Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

More is more
A Wilhelm Scream pile on the punk harmonies with Ruiner
BY WILL SPITZ
RELATED LINKS

A Wilhelm Scream's official Web site

Carly Carioli picks to download A Wilhelm Scream's "Killing It"

It was about five summers ago that I stopped going to the Warped Tour. The heat, the throngs of kids, the short sets, the increasing corporateness of the whole thing — I’d had enough. But last Monday morning, as I headed west on the Mass Pike toward the Northampton Fairgrounds for my first Warped show since high school, I was excited, mainly about this year’s abundance of local reps: Dropkick Murphys, Street Dogs, the Receiving End of Sirens, Big D & the Kids Table, Roxi Monoxide, Frequency Needs a Mate, and Gone by Daylight, among others.

It’s about 100 miles from Boston to Northampton. Figuring in the inevitable concert traffic, I gave myself what seemed a reasonable two and a half hours to get there. Some six hours later, more than four of which I spent at a standstill, I finally got out of my car in the "authorized personnel only" parking area. (According to John Peters of MassConcerts, the show’s promoters, there were two lots in addition to the full one that I was denied entrance to. Apparently, the officer who misinformed me that there was "no more parking" wasn’t aware of the other two lots.) After the show, Peters was apologetic, explaining that there were alternate routes to the Fairgrounds that would’ve alleviated some of the traffic problems but that the local police wouldn’t allow them to be used. He added that this was probably the last time Warped would go to Northampton.

One of the bands I most wanted to catch was New Bedford’s A Wilhelm Scream, who formed in 1996 and were known as Smackin’ Isaiah until 2001. I wasn’t the only one who missed their set.

"I know that none of my friends made it to the show," guitarist Trevor Reilly lamented afterward. "It really sucks." Nevertheless, he says it was probably the biggest crowd AWS have played for. "I have a feeling that a lot of people who were there were watching us because they had heard a lot about us probably, a lot of hype surrounding us or whatever. But as far as the kids who would’ve jumped the barricade, I have a feeling that a lot of those kids did not make it." No matter, he adds, because "whoever comes out to see us, it’s a fucking blast. Always."

And people have been going out to see the band in droves lately, in large part because of the huge response garnered by last year’s Mute Print, their debut for Nitro Records, the Huntington Beach (California) label owned by the Offspring’s Dexter Holland. The band — Reilly, vocalist Nuno Pereira, drummer Nick Angelini, guitarist Chris Levesque, and bassist Jon Teves, who was replaced by Curtiss Lopez earlier this year — made the album with recording vets Bill Stevenson, the former drummer for the Descendants, Black Flag, and All, and Jason Livermore at the pair’s Blasting Room studio in Fort Collins, Colorado. A hypersonic punk/metal blitz brimming with Iron Maiden–inspired guitarmonies and soaring vocal harmonies reminiscent of Bad Religion, it earned them legions of fans across the country and overseas. After its release, the band toured the US and even joined Strike Anywhere on a jaunt through Japan. "It was incredible," says Reilly. "They didn’t speak English, but they knew the words to the songs — very bizarre."

Although all the touring helped spread the gospel of A Wilhelm Scream, it didn’t allow the band much time to work on a follow-up. "We wrote most of it on the road," Reilly explains. "I have a little tape recorder and I just jotted down ideas. When we got home — we were home for about a month — I took all the ideas that I had and I went to the four-track. So it went from the little tape recorder to the four-track and from the four-track it went to the demos. I wrote most of it that way."

Although they were happy with the response to Mute Print, AWS were determined to move forward. "For the new record, it was like, ‘What do we like about Mute Print? How could we make it better and bigger and badder and faster and more crazy?’ "

In April, they returned to the Blasting Room with Stevenson and Livermore to record Ruiner, which came out on August 16, the day after their Warped show. They hadn’t found a suitable all-ages venue for the planned CD-release party in New Bedford, but a not-too-shabby alternative arrived when the Offspring asked AWS to open for them at CBGB’s that Tuesday, one of the series of benefit shows to save the legendary New York club from eviction.

And Ruiner is indeed better and bigger and badder and faster and more crazy. The arrangements are complex and unpredictable, everybody often stopping on a dime or making a hairpin turn. With a few exceptions, notably the Reilly-sung "In Vino Veritas II," the material is played at a breakneck pace. The drums are deep and loud and the guitars and bass are as thick as a triple cheeseburger. Chalk that up to the time — nearly a month — they were able to spend in the studio, about three times what they had for Mute Print.

"We’ve always thought more is more," Reilly points out. The more cool shit to listen to, the better. With every record, there’s been a lot of singing. You can attribute that to a lot of the bands that we grew up idolizing" — bands like Maiden, Bad Religion, and NOFX. "It’s like, ‘Hey, we know harmonies now. Let’s fucking do them. Wherever it’s tasteful, wherever it belongs, if we can do it, let’s fucking do it. And then let’s pull it off live, which is just as important.’ "

"Every new recording you make has to blow away your last one. The day we make a worse record than our last one is the day I wanna fucking stop, start something new."

 


Issue Date: August 26 - September 1, 2005
Click here for the Cellars by Starlight archive
Back to the Music table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group