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| Jared Micah of Vomitface at Silent Barn last June |
Roundup 3: Jersey City
In my last roundup this week, I want to mention a few releases from our friends in Jersey City. It's really easy for me to get to shows in the Asbury Park area, and even New Brunswick is only about a 40 minute drive. I tend to focus here, therefore, on the bands I see regularly and get to know.
Sure. Every once in a while a band like Jersey City's Overlake or Bordentown's Roy Orbitron make it onto my radar; but I'm just as guilty of parochialism as the next guy. With that in mind, I wanted to close out this week by taking a look at some releases that have been in my CD pile and in my iTunes library from bands in and around Jersey City.
Cicada Radio, Crime Waves
I first saw Cicada Radio as part of the Tiny Giant Artist Collective Summer Bummer at Asbury Lanes a few years ago. What I've always remembered about them was the intensity they brought to a performance that I believe took place at about 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a sunny beach day in a dark bowling alley several blocks off the beach. To say that the house wasn't packed at that point would be an understatement, but Cicada Radio brought it as if they were playing to wall to wall sweaty bodies of crowd surfers.
In somewhat of a surprise at the end of last year, the band released the 6-song Crimewaves. I heard "Funeral" on Al Crisafulli's Signal2Noise NJ radio show and decided to check out more. The song is fast-paced and surfy, the vocals coming at you as if from a room on the other side of the house. On the record, "The Patriot" precedes "Funeral" and also comes down on the more indie rock with a hint of surf side of things.
Opener "Carcosa" hews a little more closely to the band's self-professed post-hardcore sound with its orchestral, wall-of-sound guitars and shouted vocals. The title track also swirls around with that same overall feel. The set closes with "Mercenaries" that revels in a lot of Cicada Radio's 90s influences.
Crimewaves is out now on Jersey City's Killing Horse Records. You can stream it over at Cicada Radio's Bandcamp page.
Life Eaters, Life Eaters
Another Jersey City / Killing Horse band that put on a pretty crazy live show are Life Eaters. Featuring former members of Rye Coalition, The Black Hollies, ¡No Pasarán!, and Killing Horse label honcho Mike Sylvia, Life Eaters go all out in their live sets. The first time I saw them, as part of The Everymen's farewell to Maxwell's show, frontman Sylvia came out in a Rip Curl wetsuit in preparation for all the beer that would rain on him from the crowd. He was wise to be so prepared.
The band's self-titled full-length is straightforward hard rock with a heavy blues influence on several of the songs. "I'm The One You Wanted" is a fast-paced opener that features the intertwining, harmonizing guitars of Romel Espinel and John Gonelli. The pace slows down, but things don't get any less heavy on the bluesy, six-and-a-half minute "Man Pain." "Look Out" and "Lock It In" are a pair of punk-influenced jolts that give way to garage rocker "Atom Bomb." "Animal" features more of those dueling guitars. "Lie to Me" starts off with a call-and-response pair of guitar riffs and barrels along like a train before reaching a psychedelic break about halfway through.
There are doses of punk, garage rock, and metal (of the Black Sabbath variety) here. They all add up to a collection of unadulterated hard rock delivered by several veterans of the North Jersey scene.
Life Eaters is another 2014 release from Killing Horse, and you can stream "I'm the One You Wanted" over at Life Eaters' Bandcamp page.
Vomitface, Another Bad Year
We're coming up on Northside Festival again. Last year, I headed over to Silent Barn to catch Big Ups and lost boy ? and ended up being really pleasantly surprised by Jersey City's Vomitface. I remember it being super hot inside Silent Barn. The crowd was a little lethargic, but the loud-quiet-loud noise pop of Vomitface should've had them moving.
Last month, the band released a five-song EP called Another Bad Year. Things start of with "Never Make It." Heavy chords, throbbing rhythms, some discordant guitar noodling; but Jared Micah's vocals come through clearly. He kind of accepts his lot of being a loser, so why try? You know?
"Bruise" combines quirky Pixies almost surf pop with interludes of Nirvana-esque rage. The Pixies / Nirvana influence is evident again on "Did She Come Alone?" The guitar noise and the relentless rhythm section of Peetma Singh and Sam Palumbo give the track kind of a stalker-y feel as Micah sings, "Did she did she come alone or did she have someone? I could I could take her home. I could be her number 1."
Vomitface describe their sound as "black surf," and I can see that. If you dig past the distortion, there are definite hints of surf and pop in these songs.
Another Bad Year is out now on Boxing Clever Records and you can stream it at the Vomitface Bandcamp page.
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