Some bands are hard to figure out, and although I hate to pigeonhole music, a show review should do a little bit of that. On Thursday, late in the night, Awolnation broke the rules and mixed many genres with their explosions of high-energy inventive rock-rap-funk-dance. The Viper room was packed, the adrenaline level at its highest as well as the music volume.
The five-piece band Awolnation is the new band of Aaron Bruno from ‘Under the Influence of Giants’ and is a total musical departure from the sonic universe of his former group, which has often been compared to The Scissor Sisters.
The remarkable energy demonstration of Aaron Bruno during the show was captivating, as he was constantly moving along the furious hard dance beats produced by guitar, bass, synthesizer and drums, bashing over the heads of the people in the dense crowd.
A song like ‘MF’ had some weird and powerful funky rap beats that Beck would not deny, and definitively a Beastie Boys’ assaulting attitude, fully demonstrated by Bruno’s loud harangues above everyone’s head.
But a song like ‘Guilty, Filthy Soul’ changed the atmosphere with more soul-pop influences, but still hard-rocking beats, and the dark ‘Sail’ did slowly build up with a visceral scream and heavy dark beats, until it exploded in shouted lyrics ‘Sail, Sail’.
The aesthetic surrounding the band seems well studied, from cryptic pseudo-Masonic black and white symbols representing a megaphone, a marine anchor, a wave, and a hand holding a hammer, to warrior face painting, matching boat shoes, and what it seems a no-sock policy.
They ended the not long enough show with one of their most powerful song, ‘Burn it Down’, an almost Black Flag hardcore number on speed, injected with electronic beeps, and run-as fast-as you-can beats as if they had aggressively accelerated a song to the limit of the possible.
It is as if they were on a mission, as if they wanted to shake you up and reset your brain about what you think about music genres, conveying a furious passion in all of them.
Last May, they have released an EP ‘Back From Earth’, but their studio recording hardly give the idea of the energy they can release live, blowing the room away, exorcising the crap out of each of us.
Here is their myspace page: