonica. The whole set was an absolute blast - from what I've heard online it seems the live set has much more energy (not to say the recorded material was bad at all) . I'd describe it as indie but with a very distinct country-flavored, folk sound - foot-stomping music.

The night was great - a bunch of people crowded into a hot basement dancing and having fun to some absolutely stellar music. This shit seems pretty heartfelt and genuine, it's obvious everyone who played Friday was there because they loved what they did. I left with a smile on my face.

Turbonegro Live: Rock Ain't Dead

Just about a week ago, I made the two-hour trip back home to Chicago to see Turbonegro play at the House Of Blues.

After a desperate search for parking (fucking Cubs game), and a meet-up with some dear friends at the Gingerman ($2.50 MGD...yes please) myself and my entourage made our way next door, unfortunately missing the opening band - a Queens of the Stone Age side project that I'm a little bummed not to have seen.

I'll admit freely that I slept on Turbonegro. I tend to shy away from bands that are pimped by Bam Margera as the dude seems to have some of the most questionable taste in music on the planet...anyone that claims that H.I.M. is the "best band ever" makes me very, very suspicious. Not getting into this band, however, was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made.

For those not in the know (and discussing the show with some people, I found out this is actually a lot of people), picture if you will a band that is able to combine KISS or Alice Cooper-style riffage with the speed and attitude of pop-punk heavyweights such as the Ramones. Now make that band Norwegian, and have almost all of their songs be novelty songs in terms of lyrical content that somehow don't wear thin. Ladies and gentlemen, you now have Turbonegro.

Rock and roll, in its purest form, is pretty well-known to still be thriving in bands like Deadmoon, The Supersuckers, The Immortal Lee County Killers and the countless acts that garner massive amounts of praise from publications like Razorcake (sidenote - does that zine still exist?). But there are few bands that are able to take that sound and that attitude and turn it into what is at least reasonable mainstream success. Turbonegro have certainly done that in Europe, and do just fine for themselves in the US - though it took a little while, the crowd at the Metro was close to capacity.

Since it's been a week my memory of the track list is hazy, though I do remember a handful - the opener was the storming "Age of Pamparius," they closed with "I Got Erection," (the only song I was familiar with when I got to the show), and some other tracks they played included "We're Gonna Drop the Atom Bomb," "Hell Toupee," and "Everybody Love a Chubby Dude." My only major gripe was that the set was a little short at just under an hour and a half - for a rock band like this I guess you can't expect a marathon, but Turbonegro have a healthy enough back catalog to support a much longer set.

The best part about the show was the fact that it was just out-and-out fun. The dudes seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves, put on a great show with plenty of swagger, and the crowd was into it from the first note. I had an absolute blast and this past week have been jamming little beyond the Turbonegro I've acquired since the show.

I know I need to catch a huge late pass on this band, but all in all it was a great night. I'd catch this band again anytime.

Back From the Dead, In a Sense

It may have been two weeks but I promise that I haven't forgotten about this thing.

I'm sure all three of my readers were incredibly worried there for a bit.

I have plenty of things I still plan on writing about, but school has been getting unreal lately.

Expect a show writeup or two this weekend, as well as some other things once life slows down a bit after this Thursday.

Love,
Mac

Fall Out Boy Suddenly Do Something Worthwile

Before I start, I still love "Take This To Your Grave."

There. I said it.

Anyway, just came home from class and saw this on Idolator and thought it was worth mentioning here as well.



Here's what they had to say:
"The video follows a young love story in the Gulu Township of Norther Uganda interrupted by warfare and forced child soldiering. It's incredibly sad--like, make-you-renew-your-Amnesty-International-membership-sad--but almost surprisingly tasteful. The tone is a cut above "Aw, look at the poor Africans" Oprah territory, and far less self-righteous than a Bono outing. It's a little strange to associate the--let's be honest--frivolity of Fall Out Boy with such a weighty issue, but they stay in the background for the most part, and are seemingly pretty sincere about using their celebrity to raise awareness. Plus the song itself is damn decent."

