Aug 03 2006
Underrated Band Of The Month: August – Murder City Devils
Underrated band on my mind at the moment – Murder City Devils. Just spent a weekend in Seattle to catch their official (one-off) reunion show as well as the announced-last-minute second show the next night. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the band and the shows since.
Here’s a band that everyone almost knew about. They were on the verge of breaking through to the masses when they split for personal reasons in 2001. What is ironic is that the impending success would have probably caused them to break up anyway. That’s not their style, and that’s part of what makes them so great.
One of the greatest things about this band’s history is the significant progression they made through a short 5 years. Their first full length is straight forward trash/garage rock, think the Stooges but more gritty. Their next one, Empty Bottles Broken Hearts, dove deeper, both musically and lyrically. After that, In Name And Blood (which many consider to be their best release) truly saw a development of an entirely new style. Sure, you can name the influences, but there was something above all that, something purely unique to MCD at this specific moment. [ Side note - I did some work in the recording studio this was tracked, and many times I imagined how amazing the recording process must have been. ]
Their last studio effort, the EP Thelema was an even further distinction of a unique musical vision. Bleak, haunting, fully depressing, yet completely inspiring.
From Allmusic:
In 1998, Murder City Devils, their eponymous debut, hit the record stores. The results were surprising enough to justify the group’s move to the catalog of Sub Pop. Working with producer Jack Endino, they kept on rocking with the album Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts in 1999, before entering an extensive tour that took them all over the U.S. and to Canada. Before the tour, keyboard wizard Leslie Hardy, previously with Hole, joined the team, thereby solving the organ problem, which was until then a shared instrument by Frudesco, Manny, and Galluci. Supporting the album on the road for almost a year, the Devils then decided to take a break.MCD entered the studio with John Angello in 2000 and emerged with In Name and Blood, an album that fleshed out the band’s Dead Boys fascination by depicting each member as the victim of a different heinous murder. The Thelema EP followed in 2001; it included some minor-chord textures and a folk-ish number called “364 Days” that was a significant departure from Moody et al.’s normally raging death punk. But the growth would be fruitless, as the Devils broke up a few months later with an incendiary farewell to their hometown crowd on Halloween night 2001.
It’s really hard to pick a specific place to start. Depends what you’re into. If you like your rock punk and raw, get their first one, Murder City Devils.
If you prefer the Misfits to the Stooges, get In Name And Blood.
And if you prefer something right in between, get Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts.
