Chicago nu-rollers Something Is Waiting have released the official live version of their track "Unholy Alliance," along with a live video showing the band in action at Chicago's famed Empty Bottle.
"Unholy Alliance (Live)" is the second single off Something Is Waiting's upcoming new live album, Livelick, out October 24th on Learning Curve Records.
Stream the "Unholy Alliance" live video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auhmPOLkfSk
Pre-order Livelick, here: https://somethingiswaiting.bandcamp.com/album/livelick
Recorded at a headlining show at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2023, Livelick captures one entire Something Is Waiting set, start to finish, with no edits or overdubs. In an era where live content has been exponentially devalued, thanks to an endless flood of casual phone clips, Something Is Waiting has chosen to go against the grain and deliver an official, old-school live album.
Skating a line between noise rock, glam, and groove metal, Something Is Waiting is the primary purveyor of its own self-proclaimed genre, “nu roll.” The band carves its own strange path, explained accurately by The Chicago Reader with these words: "On their first few releases they focused on big, mean, chaos-bringing noise rock a la Unsane. Over the past few years, though, they’ve charted a new direction, trading in nihilistic bludgeoning for Sunset Strip swagger forged with a sonic sledgehammer of '90s metal... A bizarre hybrid of White Zombie and Guns N’ Roses, pairing high-gloss metallic guitar with [vocalist Eddie] Gobbo’s shrill, confrontational shrieks." Rarely does a band so strange, rock so hard.
To complicate matters further, Gobbo is a wildly creative lyricist who conjures surreal scenarios with the euphoric wordplay of a Beat poet. He gives this peek at the meaning behind the "Unholy Alliance" lyrics: "It's a song about the world and how things like money, status and convenience will turn someone you would normally not fuck with, into someone (or something) you regularly and gladly fuck with. A transactional experience. The irony is that occasionally similarities can become apparent in the process."
Initially a quintet, Something Is Waiting operates as a trio now, consisting solely of Gobbo, drummer Idin Alexzander, and guitarist William T. Fay. Livelick captures this 3-piece lineup, fully dominating in the live setting -- a lethally tight live band, replicating its album sounds faithfully and rocking with steamroller energy. Gobbo howls and prowls with utter conviction; Alexzander pounds with power and grace; Fay does the work of three musicians, using a custom live rig to create ripping lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass sounds.
The Livelick setlist consists of all eight songs from 2023's Absolutely album, plus one song from each of the two preceding albums – 2019's Songs from the Sally Beauty Pavilion and 2016's The Something Is Waiting Band. The live soundboard audio was mixed by engineer (and former SIW bandmate) Pete Grossmann at Bricktop Recording (Weekend Nachos, Frail Body). In addition to the audio, the entire set was immortalized on video, with video editing handled by mastering engineer Blake Bickel (Bronson Arm).
Photo by Brian Santostefano
No comments:
Post a Comment