Introducing: Fight Like Apes - page 2

08-09-2008 11:33

Another EP - 'David Carradine Is A Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch' EP, was released in Ireland at the end of 2007, and its lead track ‘Do You Karate?’ – a homage to chopsocky queen Cynthia Rothrock - consolidated their position as the most exciting new band in their homeland, rounding off a year of gigging around Ireland, the UK and a trip to New York for CMJ.

2008 picked up where 2007 left off - more UK touring with Untitled Musical Project (on the Artrocker tour) and The Von Bondies, wherein several members of Jason Stollmeyer’s garage-rock mavens were regularly kidnapped by marauding FLApes and held hostage overnight in Travelodge’s all over the British Isles. A smash and grab raid at SXSW followed, before the group moved to Seattle this Spring to record their debut album with producer John Goodmanson (Los Campesinos, Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill), scheduled for release later this year on new Irish indie Model Citizen.

The album goes by the name ‘Fight Like Apes And The Mystery Of The Golden Medallion’ (referencing Mr T’s post A-Team cartoon series). Twelve sticks of electronic punk dynamite, ranging from the miniscule, eight second BLAM of ‘Megameanie’ to the echoing canyons of sound and space at the climax of ‘Snore Bore Whore’. FLA faves like ‘Jake Summers’, ‘Lend Me Your Face’ and ‘Do You Karate?’ have been jacked up, stripped down and retooled in John Goodmanson’s Seattle garage, to emerge gleaming in the sunlight like renegades at some pumped-up monster truck convention. Hearing these babies for the first time is like being given the keys to the Millennium Falcon when you’ve been used to doing the milk round.

Emphatically pro-profanity and anti-mundanity, Fight Like Apes choose music as their weapon; a synth-stained hybrid of tasers and nunchucks in high-voltage pop songs the size of Saturn.

It's the Apes' planet - we just live on it.