band review: Blasticus S.S. Blastica

A friend of mine, Wes, is a person who is instinctively a rock star. He intrinsically throws out the air guitar and screams things like "FREEEOW YOW YEAH!" So what choice did I have when he told me that his band would be playing the day after Thanksgiving? A person of this calibur of rockingness is, without a doubt, a show in himself.

Before them was a band with some name like EverFold or EverKind or some shit like that. The lead singer was stocky and tried desperately to sound like Green Day. Oh, and he tried to rock and failed. These people did not rock and brought shame to the verb.

Then Blasticus S.S. Blastica showed up and things were different. People actually approached the stage and danced when they came up. Even through they were projecting DVD extras from "Titan A.E." behind the band, they still played some pretty cool stuff. Their sound wasn't unlike Primus, not silly but somewhat unorthodox. They were instrumental, so the songs were continuously occupied by some kind of solo or well-pressed line of musical dialogue.

Their solos were really pretty good too. Their bassist seemed well versed in his trade, and Wes rocked pretty hard too. The production guy sucked and fucked up the frequencies between Wes's transitions from distortions and regular (sorry, I don't know the terms. so sue me.), making some of his lower range non-discernable to the ear. That and one could tell he sucked at life otherwise by all of the recorded between-band music. He'd play something like Limp Bizkit and walk in beat with it, making his oh-fuck-yeah-this-shit-is-awesome kind of thug face. What a bitch.

They played a song called The Pirate Song which was terrific. I wish I could put a soundbyte of it up here, but the gist is that it reminds one of pirates going around on a creaky boat, pillaging and kicking ass. It is unpredictable, fun, and cool. You'd like it.

In short, I'm going to get one of their t-shirts because that is what I consider my greatest compliment to a band. The only other bands which I would get t-shirts for are Boards of Canada, Radiohead, Morcheeba, Beck, and Necrosatanica*, so Blasticus S.S. Blastica is joining a worthy crew. Check them out.





*The death metal band I was in during high school. We rocked six hundered and sixty six times harder than any other band in existence. I played electric triangle (I think), but never really showed up for practice much, so I just sort of beat-boxed and fell into sync with the others. Our first release, Neopentagramiticon, was quite delightful. Since then, there have been a few reunions including one very prolific one, so if any former band members are out there we should arrange another one soon.