Call Me Lightning at Project Lodge
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Everything about Milwaukee’s Call Me Lightning is of gargantuan proportions. In fact, the band’s explosive The Who-on-anabolic-steroids approach barely fit into the Project Lodge on Thursday. Shane Hochstetler’s head-rattling rhythms resemble a gorilla beating on tympanis with tree trunks. And Nathan Lilley’s wailing vocals and massive chords slam so tightly into Tyler Chicorel’s wandering bass lines that the entire band just sounded like one massive instrument.
The brew-city bashers took an opening swing at the crowd with the heavy gallop of “Called To The Throne” (the opening cut from this year’s metallically-titled When I Am Gone My Blood Will Be Free). Lilley’s huge caveman hair flew around his head as he hacked away at his guitar strings, looking up only to belt out his melodic howls. Meanwhile, Hochstetler plunged into each hit like he wanted to hammer through his drumheads. The trio blasted its way through a set that completely avoided the band’s kitschier, more dance-rock oriented past and pulled plenty of jams from When I Am Gone.
As the set trudged forward, some kid with saggy pants and a hat cocked to the side was going cat-shit crazy; running into the wall, punching the air, rolling around on the ground, and screaming along to seemingly every word—even going as far as to jump on stage and shout into Chicorel’s microphone. By set-closer “Old Cactus” a second party wandered in to compete with the band for attention, this time in the form of some sculpted, shirtless meathead—resembling Dolph Lundgren—who kept wandering back and forth between band members and screaming random shit of approval as they played on. The closing number flew over our heads as the contest culminated with saggy-pants being picked up by almost-Lundgren for a 30-second “mosh-pit” dry hump.
The local openers’ sets absolutely killed, too. Supercharged garage-duo The Hussy cruised through a ton of nasty rockers from its upcoming full-length Cement Tomb Mind Control. The new material is loaded with the same snotty vocal interaction between guitarist-vocalist Bobby Wegner and drummer-vocalist Heather Sawyer and laced with hissing chords and bashed rhythms. The Transgressions cranked out some down-picked, California-styled punk rock. The threesome is readying to embark on an upcoming three-month tour. And finally, noise rockers Zebras made a triumphant return from the departure of drummer Shawn Pierce in May with drummer Dr. Awkward and bassist Mr. Alarm (who played as Zebras’ noise specialist, utilizing a theramin, a vocoder, and plenty of nuked samples) from Milwaukee’s IfIHadAHiFi in tow.
