Explosive rock duo Local H has an equally explosive month ahead, with the release of its new album Hey, Killer and the kickoff of an extensive three-month tour. To mark the band’s 25th anniversary, Local H is playing Chicago’s Metro on April 19 in honor of its very first show (with ’90s band Fig Dish playing a reunion set to open). Still driven by extraterrestrial guitarist Scott Lucas, Local H has seamlessly added new drummer Ryan Harding to the mix, losing nothing in the transition. Over the past few years the band has excelled at covers (check out the Local H version of Lorde’s “Team,” if you haven’t already) with all of its dual ferocity intact.
Hey, Killer, the band’s first full-length release with Harding and eighth overall, will be released on Tuesday, April 14, and the preview tracks show that the band’s original songs are as fierce as ever. Below is an exclusive A.V. Club preview of Hey, Killer’s “One Of Us.” Lucas describes: “Wrote the lyrics for this on the way to a wake for my friend Lexi. It’s a funeral song, but I didn’t want it to be morose. I wanted it to be unsentimental and kind of triumphant, and above all else, unapologetic. Anything less would’ve felt like lying.”
Local H can transform ferocity into an actual art form, but “One Of Us” offers some welcome dramatic peaks and valleys from the band. Lucas starts out slowly and sentimentally on the guitar, describing an old friend who was “the next one of us to become none of us.” His dynamic build finds a rage platform as he rants about being “blissfully numb to the feeling of years that were peeling away” and “the sweetness of cherries and stones.” Even the guitar solo is subdued, as Lucas sings this ode to a friend too-soon departed, but the song soon reaches Local H’s classic guitar-drum stratospheric heights.
In an A.V. Club interview a few weeks ago, Scott Lucas revealed that his favorite song was Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” The influence of this anthem is evident in what could be considered the second chorus toward the end of “One Of Us.” The shouted “We’re all one of us / Sooner or later” throws right back to the Trick’s “We’re all all right,” with Lucas striking his unapologetic and inclusive stance. We’ll all die someday, some too soon, but we can still rage against it as we remember the ones who have gone before us. If every track on Hey, Killers sports this kind of depth, Local H fans are in for yet another captivating thrill ride.
April 17—H.O.M.E.—Arlington Heights, Illinois
April 18—Tailgaters—Bolingbrook, Illinois
April 19—Metro—Chicago, Illinois
April 30—Firebird—St. Louis, Missouri
May 1—OK Conservatory—Oklahoma City, Oklahoma