The Suicide Machines
Punk / Ska Detroit, MI |
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The Suicide Machines are back with their 6th studio album. This time around the Detroit four piece is cranking it up a few notches with War Profiteering Is Killing Us All. These are some of the heaviest, loudest and politically charged songs the band has ever done. In the producer's chair, once again, was Mr. Bill Stevenson (Black Flag, ALL, Descendents). Brace yourself!
www.suicide-machines.com
If you like the Suicide Machines, be sure to check out:
Flogging Molly
The Casualties
The Briggs
These are strange and dangerous times. War. Weak economy. Weapons of mass destruction that are missingor werent there in the first place. Debilitating gasoline prices. World leaders we have no faith in. A populace that feels too disenfranchised to even hope it can affect change.
Whats a punk band to do in the wake of all this? The brave ones Rise up! as The Suicide Machines declare on their new album, War Profiteering is Killing Us All, and let em know that it aint over til...well, maybe itll never be over, and the long-lived quartet serves notice that itll never stop fighting, either.
But as frontman Jason Navarro notes late in the album, This is no manifesto. This is no propaganda. War Profiteering... is, in fact, a typically ferocious listening experience for the Detroit crew, a collection of 14 battle hymns that gallop by in half an hour with more adrenalin than youll find in an average hospital emergency room. Dan Lukacinskys guitar leaps from metallic thunder to ska syncopation. Bassist Rich Tschirhart and drummer Ryan Vanderberghe turn tricky dynamics on a dime, without so much as a stutter step. Navarro and Lukacinsky make their lyrical points with passionate gusto, and completing each others arguments like youd expect from two men who have been making music in this setting for the past 14 years.
I finally think that The Suicide Machines are comfortable in their own skin, notes Navarro. Who knows; the band could break up tomorrow, but I can definitely say that at this point, were very comfortable with who we are and what we do.
Lukacinsky concurs, noting that I really like where were at right now. I like being in a position where we can keep shit edgy and really say something. I really have a sense of accomplishment that weve been able to take our music all over the world and play it for people pretty much everywhere.
The Suicide Machines are one of punk rocks great stories of endurance and credibility. Starting the group in 1991, Navarro, Lukacinsky and various cohorts worked the Detroit punk underground for two years before recording their first demo, subsequently issuing singles, split singles and EPs before signing a major-label deal in 1995. The four albums that followed were the proverbial Real Deal, musically uncompromising but not tied to any dogmatic parameters. The Suicide Machines saw fit to experiment with everything from melodic ideas to instrument tones and song structures and lengths. Not cookie-cutter punk rock, in other words.
With 2003s A Match and Some Gasoline, The Suicide Machines found a new label home, with SideOneDummy Records, as well as a new production situation, working with Bill Stevenson at his Blasting Room studio in Fort Collins, Colo.a relationship that continues on War Profiteering...
Working with him and with Jason (Livemore, Blasting Rooms engineer) and with SideOneDummy, I get this feeling that everybody is on the same page now, Lukacinsky says. Everybody knows whats going on. It makes for a more effective record, I think.
Lukacinsky and Navarro will be the first to acknowledge that it took some time for The Suicide Machines to hone in on what they wanted to do with War Profiteering..., however. The group started working on songs in the late summer of 2004. We wrote a bunch of songs we werent content with, Navarro recalls. It just lacked the right intensity, as far as we were concerned. The sessions did yield some material, but the singer feels that when the group locked in on the track Capsule (AKARequiem for the Stupid Human Race) things really started to kick into high gear.
Lukacinsky, meanwhile, says it was the albums title track that helped turn the corner. After I wrote that, then it was like I know what I want to do now. Boom! After that we were able to write a bunch of songs for this record.
They acknowledge now that they may have started too soon, that the results of the 2004 Presidential election provided a different kind of inspiration for songwriting, whether as direct as 17% 18 to 25about the poor turnout of younger votersor in more general state-of-the-society examinations such as Capitalist Suicide, The Red Flag, Bottomed Out and Hands Tied.
This kind of shit fires me up, says Navarro. Some people arent going to like it, but at least were saying something. In fact, he adds, The Suicide Machines were particularly motivated by what they felt was complacency in the wake of the elections.
Thats kind of what a lot of this record is about, Navarro explains. All the punks bands are like, Oh, whatever. Politics? Eh. Lame. Over it. Were like, Played out and over it? Are you kidding me?! Its an everyday struggle. Its not something thats in or out, and all these bands are just kind of taking it that way.
Lukacinsky agrees that the anger increased after the election, for sure, and doesnt feel its out of character for The Suicide Machines to vent like they do on War Profiteering... Weve always talked about politics, he notes. Before it was more talking about issues of unity and this and that. Now there are other things to sing about. We know that when you come at people with an extreme message some of them arent gonna dig it, but...
Its punk rock, right? If were not pissing somebody off, were not doing our job.
But dont lose sight of the fact that its the playing that really fires War Profiteering... We went for a more bombastic sound and got it, Lukacinsky says, and its also a incredibly diverse attack, with plenty of straightforward, blast-furnace rockers (the title track, 17% 18 to 25, Revolution is on the Clearance Rack, Capsule, All Systems Fail) but alsoand importantlysongs that shift into reggae and ska flavors on tracks such as Ghosts on Sunset Boulevard, Nuclear Generator and Capitalist Suicide, the latter of which Lukacinsky considers quintessential Suicide Machines.
Ultimately, War Profiteering... is in itself quintessential Suicide Machines, giving the listener plenty of portals into the music and 14 convincing reasons to listen.
However somebodys getting into the band, thats cool, says Lukacinsky. Were not going to say that the only reason you should be into The Suicide Machines is because of what were talking about or the kind of music we play. I think we offer a lot, and whatever catches someone is great.
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The UPTONES says:
allo gents
posted Jun 25