First of all, holy shit they're right...that song is actually damn decent. Just dreamy pop without all the crossover nonsense that FOB have been immersing themselves in as of late. When the band started out, they were good at what they did - bubblegum pop-"punk," but had started to drift away from that. This is an incredible pop song and frankly I'd be into it even without the video. Might even download the record just for it.

Now onto the video. I've never really been one for "be aware" videos as they usually seem to come off either preachy or just downright shitty - see "Wake Me Up When September Ends," or "Have You Forgotten?" (as an aside, I don't even know if there's a video for that song but you'd think there has to be). This one seems to be a bit different, which is weird as when I heard that FOB were making a "socially conscious" video I got more than a little nervous.

What makes this work so well is that it's a video that just happens to be set to a FOB song. They're pretty peripheral in the whole thing, which is always a plus. Plus the song - the chorus and hook at least - play really well with the overall tone of the video, both lyrically and instrumentally. It's a lonely song, lyrically, and for most of the video a very lonely image. The airy guitars and vocal sound (probably processed, I'm sure) lend a sort of upbeat feel to it yet, and even if the video didn't end so nicey-nicey there would still be a lingering feeling of hope.

What I think inspires me the most about this whole thing, makes me feel good about it, is that Fall Out Boy are the absolute last band on Earth I'd ever really expect to make a video like this. Somehow they were able to pop out of their little candy-pop "Dear Diary" world and make this incredibly powerful video that not only shows a timely message, but (unlike "When September Ends," as mentioned before) actually gives the viewer something to do about it if they choose.

That's the clincher. It's all fine and good for you to say something about our society, or what's fucked up in the world. It's all fine and good for you to use your celebrity to shine a light on things you think need to be seen. But when it all comes down to it, you need to give the people a way that they can help.

Does this really mean a bunch of 13-year-old girls from Omaha or Salem are going to start rushing out to peace rallies? Of course not. But it makes them aware. Step one.

Review: Ministry "That Last Sucker"...What The Fuck, Al?

No cover art for this one as it's a leak.

Wow.

Wow, Ministry...just what have you done? I've listened to this record several times since I downloaded it so very excitedly the other night, and I can honestly say I haven't been this disappointed by a release in a long time.

I've been a fan of Ministry since my early childhood, having been raised on metal from an early age by my dad. I went on a dry spell from them for a while, but in the last couple years had realized just how absolutely fucking heavy and powerful they were and had gotten back into them again. I stuck mostly with Psalm 69 and The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, though Filth Pig wasn't half bad either. Last summer, I went and saw them on tour with the Revolting Cocks and it was hands down one of the greatest live shows I've ever seen. Ministry shows are a total mindfuck, both visually and aurally. My ears were ringing for three days.

The album they were on tour to support, Rio Grande Blood was not only one of the most incredible, but most surprising releases of that year. On Rio, Ministry ditched the industrial, instead going for a pure speed-metal record that absolutely killed. The album doesn't let up from start to finish, it's probably one of the best metal releases of the last year or two for me.

So...what the hell happened here then? I mean, to be blunt...this record sucks. It almost seems like they tried to go back and do an in-between speed metal and industrial record and just ended up with this bland nu-metal flavored crap instead. The riffs are weaker, the production sounds a lot less full than it did on Rio..., and the lyrics are much weaker as well. I'm hoping the bad sound can be explained by the fact that I downloaded a leak, but I really don't see it changing that much in the next two weeks.

There is one song that actually jumped out at me as any good on the whole record, and that is "The Dick Song," a tirade against our fair Vice President, that was not only a welcome piece of musical power, but a return the the clever and biting sampling and lyrical style of Rio....

I'm not as good at writing bad reviews as I am at good ones, but I can say this: this is a weak record. Weak all around. Songwriting, production, everything. It would've been better to end it with the last record, as all this does is weaken the legacy of an incredible metal band. All I can do, really, is try to forget this album and hope they stick to playing older material on their farewell tour.

Final verdict: 3/10

Review: Modern Life Is War "Midnight In America"

It almost seems redundant or cliche at this point to describe a band as one that is "life-changing" or one that "saved a life," but I can honestly say that Marshalltown, Iowa's Modern Life Is War fits into both of those categories for me.

