Last night Music Hall of Williamsburg played host to Los Angeles’s amazing punk band The Bronx in two formats. Headlining as The Bronx they played over an hour of the amazingly frenetic rock-n-roll for which they’re known, but also making their Brooklyn debut as Mariachi el Bronx, the self described “all white guys playing mariachi music.” Tucked into the middle of these two bands was Brisbane Australia’s Violent Soho filling out a bill of out-of-towners performing to the city that lent the bands their names.
My own exposure to The Bronx started with the video “They Will Kill Us All (Without Mercy)”, the lead single off of their 2003 self-titled first album. In it, a black guy wanders around a Los Angeles neighborhood mouthing the anthemic lyrics about junkie life while getting into confrontations before dying of gunshots, lending the musical swagger a visual compliment. It hit me like a thrown elbow in a pit. Punk rock with a great guitar tone that’s part Buzzcocks and part Buzz saw, a barbed hook so well done it pulls you further in each time it’s deployed and by the time it had ended, I was scouring the internet to find a copy of the album to buy as quickly as possible.
The rest of the album is just as amazing. Big and powerful from the first seconds of the “Heart Attack American” while also not afraid to take their band in different and unexpected directions shown in the closing song “Los Angeles”, a group chorused sing-a-long work about escaping the city they’re from. I was a fan in the true fanatic sense. Immediately and passionately, it was as though I’d been born again, ready to go door-to-door and circle pit for The Bronx in hopes of saving the little lost lambs of the world from mediocrity. So anticipation was high enough already, but that crested with the news of who was touring with them.
In addition to The Bronx, was the other incarnation of the band, Mariachi El Bronx.
Though I was instantly in love with this incarnation (their “Cell Mates” video was one of my first posts) when hearing the album Mariachi El Bronx I was really uncertain where the band ended and where the studio magic began. I’ll admit, I was entirely incredulous and totally sold the musicians short.
Taking to the stage in matching black uniforms with silver piping and accents, the members of punk band, The Bronx were joined by a violinist and guitarrón player and bassist Brad Magers trading up and displaying his chops on Trumpet. Showing the band willing to go the extra distance to sell the experience to us.
When the first notes of “Slave Labor” started, it all seemed to kick in like Rosemary Woodhouse’s worst nightmare about her baby. “This is real, this is all real!” Matt Caughthran can sing. Can really sing. Clean and clear and strong. In addition to the music moving the audience, Matt’s face beamed a radiant grin every second he wasn’t crooning to us. He looked like he was the luckiest guy in the room, but to be fair, the audience was pretty lucky too. I had never expected we’d see Mariachi El Bronx live on the East Coast, and I’m so, so glad that we did. If they come to your town, there’s really no excuse for you to not go and experience mariachi music as something more than just a soundtrack to your chips and salsa.
After Mariachi El Bronx finished their set, half of the crowd rather stupidly filed out leaving the remaining third of the audience to watch Brisbane’s Violent Soho, a band that took to the stage and immediately transported Music Hall of Williamsburg to Seattle 1990. Never heard of the band before this but was immediately hooked. It called to mind the best of Sub Pop from that era with feedback, flailing band members, and prominent sludgy distorted guitars in a sound that makes their inclusion on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! Records less a record deal and more inevitability. Seemingly unfazed by the lack of an audience they threw themselves enthusiastically into their set. Hair was set flying, chords whined at mistreatment, and the audience was distanced at first, but by the end of the set, as the pit kids made their way back to the floor, approval in the form violent dancing infected the crowd leaping from participant to participant until in the end Violent Soho had managed to make the kind of converts that any band would be happy to have.
When The Bronx returned to stage the audience that had filed out found its way back and the floor was packed. Surveying the crowd you could immediately pick out the people who weren’t really prepared for what was to come. People who had dressed nice rather than pragmatic, girls in glasses holding mixed drinks near the stage, and people there to be seen rather than be scene thinking they’d be safe off to the side. There were signs warning people as they entered that absolutely no stage diving would be tolerated. Surely the kids up front would be spared a foot in the face.
Within moments of launching into the first song, the first foot to face greeting took place, and you could see people fighting to get close to the stage crushing the people fighting to escape. It was madness. It was like watching an attack on a nature documentary, as the herd animals fight to flee the predators. Gone was the silver piping, gone were the silver tones of Matt’s mariachi vocals, replaced with a pig iron intonation coupled with the guitars and drums to compel movement activating our primal pack mentality. Gone is fight or flight. Replaced by mosh or move.
The set list pulled from all three albums with the singles having been spread out and arranged for maximum impact. The crowd called out for favorites, only to find their pleas ignored. Matt worked the audience like a master craftsman, turning us from rock to sharp flint attacking each other in our enthusiasm. Stopping only to pause for breath clearly as exhausted as we, but we found the band feeding on our energy.
There were times when Matt fighting the audience to sing, handing us the microphone to shout our memorized lyrics with as much passion as we could find in those seconds. As we tried to pull him to us to bring him to us rather than us trying to rise up. We slammed into each other with a crushing fury trying to explode ourselves outward. When we fell, we brought each other back up. We tried to kill each other in the most polite ways possible out of camaraderie instead of malice.
No encore, but no encore was necessary. The Bronx played with heart for about an hour, we were in their thrall to the point where the audience moshed to the banter trying to capture what had just passed and what was to come. The closed with “They Will Kill Us All” the song that introduced me to The Bronx and it capped off the set perfectly, ending the incredible night on as high a note as we could hope. They have dates remaining on this tour, playing another NY show, coming to DC and Philly and I cannot stress this enough. If you like punk music in any capacity, you absolutely owe it to yourself and your rebellious 16 year old self to make your way to one of these shows.