HOME |
DINING |
MOVIES |
LIVE SHOWS |
ARTS |
UPCOMING EVENTS
ARCHIVES |
ABOUT |
ADVERTISE |
CONTACT |
DISTRIBUTION
entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
<<
The AB's and Swordz
|
Main
|
Carey Ott (album review)
>>
|
|
|
by rick grant
rickgrant01@comcast.net
Two nights and two musical worlds in different universes–a contrast so bizarre it would normally blow the average person’s mind. Not me, I travel to all corners of musical boundaries, seeking out the outer reaches, the middle ground, and the avant-garde. Thursday night I checked out Al Maniscalco at The Brick in Avondale. It was jazz steeped in the traditions of a bygone era, then I flew into a wormhole on the other side of the galaxy to catch Five Star Failure–a cutting edge modern rock band at the new alt-rock venue in Atlantic Beach called the Landshark Café.
|
|
I’ve seen the light and it cries out in heavy dark sounds of angst-driven new rock. Yes, Five Star Failure is an evolution of former members of Order by Chaos, Misery Head, Sentrpoint, All4Defiance, and Feeble Attempt. The FSF members include Vince Shepard on guitar, Dusty DeWitt on vocals, Troy Kelly on drums, Steve Kucinskas on bass, and Ryan Boyd on guitar.
“This is the project I’ve been waiting for. The band has years of experience driving it forward...We are setting a new standard,” says FSF’s manager Joel “Slim” Butler of J.A.M. Management.
The modern rock firm of Five Star Failure has stripped down the alt-rock model and thrown out the clichés to emerge as a powerful force for creating hardcore songs that have both melody and driving guitar power-chord distortion–a benchmark of modern rock. That combined with the gritty vocals complete the brain-as-an-egg-frying-in-the-pan growly sound. This is your brain on FSF– it’s fried but not fatal.
Funny, I was watching Sean White’s Olympic Gold Medal winning snowboard performance on a flat screen monitor above the stage–muted–on the popular Fuel Network, and fittingly, FSF’s hard-as-nails sound fit Sean’s movements perfectly. It was another strange juxtaposition of audio-visual sync that gives me a drugless high. Yeah, “it’s only rock’n’roll but I like it.”
The “Heads of Misery” devolution, now called FSF, got into my brain and cleaned out the cobwebs, as the lads cranked out their originals. Typically in the alt-rock scene, it takes three bands to get through a nightly gig, since the bands have only fifty minutes of material, but FSF had more material, they just chose to play a single set. They could have played longer.
As alt-rock venues go, the Landshark Café is surprisingly upscale–clean and modern. They serve delicious food and feature live music on most nights. It’s relatively small, so the place fills up quickly. They have a large outdoor deck where smoking is permitted. So, at any one time, the deck is buzzing with activity. It’s located in the Publix Shopping Center in Atlantic Beach. This mall also houses Culhane’s Irish Pub and just down the street is the Atlantic Theaters complex and the Fly’s Tie Pub.
Recently, I found out that Judy Van Zandt, owner of the Freebird has made a deal to take over part of the Atlantic Theater in March as the new Freebird Live. She is selling her present Freebird property to a Jaguar player who will put an upscale restaurant in that location. This will make that Atlantic Beach mall quadrant a thriving music scene, with the Freebird, Culhane’s Irish Pub, the Fly’s Tie Irish Pub, Cliff’s at The Beaches, (across the street) and the Landshark Café.
The former Misery Heads of Five Star Failure have come up with a harder-edged take on the modern rock sound with tightly orchestrated grooves that get the adrenaline flowing and the heart racing. It’s a hardcore sound that has taken rock in a bold new direction, away from the mundane classic rock of the past. (Please no more Styx.) If the members of FSF can hold this project together long enough to make inroads into the modern rock scene, then they definitely have a leg up on the legions of other bands trying to get noticed. It’s a jungle out there, but FSF has the hard rock machete to cut through the dense underbrush. Slash away, dudes.
|
|
