Monday, December 1, 2008

I Think This Time I've Finally Lost It

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Friday night's Off With Their Heads show at Whitney House was easily four times as packed as any of the other times I've been there, even with the wooden partition and stuff that had been taken out since the week before. Guilty Faces were originally listed as being on the bill and then bailed on it (that record better be out soon, by the way), but the four bands that did play-- Off With Their Heads, Dead Uncles, Play It Faster!, and Iron Hand-- were all worth a night out, which was pretty damn alright.


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Iron Hand, holy fuck. I was not prepared for how awesome these guys were gonna be, especially with this being their first show ever. Iron Hand is some dudes from They and The Children (who just split up in September) and Oiltanker, and there was one song of theirs that had the most wicked headbanging mosh part ever, I swear. There's even a photo out there where you can see me headbanging, although I was probably just looking down at my camera. I'll admit that it's beyond me to be able to describe any hardcore besides old-school thrash at this point, but if you're thinking that Iron Hand probably sound like Smurf Crisis or Converge or whatever crappy metal bands started counting as hardcore way back when, then they're not at all what you're thinking. More like Ass-End Offend, but that's just a scientific wild-ass guess on my part. Their demo wasn't ready yet-- about another week, they said-- but you can check out some songs on their MySpace page (myspace.com/ironhandcrushesall) and that oughta clear things up a bit.




Play It Faster!, are some kids from down Route 8 or somewhere, playing Plan-It-X core or something like that. Their songs are simple and catchy, plus their drummer doesn't waste a lot of motion and plays with a loud hat, which is the way I like it. They seem like one of those bands where you maybe hadn't heard of them before, yet everyone in their local scene knows the words to all their songs by heart, so go ahead and have fun, that's gotta count for something.


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The first time I saw Dead Uncles, who made me think of Dillinger Four even before I knew that's what they were trying to do, is when they opened up for The Ergs! and For Science back towards the beginning of the year. They didn't really fit in with the preppie pop-punk crowd, for whatever reason, and the room emptied out right before they played, which was a bunch of crap. Friday night, though, Dead Uncles got the response they deserved, and it was great to see the place turn into a madhouse when they played, with people flying all over the place, in front of and even on top of the band. The first wave of crowd surfers began in earnest, and yeah, it's pretty funny to see someone crowd surfing underneath a 7-foot ceiling (just like at the old Anthrax Club), but it works, somehow.


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The singer for Off With Their Heads didn't seem to get the drum kit joke I made at the beginning of the night, but they're from Minnesota so I coulda been a martian for all they knew. I could barely move during Off With Their Heads, which was awesome; people were shouting along to every word and climbing up on top of people by hanging from the support beams in the ceiling so they could get closer to the band, and every few songs the guy who thought I was a martian would stop to tell everybody how great this place was. It this whole mess that reminded me of how much I love punk rock, which I tend to forget sometimes. Off With Their Heads ended up playing every song they knew, almost, announcing "we only know two more songs" before playing ten more songs after that.


Off With Their Heads -

"For The Four"

"Shambles"

Dead Uncles -

"Mediocrity: It's What's For Dinner"

"We Weren't Meant For Free Time"

Play It Faster! -

"It Never Ends"

(all of these files are now listen-only)


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14 comments:

Jere said...

Guilty Faces, featuring...the "mutual friend" I mentioned in my comment on the Estrogen Highs post. It's very cool watching people I used to know as "fans of my band" grow up and be in bands themselves. Although Tom's band names before Guilty Faces were way better in my opinion--Gulf War Syndrome, Career Suicide, HCHC (Hot Chocolate Hard Core)...

ib said...

Off With Their Heads: "I'm not tired, I'm exhausted..."

That line gets my vote. Good stuff.

Brushback said...

If the Guilty Faces record ever does out in '08, it's gonna be the best Connecticut punk 7"-er of the entire year.

Anonymous said...

this was definitely an awesome show! i think you were nearby me taking photos.

Brushback said...

Yeah, judging by the angles our pictures were taken from, we were both on the same side of the room.

Brushback said...

The singer for Ripshit took some photos, too-- you can see me in this one, standing behind Brian, the singer for Iron Hand:


Iron Hand 11/28/08 Whitney

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theneedledrop said...

It's nice to see people I know on the internets.

ib said...

ditto.

Jere said...

Yeah, Guilty Faces sound pretty good. I forgot to mention Tom's best old band name of all, the DDTeens.

theneedledrop said...

I've been listening to this freaking Iron Hand demo like crazy!

Brushback said...

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on that tape.

Chris said...

I really dug that Play It Faster track.

Brushback said...

Chris, you can hear more songs on the Play It Faster MySpace; I think most of the songs from their demo are up there now.

I think the CD is only around 2 bucks, but that doesn't help you since you're in New Zealand and all.

Brushback said...

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. They are now being hosted on my Vox page (accessible through any of the above listen-only links), along with two Play It Faster! songs which weren't included in the original post.