GAD! Zine

    Got “turnt” onto this band by Brad Posey, host/curator/creator of THE INVISIBLE CITY on 89.3 WLRH out of Huntsville, Alabama, and all-around swell guy (when he isn’t using thousands of people as test subjects for his droning experiments-choice emoji goes here, lol). He baited me by using The Replacements as an adjective to describe the lyrical style of this band, and I’m a sucker for anything Paul Westerberg connected. You could tell me a porta potty at a BBQ competition in the dead of a southern summer reminded you of “Tim” and I’d be there waiting for another spiritual awakening. But these dudes are from Dallas, so there may not be such a large degree of separation between plastic crap coffins and our favorite intermittently-sober subconsciously self-sabotaging lore-infused underground rock 'n' roll religious figures after all.     This is a pissed off record. It’s sarcastic. It’s wounded, and it’s mad as hell and isn’t gonna take it anymore. But it kind of ...

Originally published in GAD! Zine Issue 5. Interview by Harmless GAD! Who are you and what is YOUR history? Ian Wise - I grew up in Birmingham. I got into punk through the Ramones when I was about 9 and during middle school I didn’t really know anyone that was interested in the things I was. There were some other kids that were vaguely into punk rock but they were all older than me and I didn’t have any friends with interests like mine. Granted, I was very young and even though the internet was around I pretty much only had access to it at school so it was hard to find out about current bands. I would pretty much buy punk CDs and then track down releases by other bands listed in the “thank you” section of the CDs. Sometimes I’d get a record and the insert would have a collage of flyers from shows the band had played, and that was always great because it gave me more names of bands to look for when I was digging through records. I was able to get into some great stuff thro...

    Sometimes it’s fun to imagine alternate realities for clearly defined entities, historical eras, and so on. Like, I found myself wondering: “What if the music of MUSE was sexier?" "More slithery and reptilian?” “What if The Black Keys were from Gotham City?” “If Artic Monkeys weren’t so spastic and British*?” or the one question that almost woke me up at night more than once: “What if Radiohead weren’t so dreadfully boring?” (A rock and roll antihistamine?) Then I got this EP in the mail. And I went…."oooohhhh…" This is good. REALLY good. It’s the kind of good that pisses you off, because you know it’s inevitably going to cause you to judge the rest of the albums you acquire against it. And it’s only five tracks. It’s like getting interrupted in the middle of the one-man slap fight: you’re about to send a few thousand little soldiers on a suicide mission, then BAM! Its gets called off, the freeway gets backed up, but the rocket is still ready to launch...

    In the latest issue of the GAD! zine, I reviewed A Very Loud Death's new full-length, "Lanterns". Below is the review as it appears in Issue 15.... Short and sweet. Well, now I kinda want to say a little more. First of all, these fuckers are deceptive. They walk you in with some cool ambiance and follow it with some whispery/emo-y alt-metal that starts dipping into mad laughter. The vocals become a tad unhinged. The music becomes a teetering crooked carousel. Hardcore hollering makes a brief appearance. More whispering. Reverb. Crunching guitar. Swinging drums. The bass just snuck into my right ear and got a little too close to my brain. Was that just some Dick Dale-esque guitar noodling?? Now they're marching. Yet, most of this thing is... mellow? Is it the reverb and effects that are confusing me? This recording is a mystery. I think this is what I was trying to get at before. You're gonna think you've heard this before, but it's richer and ...