New Noise
If this was 1996 and not 2011, then the only way you’d find out about a band like The Men is by digging through the racks at Tower Records and finding some track by them tucked away on some obscure Dischord compilation.
The reason? The Men’s blend of krautrock, shoegaze, screaming hardcore and strange proggy interludes pisses on genre boundaries way too much for any label/marketing manager to effectively box them into a neat package, so they just wouldn’t be pushed at all. Everybody knows that the key to a successful campaign is keeping the message simple, and The Men are anything but simple.
Fortunately, we now live in a world dominated by the information super highway, and for all the bad things that brings, it means that a band who would have usually been an interesting footnote in the history of New York’s hardcore scene can now get the recognition they deserve rather than years after they split up (Born Against springs to mind).
Now, at the risk of a battering from every well read ‘punk rock dude’ out there, at least when The Men say that they have DIY roots, they actually mean it. Formed back in 2008 around the core of Nick Chiericozzi, Chris Hansell, Rich Samis and Mark Perro, their first two albums were both completely self-funded and self released and both landed on blog-land like a hammer. What’s more, their recently released full length ‘Leave Home’ is definitely the most out-there and brilliant post hardcore record since the heyday of bands like the Nation of Uylsses and Fugazi.
the men - Leave Home - Bataille (sacred bones records) by pdis_inpartmaint
The Men are playing White Heat on the 13th December and The Shacklewell on the 14th.
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