This Place Sucks

Before last Friday it had been nine months since the last time I saw Murdervan, which is kinda dumb considering they're my favorite Ct. band and so forth. It's also been a while since I've seen a set of theirs that wasn't hampered by equipment trouble, or bad sound, or whatever else, and Friday night was no exception-- though they still tore it up regardless. Andre didn't seem to mind getting into a little friendly give-and-take with some of people in the crowd who were shouting out dumb stuff all night, either. I'm sure I've cried this same note a lotta times, but I would've wished for Ct.'s sake that a band with the power to deftly mix Black Flag with Black Sabbath and a little Epitaph-era New Bomb Turks would have a lot bigger following by now, but maybe that added Kiss cover or two is all it's gonna take to turn that around. Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I've heard them play some new material, too, though I'm sure they're working on it...




Hand Grenade Serenade announced a Jawbreaker cover on Friday night, but I don't know a single Jawbreaker song, so I can't tell if they actually pulled it off. It wasn't exactly their kind of crowd (hence all the blank stares when they mentioned Jawbreaker), but it only took one song before all the disinterested stoner types in the back of the room were standing up front and getting into it. This band just keeps topping themselves every time I see them, and while their newer material is pretty close to unbeatable, they've beefed up their older material, too; case in point, "Americana", which I sorta used to skip over on their "Black Market Band" CD, but has now become an anchor of their live set. Any of their past releases (which are all at least a year old, anyway) don't even apply to this band anymore, and if they ever get the mix right, their next album is bound to be a hell of an ass-kicker.


Murdervan -

"Black Phil"

Hand Grenade Serenade -

"Americana"

(both of these files are now listen-only)