English again, and before all you Ljudevit Gaj-lovin’, Miroslav Krleža-adorin’ language purists out there reach in righteous fury for your big leather-bound hard-cover volume of Anić & Brozović’s ”Dictionary of Croatian Language” to pummel my face in with, let me explain why: first of all, I want to give the members of the foreign bands that played the Attack club last Monday a chance to understand what I have to say about them and their music, and bearing in mind that three out of four bands that night were not from Croatia I think it only fair to write this text in English, the current lingua franca of the world. Secondly, the place the headliners of the evening, Iron Chic, hail from is a little town of Huntington Station, New York, which also happens to be the birthplace of one of the greatest American poets of all times, the bearded bard Walt Whitman. To write in English will not only allow the boys from Iron Chic to retort to my assertions after they have perused the text on their Facebook timeline, but will also stand as a small but fitting tribute to the master of the American vernacular (I know Tin Ujević would surely approve).
Video from concert.
Staging a gig on a Monday night is never a reasonable thing to do, especially when there are no fewer than three opening acts to enjoy (or endure) before the main attraction plugs in the instruments, although, in defense of the organizers, we have to say that it wasn’t their fault the only slot available for a Croatian gig on Iron Chic‘s tour schedule was on Monday. Since I have witnessed the diminishing of attendance on weeknight concerts many times, as the people who had work to go to in the morning grudgingly left the club long before the main act’s performance, I hastily assumed that by the time Iron Chic boys finally appear on Attack‘s little stage, the only audience left in front of it would consist of a few drunken, jobless punks who’ll barely muster the strength of arm needed to lift even the scrawniest of them when he or she launches into a double back-flip stage dive. As it turned out, I was very wrong in my assumption, because as Iron Chic took to the stage, the club was packed full with able-bodied boys and girls eager to tear into each other and storm the stage the minute the band’s opening song erupts from the huge black speakers. However, before I continue with my impressions of chaos during Iron Chic‘s performance, I have to mention the supporting acts first.
Überyou, the young dudes from Zürich, Switzerland, had the honor of jump-starting the evening’s festivities. They are a well-tailored, groomed and coiffed bunch, and they even had the name of the band spelled out in lights on the wall behind them, but such by-the-book uniformity and adherence to the latest fashion of punk hipsterdom only made me think of them as the slightly less melodic Swiss version of Croatia’s most popular pop punk product, Kino Klub. Überyou play pop punk lightly sprinkled with some heavier guitar riffage and sparky drumming, but tame enough for even the lamest kid in the audience to hop along to. Theirs is a more radio friendly and mass-appealing kind of punk than that championed by such gutsy and more original acts as Nothington, Dear Landlord, Bangers or the Flatliners. Not many people seemed impressed by their sound, so the only guy dancing in the pit was the singer when he jumped into it strutting his Jagger-like moves. That was also the high point of their performance, which at least wasn’t too long to become arduous. All in all, I think Überyou manage to impress those punk fans who haven’t yet heard the aforementioned bands, of which there were very little, if any at this gig. The name of the band in lights was a nice touch though, and it would facilitate the reporter’s job considerably if all the bands were to follow suit and put up their names in lights when they perform at such group gigs.
The second band of the evening came from Graz in Austria, the favourite shopping city for many Croatians hooked on IKEA’s simple to assemble, yet stylish furniture. The group is made of four decent looking guys plus a pretty but shyish violin fiddling girl, and they have named themselves The Liberation Service. Now, I admit I haven’t a faintest clue what it’s supposed to mean, but it immediately earned them the Dumbest Band Name Of The Evening title, which is a pretty respectable feat considering there was also a band named Kiper on the bill. The music they make falls somewhere between Frank Turner‘s optimistic, semi-acoustic folk-punk croonery (the lead singer has an ever-so-obvious man-crush on Frank) and The Pogues‘ mad array of fiddles, accordions and violins lashed into submission by raw punk guitars. Most of their songs were of the uptempo beat, with all the members of the group singing together and rallying us for whichever worthy cause each of them decided to support: save the whales; preserve the melting polar caps; protect the indigenous Amazonians they seemed to be saying enthusiastically, while the fiddle glided over the violin strings and made the audience dance the happy dance of people safely nestled in their neat new European home. Shorn of the hippy activism, the music itself was not bad, although the violin was sometimes hard to hear, and in my opinion quite unnecessary altogether. Who knows, maybe the band also does Alpine wedding parties in their spare time, with all the members clad in lederhösen, fully equipped with accordions and harmonicas, and the violin is just a remnant of these happier events. Whatever the case, they managed to draw and entertain a considerable crowd during their performance, which is something the next band of the evening, Kiper, completely failed to achieve.
Noone present at Attack that night seemed to be at all interested in Kiper‘s Laufer-like sounding brand of garage rock, although the guys obviously know what they’re doing musically and deliver a very tight and muscular sound. I’m all for heterogenity at this type of concerts and don’t like to listen to four or five completely similar bands all night long, but this was obviously one of those unfortunate cases when the audience just couldn’t give a flying fuck about what this particular band had to offer. Instead, everyone was drinking and smoking in the yard, waiting for Iron Chic to take up their positions on the stage, which they finally did at around half past 11.
In the typical American, cowboy-like style they have straddled the stage like they own it, strapped on their instruments, and immediately launched into their set. Chaos ensued, people started pogoing and climbing onto the stage and flinging themselves head-first, feet-first, belly-first (and in the case of one small but well endowed girl – tits-first) into the rampant sea of bodies below. This common razzle-dazzle, although often found at such hardcore gigs, was an impressive sight to behold from a safe distance in the back of the club, nearer the bar. The guys in Iron Chic have reallly sweated their asses off doing their thing onstage, at the same time stoically enduring all the drunken rabble’s attempts to hug, or even try and kiss them (these kids, I guess, are truly in love with this band). The singer bellowed the words of the songs into his microphone keeping his eyes shut all the time, but nevertheless always in complete control of the show and his bandmates. It was a fantastic feast of modern melodic hardcore, and hopefully we’ll not have to wait (as) long for the next similar band to ride into our town and blow us away.
Nenad Lukač
https://www.facebook.com/ironchicband
https://www.facebook.com/theliberationservice
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