Wildcatting

Something like a fireball spurting monster truck, but bafflingly graceful, like a soaring, contorting trapeze acrobat: Wildcatting are so ostentatious and overwhelming in their slamming tumultuous riffs, so devastating in their tightly-locked rhythms and lightning-bolt-hysteria fuzz solos, …yet, so succinct, able to wind their beastly napalm-shock-therapy-rock down to the most lucid of brush-stroke subtlety, and give you that brief eye of the storm heave before the roller coaster drops again; and, before you know it, they’re building it back up with some metallic Gregorian haunt-feedback churn, melting the walls before sending in the swift, decisive wrecking ball.
Soft-spoken demigods, valiant gunslingers from a sun-baked cellophane Leone picture, meticulous yet raucously ramshackle, like kung-fu scientists – these potential saviors of instrumental guitar-and-drum rock formed as stereotypically simple as the ol’-set up of mutual acquaintances meeting and jamming in basements. Curious that four scrawny, shaggy mid-Michiganders with thrift store shirts and trucker hats can make other bands, metal-heads or casual indie-rockers tremble as though thrown at the feet of the wrathful Zeus himself. Guitars roar over spastically streaming mutant-jazz percussion fits; each composition is an epic dissertation.
The four met around Milford, MI, northwest of Detroit, with three fellow pedal-heads, guitarists Scotty Iulianelli, Ben Audette, and bassist Nick Jones joining the relentless jujutsu-drummer Brandon Moss (who originally played with Ann Arbor’s beloved avant-indie-rockers Bear Vs. Shark.) Through their second year, they holed up together in Scotty’s studio in the basement of a big cluttered house in the woodsy boondocks north of Milford. The goal was to capture the blistering ferocity of their live set onto this epic little disc – titled: How to Survive a Sneak Attack, an exhilarating odyssey of avant-garde experimentalism mixed with a palpable investment in classic-rock’s hook-filled structures and grimacing guitar grittiness – Deerhoof’s erratic broken-spoke rigidness with the MC5’s brazen and unabashed primal garage gut-punch; Can’s spooky expansive jamming with Led Zeppelin’s forceful guitar trounces revved to near-self-destructive tempos – yet never losing its grip. –Jeff Milo, September 2008

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