Mongo Nation

CraveOnline Soundcheck featured Artist!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Simply based upon their appearance alone, it would be easy to write Pierce the Veil off as just another cookie-cutter emo band. Like most people over the age of 25, I see tight pants and scene haircuts and I immediately recoil as a result of being assaulted with a decade’s worth of lame guitar pop and whiny lyrics.

After listening to their new album, A Flair For the Dramatic and meeting the band personally, I can safely say that Pierce the Veil possess a style and spirit that places them head and shoulders above their peers.

Hailing from a generationally musical family, brothers Vic and Mike Fuentes clearly exhibit a wide range of styles that range from screamo and melodic hardcore to punk rock, early Michael Jackson era funk, Spanish guitar/Flamenco and even a little bit of shred metal. Every song on the album is widely varied, not only compared to its neighbors, but within the actual songs themselves. The changes in style and tone are masterfully arranged in technically complicated patterns that mimic the climax and catharsis of life in a way that “emo” music is always expected to and yet often fails to.
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Radiohead is now officially so last year.

Upon first listen to Idiot Pilot’s new album, “Wolves”, you’d imagine that these are a band of seasoned music veterans. In a way, they are. They’ve collaborated with Chino Moreno and the Deftones, Team Sleep, +44 and The Used. They’ve had one of their songs featured on the “Transformers” soundtrack. They have almost 1 million MySpace friends. But in actuality, they’re two little nerds from Washington that are barely old enough to drink, and they may be the next Radiohead.

Wolves may take more than one listen to get past the richly produced, slightly emo electro-rock shoegaze aesthetic. At first it’s a lot to take in. The songs swing from “Refused” era punk shredding to Nintendo rock 8-Bit boops and bleeps. Upon further listen, you will find a deliberate, almost genius arrangement that would be difficult for a 10-piece band to put together coherently, let alone two dudes and that dork from Blink 182, Mark Hoppus, who co-produces the album.

Hey dude on the left, your little brother called. He wants his shirt back!

Luckily, legendary producer Ross Robinson (Glassjaw, At the Drive-In) is also on board to handle producing duties. Somehow the album comes edgy even after all the heavy effects are taken no account, which is no easy task. Songs like “Red Museum” seamlessly incorporate screams, guitar work that sounds like it came off a Smiths record, haunting verses, and hi-lo-tech computer programming.

Many of these songs, like “Theme From the Pit”, are so epic that it’s hard to imagine it not being licensed to every movie and TV show that comes out this year. The first single from the album, “Cruel World Enterprise” may be the hipster sex-jam of the year. There isn’t one stinker on this whole album, which is significant, considering that this is Idiot Pilot’s sophomore album, and sophomore albums are crap like 99% of the time.

If you like electronic rock music even a little bit, “Wolves” by Idiot Pilot should definitely be your next purchase. Seriously, do yourself a favor and be the first to pick this album up, so you can brag to all your hipster friends that you “were totally into Idiot Pilot way before they got all popular and stuff”.

For maximum effectiveness, use in bathtub.

Wow. If you needed any more proof that the emo/gothic, skull and crossbones, suicide threat as conversation starter fashion scene has gone a little too far, this is it.

Not content to emblazon every square inch of their clothing with images of skulls and guns, cheerleaders mimicking the style of their less popular peers have turned toward their beauty products and appliances for further poseury.

Enter the Gun Blowdryer, a seemingly normal hairdryer encased in a wild-west revolver casing. Now you can put a gun to your head every morning, and blow frizzy hair straight to hell!

The Gun Blowdryer comes in blue and pink handled models, and changes speed and temperature by cocking the hammer.

This product will make a great companion piece to the half bottle of sleeping pills and dull straight razor that you pretend to attempt suicide with on a weekly basis! The Gun Blowdryer is currently only available in Japan, but don’t worry. There is very little chance that Hot Topic won’t be selling this item to morbid, self-loathing American teenagers in the very near future.

Interpol makes you care about post-punk indie rock again.

After being so thoroughly disappointed by recent post-punk acts like She Wants Revenge, who are at once monstrously over hyped and under talented, it’s refreshing to see a band like Interpol come back with a new album that shows the posers how it’s done. On their new album, “Our Love to Admire”, the NY foursome prove that there is hope for the genre yet, with excellent, poetic lyrical compositions and deliberate, hypnotic rhythms that have the cold sexuality of a heroin laced mechanical bull ride.