What the…? What have you been breeding, Cleveland? If I had known a band existed in the area that could inspire me to get up in the morning and top out my stereo volume so I can hear the fuzz from all the way downstairs while I’m makin’ the coffee—then come back and not actually turn down the volume while I’m drinkin’ the coffee—and just sit in stunned disbelief while I obtain the momentum that instills in myself the feeling of reaching the top of the Agro-Crag, I suppose my life could have been a lot different these past few years. I would certainly have been this band’s roadie by now.
I was introduced to This Moment In Black History on Christmas Eve Eve at the Beachland Ballroom with a set that left me hanging on every riff. The thing about TMIBH is that they have the ability to leave in their wake a feeling of being mugged and punched upside the head. It’s a grand thing.
This band began their career in 2002! I was a young Spritle cutting my teeth on the classics (somewhere between Green Day and Judas Priest) back then, not yet ready for the sonic burden a band like this lays on you. The time has come, now, to inherit their sound into my ears, and it’s a great coming of age story that may be picked up as the next Disney Channel movie special. Where I have been since this band has hit the ground running is another matter entirely, but seven years were spent in Tibet. In any case, this has been a fine time to discover them because they seem to be in their prime.
Since ’03, the band has amassed three studio albums and a handful of EPs/splits. I think overall their output has been very solid, with their latest album, 2010’s Public Square, being their tightest bundle of freakouts. The band, consisting of vocalist Chris Kulcsar, Shredmaster General-guitarist Buddy Akita, and a rhythm section of Lawrence Caswell and Bim Thomas on bass and drums respectively, is a ball of energy. Kulcsar is a youthful man-child who looks like a dude I could have gone to school with a few years back. He seems to maintain a perpetual twenty-two year old look even though I have no idea how old he really is.
As far as their sound goes, this isn’t just a punk band, this is an explosive band. I don’t want to know them as anything else. They are incendiary, and they will blow up in your face. The origin of their sound to me is based off an intense, in your grill hardcore of an old school styling. There’s an inherently modern edge to what they do, but I’m sure the music owes a lot to influential artists of the ’80s. But the thing is, they don’t sound like anyone but themselves. Buddy Akita’s playing even seems to harken back to many of the classic shredmasters of a bygone era. He’s like the James Williamson or Greg Ginn of Cleveland. Or probably both plus more because I hear a surplus of shrieking, drop-it-while-it’s-hot licks, and staccato dagger bursts that take me down a ghostly well, into a din where all my favorite guitarists through the ages dwell.
There’s something to be said about the variety of their songs. It’s as if each one is packaged as a different kind of awesome. Like I said, this band is a band of energy that puts out energy, and gives it to us in a nice care package. Well, I haven’t heard a single song that sounded like another song of theirs. Or was at least on the same wavelength. There’s a wide, powerful spectrum on display.
Their album Public Square highlights this feeling the best. It seems to house many of their most put-together songs. “MFA” and “About Last Night” in particular will be helping me wake up for years to come. As a whole, it’s a crazy urban soundscape that sounds like a concept album about a dull, grey, gritty, angry Cleveland metropolitan sidewalk.
The real magic is of course found in their live show, and it enforces everything about them. When their set ended that fateful night, witnesses will contest that I didn’t know who I was for seven minutes, was shocked and sullen, and honest to God, the corners of my eyes were moist with some unconscious expression of joy and… relief.
I knew I was in for something special when Kulcsar… started talking. He engaged the crowd with a charming charismatic banter before the show started, and while it was going on, that was hilarious and insulting, with an impeccable snide that I really appreciated. I thought, “He can really set the tone of this group here.” Then, Clark Kent took off his glasses, and they launched into the set, and Kulcsar became a dancing, shouting maniac in his classic plain-ass tee and jeans, doing a familiar rhythmic jig across the stage that I recognized. It closely resembled a dancing custom I do sometimes alone in my house. Kulcsar led the frenzy flanked by the rhythm section of Caswell and Thomas, who looked distinguished in the manner of having just walked out of a gig at the Apollo Theater in the ’50s, and Akita, who stood stoic, hammering out riffs. He wore plaid, had an OFF! t-shirt, glasses, goatee, and bore a striking resemblance to my friend’s sister’s brother.
What really hit me and what really set the tone for them, was how they traversed across that playbook of energetic songs. Every song was high-octane, but every song had a different high to it. It was as if one song was an energy drink, another one gave you wings, then they played a shot of expresso, popped an amphetamine, then just kneed you in the solar-plexus because they could. This was my first time hearing these tunes, and they had a musical bag of tricks. There was a hardcore song that must have clocked in at less than a minute.. There was a Stooges-ey plodding sex bomb, fast straight ahead barnburners that all had a different vibe to them, a melodic, almost lighter, ascending tune, and they finished with something that morphed into a grandiose noise jam.
Kulcsar had a keyboard that illicited some beeps and boops into the chaotic fusion. Audience members and Kulcsar bickered back and forth throughout, and then with exaggerated contempt, he threw a water bottle into the crowd, and I know I must have lost it inside at that point. I somehow saw those globules of water molecules slow down as they sprayed over everyone, I think because they were so much slower than the music in the air. When It was over, it was pure metabolic burnout. A classic crash that I tried to compensate with alcohol.
The best thing TMIBH offer is something unique in everything they put out. Each show seems to be a raw display and source platform for the distribution of some bizarre new energy source, and each song amps you up in a new and exciting way, and holy shit if it’s something I’ve never quite felt before.