Around two years ago, the by now seemingly endless cycle of personal mental demons were just starting their assault on me, and I was completely unsure of how to cope with them. In MLIW, I found a band that not only had the sense of musical urgency and desperation that I felt every day, but lyrically expressed the same hopeless feelings and anger that are born from growing up in a small Midwestern town - let alone just going to school there, as is my experience.

Some of my best hardcore memories revolve around this band: seeing them (and the absolutely mental crowd reaction) for the first time at Posi Numbers 05 in Wilkes-Barre, "The Outsiders" exploding like a bomb at a show in a packed classroom at DePaul in Chicago, and crust punks and hardcore kids alike going absolutely mental the whole set at the Tragedy show in Milwaukee. But the one that stands head and shoulders above the others is the night that this band played a one-off show at a friend's apartment in Macomb, Illinois. Even playing on a weeknight to less than 50 people (all going apeshit, natch), this band still played with an intensity and passion I have only seen a small handful of times before.

MLIW has become known for breeding their own seemingly completely unique sound - a driving, melodic, almost formless breed of hardcore that seems to sonically reproduce the physical surroundings of a small industrial Iowa town. Their first two full-lengths, My Love. My Way. and Witness, were lauded among hardcore and non-hardcore fans alike as the shot in the arm a largely stagnant genre desperately needed. So, needless to say, Midnight In America was hyped up just a bit.

So how does it deliver? Well, it's certainly not their best work (that, in my mind, is still Witness), but that isn't saying it's a bad record at all. What is the most noticeable flaw in the record, in my opinion, comes quite literally at the very beginning. My Love... and Witness both opened with some of the most driving, epic songs I've ever heard in my life in "Breaking the Cycle" and "The Outsiders," respectively. By comparison, "Useless Generation" just doesn't have the same slap-in-the-face appeal to it, though I love the track once it gets past the awkward drum roll intro and into a heavier interlude and the punchy instrumentation that follows for the remainder of the song.

The production on this record is much more high-cost than the previous two releases as well, but it seems as though hardcore bands have learned how to have fantastic production while still retaining an edge and straying away from flash (Converge's No Heroes being a prime example). Though the production is hardly Nickelback quality, I still feel a little let down by the fact that while there is more weight to the music, much of the rawness of the MLIW sound seems to be gone.

Perhaps it speaks to the overall strength of the band as songwriters that the good songs on this record really explode out of the speakers, whereas the bad songs aren't even bad so much as forgettable (minus the atrocious "Fuck the Sex Pistols"). There are no punishing epiphany-inducing tracks like on the previous albums ("By the Sea," "D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.") but the quality is certainly still there. I was incredibly impressed with the atmospheric, swaggering version of the classic "Stagger Lee" folk tale, while "These Mad Dogs of Glory" and "The Motorcycle Boy Reigns" would feel at home on any of their other releases - though there is an interesting almost traditional breakdown within the latter. Jeff's lyrics are the only thing that have stayed flat line consistent over the band's history - both the quality and the delivery are just as phenomenal as ever.

The album's closer and title track brings me to my last point about this album, and really about this band as a whole. MLIW has been able to craft a sound that, as I said earlier, seems to be incredibly evocative of the surroundings from which they came. The - dare I say - epic and persistent instrumentation evokes mental images of wide open spaces, cornfields and desperate solitude. Jeff is an incredible lyricist, with brooding and brutally introspective lyrics born from growing up an outsider in a small Midwestern town. There is certainly a reason why I listen to this band almost exclusively at school: Modern Life Is War is a soundtrack for living in isolation, surrounded by the heartland that has the ability to both feed the American Dream and stagnate the minds and hopes of those living in the towns within.

Is it fair to judge this record based on the band's already plaudit-winning previous work? Perhaps not, but I think it's also fair to say that if Witness or My Love... did not exist, if this was MLIW's first record, I would not be as inclined to love them as I do today.

Overall...6.5/10...7/10 if I'm in a particular mood.