Hundred Years War at the Record Bar
Hundred Years War, with Ladyfinger (NE) and Attack on Uranus
Wednesday, August 29
The Record Bar
Better than: Having piping-hot Velveeta ladled into your pants.
By Jason Harper
The fairly new and not seriously conceived but seriously awesome Hundred Years War reminds me of the spoken-word monologue Nick Cave bellows on the opening track of Grinderman. It's called "Get It On," and at the opening, Cave manically yells: I got to get up to get down and start all over again!/Head on down to the basement and shout!/Kick all those white mice and black dogs out!/Kick those black dogs and baboons out!/Kick those baboons and other motherfuckers out!/And get it on! Get it on! "It is a lament for the messianic rock 'n roll hero," Cave says on the Web site, "and begins, of course, with a statement of intent."
Fucking. Sweet. (You won't hear the statement-of-intent album version of "Get It On" on Grinderman's MySpace, by the way. Go buy it.)
As Ashley Brown's article (linked above) confirms, the intent of the members of Hundred Years War -- all guys in their 30s who've been in and around bands in the midtown music core -- was to form a riff-metal band for the hell of it and see how far they could infiltrate Jim Kilroy's Metal Wars. What they've ended up with is a working, lumbering beast of a band that still doesn't take itself too seriously but rocks the fuck out.
Chris Wagner is HYW's badass bass player.
The night's opening act was KC punk/garage/metal (or, according to its MySpace, "Rockabilly/Thrash/Melodramatic Popular Song") band Attack on Uranus. Already you're thinking this band doesn't take itself too seriously, either. Well, maybe, but it's more like the band seriously wants to come across as funny, meatheaded, puerile, not giving a fuck, etc. "Look, we got Uranus in our band name!" Fortunately, they aren't over the top with the lowbrow humor, and they have a charismatic, skinny, punk-ass lead singer with a high, searing voice from Mercury.
Dr. Phil, lead singer for Attack On Uranus, absorbs the cosmic rays.
The band is also ambitious in its bending of genres, attempting to funnel things like Rush, 50s pop ballads and hair rock into splintering space-punk. They succeed at that, mostly. What they need more of is the camp and B-movie weirdness that the band name implies. People hear a band name like that, they're going to be disappointed if it's not accompanied by some theatrics. Just saying. Get a fucked-up space backdrop with a robot carrying off a woman in a torn dress with her bubbies hanging out. Cover "Flash Gordon" by Queen or "Godzilla" by the Blue Oyster Cult. I'm not saying pander -- OK, maybe I am saying pander -- but just do something a bit more interesting and exciting than your show is now, Attack On Fucking Uranus. Step up. You clearly think you're clever, but it needs help coming across.
As for the next band, well, they had some problems, foremost of which being all the songs they played sound the exact damn same -- it was like "Rhythmic Variations on a Punk Song." I'd heard enough songs from this band, Ladyfinger (NE) (which is from Omaha and signed to prestigious Saddle Creek) that I was expected a varied, emotionally climactic set. But what we got was prog-rock for skaters stoned to incapacitation, like something you'd hear on a Warped Tour side stage in the middle of the day. In Nebraska. It was the same octave-chord attacks with screamy, indiscernible lyrics over bashing rock. It would have been fine had there been anything catchy about the songs or compelling and fun about the performance -- or, evidently, if they played their better songs, because they do have them. Maybe they were pissed because they were opening for a local band in front of a small crowd at a small venue in Kansas City instead of in Lawrence, where these baboons could headline the Bottleneck on a weekend. Well, FYI, LADYfinger: the local band you opened for blew you the fuck outta the Cornfield (MO).
Ladyfinger (NE) was one long vanilla cookie. But with no icing inside. :(
Right now, Hundred Years War is sharing MySpace rental property with two of the members' previous band, the Secret Club. Listen to the two HYW songs that are streamable, "The King's Brass Knuckles" and "Counting with Razor Blades," and imagine them at 58 times the volume with big hot lights shining in your face and the imposing figure of Wagner, his wiry arms ripped and sinewy, looming over you like the death angel. Part of the appeal, to me of, HYW, is that this intensity is coming from guys who are basically out-of-shape geeks who become unhinged -- scary in Wagner's case -- when they play this loud, Unsane-like shit.
Couldn't listen to it every day, but, O, the virtues of post-hardcore. Get it on, motherfuckers.
Critic's Notebook
Personal Bias: I think a band like Helmet, for being more real, is heavier than gothed-up longhairs from Sweden any day.
By the Way: Have you noticed how the Record Bar has booked multiple-band shows every single night of the week through mid-November? Later at the Buzzard, I ran into Steve Tulipana, who's now doing the booking himself (until recently, Billy Smith had been doing the booking), and I asked him about it, but it was too loud at the Buzzard, and I was too drunk to officially record what he said.
Random Detail: Bill Murray was arrested for driving a golf cart through the middle of the show.
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