Saturday night at the luxurious upper-class hideaway known as Ronny's Bar in Chicago, Victim of Time celebrates two years of blabbering and drooling online existence by bringing you a fortified evening of five of the best new bands circulating our cerebral cortex. As time passes and bands come and go, we are charging full steam ahead, and we're committed to keeping the most interesting new music coming right at you, years or months before you hear about it on any other media sites. And as it just seemed like yesterday when VoT was launched, two years have now passed and goddamn it, it's time to celebrate! As many of you know, the landscape of Chicago bands has changed drastically since the heyday of 2002 when everything was exploding here, and luckily most of the real movers from the remnants of great bands past have found greener pastures in recent months with a whole slew of new configurations. For example, Alex White's new band is called White Mystery and is essentially a stripped down reverb-soaked two-piece with her brother Francis, formed out of both proximity and necessity, and not far off from the band we first came to know her by, The Red Lights. With that unmistakably massive wail and her signature red and white Rickenbacher guitar slung around her neck, Alex and Francis have solidified a tight, versatile band that is intended to fill the long periods of time between the often-too-rare Miss Alex White and the Red Orchestra performances, and to blow our minds with their raw simplicity and matching red afros. You'd be a stone cold fool to be late to this opening set, so don't stand in front of the mirror squeezing zits for any longer than you have to, and grab a cold beer and get up front.
Sang des Loups are a long-running group of Chicago friends that have only played three shows in total in the past two years, and have switched around members more frequently than they have changed out their underwear. Unveiling their new lineup a couple of weeks back, core members Zach (Black Beauties, Headspacer) and A-ron (Baseball Furies, Dirges, Bold Ones) have added Ken from Holy Ghosts and cohort Sim on drums to round out the next phase of the blurry vision that sums up their sound. As their first lead vocalist/guitarist (and VoT/Horizontal Action photographer extraordinaire), Canderson left the band after their first show to move out to California last spring, Sang des Loups have run their sound through a rougher, and decidedly less country-fried meat grinder. They've written a whole batch of new and faster songs that stay well within the twenty-minute set confinement, and barrel through into an all-out staggering rock'n'roll catastrophe that's built up incredibly catchy tunes and an impressive wall of vocals that will bowl you over with ease. Don't miss these guys, whatever the case.
Next up to bat are the brand new Chicago two-piece, Mother of Tears, which consists of Nathan Jerde of The Ponys on drums, along with Ross Fisher from The Brides and the Dirges on guitar and vocals. Another simplified situation where two get the job done far better than expected, Mother of Tears zig-zags across styles and form terrifyingly powerful songs out of nothing, and come up with exceptionally great snarling punk smashings with an air of anger and precision. Jerde's mercurial drumming combined with Fisher's serrated guitar forms an attack that results in a rapidly increasing heartbeat, rushing the blood to your pleasure dome and begs for more when their set reaches it's end. Sounding nothing remotely akin to any of the members' previous bands, look for Mother of Tears to shake the foundation of the current state of Chicago underground in a major way, and keep an eye out for their debut 7" on HoZac Records later this year.
And once you're sufficiently sated with the heaping helping of new Chicago bands, get ready for an intimately rocking and indisputably heart-warming set of songs by one of the Midwest's greatest secret weapons. Eric & the Happy Thoughts is the new Indiana band featuring guitarist Eric from the Romance Novels, in his own ingenuous band that pulls together the best parts of Buddy Holly's forgotten innocence, while straddling the Real Kids' charisma. To say they are a step up from the Romance Novels would be on the right track as the full backing band rounds out their pure pop sound with perfectly chilling results. Their debut cassette single "Bad Days" is already a classic anthem of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, and with further exposure, this might be the band that breaks out of the underground circles more than anyone could have expected. Look for the Eric & the Happy Thoughts debut 7' out later this summer on Bubbledumb Records and don't miss their hair-raising pop perfection as they seduce even the hardest-nosed rock'n'roll fans effortlessly.
And just when you think the night can't get any better, The Feeling of Love from Metz, France will take the stage and drill into the noisy caverns of your soul with their definitive Glue-Wave gunk that has the ability to crack spines and drain water on the brain upon instant exposure. With several knockout 7" records, a new split 10" on Rijapov, and their debut LP on Yakisakana out of the gate, it's the first ever US tour for Feeling of Love, and you're not gonna forget it. And to further encapsulate the excitement, they are bringing along members of A.H. Kraken to fill out the band, which should blow Chicago to smithereens with their deranged interpretation of modern punk music. Just as your belligerence reaches maximum saturation and the night comes crashing down around you, remember that Victim of Time is still here working hard for you, to both help enrich your degenerate lifestyle, and to do our part at disrupting the status quo of underground music by bringing you the best overlooked and underappreciated bands in the vast and overwhelming sonic universe.
check out a video of Mother of Tears at their first show in February, right here:
check out a video by Feeling of Love, courtesy of georgesedy right here:
