A.R.E. Weapons
Modern Mayhem

Defend Music 2007

By ignore staff

The Weapons have hung on and stayed true. Yes, they are the only good punk group in history to receive its first press mentions from fashion rags read by horny wives of Goldman Sachs execs, but have you listened to their first two albums lately? Putting them on is still like walking into a gas station with no cameras and discovering that the fat clerk shat himself dead in the bathroom. And seeing them live is like, go fuck yourself, witnessing the third Misfits show or partying with Jason Voorhees. Colossal synths courtesy of Paul Sevigny stab your brain as two dudes out of Heavy Metal Parking Lot unleash vox and guitar tougher and rougher than chainmail.

Modern Mayhem, the Weapons' third full-length and second for Defend Music, finds them toning down their electro-asphalt Huns-aesthetic for a leaner, more traditional, hook-laden direction in ode to ‘70s Rotten Apple punk. The album starts with a scream on “We Don’t Care,” the song shooting off a dark, intimate stage into a blitzed mosh as the band empties a clip of late night lupine howls.

Longer and less polished than their previous efforts, Mayhem works as both a pseudo-live and pseudo-cover album; though we hope they still consider doing both of those for real in the future. A looser, faster sensibility is on display here, in coordinance with the group’s passion to somewhat aggressively align itself with old guard peers like Suicide, Television, Voidoids and the original New York Dolls.

As New York’s scenesters currently tie their hands to fun, albeit literally safer, whiter, bands like Animal Collective and Vampire Weekend, the Weapons stand a band apart singing about IRL things like “Keys, Money, Cigarettes” atop low-rent, high-suspense fuzz befitting vintage Walter Hill productions. “Hey Joey” is the band's first ever track to feature awesome, well-drink sax, “Let’s Go to Time Square” is an unlikely valentine anthem to the home of MTV (and to serving time in Iraq), and highlight “Do You Wanna Hang Around?” is a cheeky, spoken-word love ballad—zoing!—to compliment “Netty’s Girl” by the Beastie Boys. The addition of new drummer Erik Rapin means the Weapons are now a carpool of grown men and the only band, off the head, that currently deserves being called a real deal American punk band. Pay them..

This discourse of A.R.E. Weapons' Modern Mayhem is written for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007.