Bang Camaro @ the Bluebird Theater
By Ricardo Baca | February 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
Bang Camaro brought their gigantic stage show to the Bluebird Theater on Saturday night, and it was easy to feel the Boston metal band’s energy. Photos by Reverb contributor Doug Beam.
Twenty lead singers and a plethora of guitarists railing old-school metal with the assistance of a bass player and drummer.
That’s all we knew about Bang Camaro going into the Boston band’s Saturday gig at the Bluebird Theater. Of course, only one stat sticks out in that equation: 20 lead singers.
That’s right. 20. Lead. Singers.
Listening to the ’80s metal that makes up the band’s MySpace page, it was obvious that the term choir is more accurate than saying Bang Camaro has multiple lead singers. And this choir-fronting, Bon Jovi-aping rock band’s music has an undeniable electricity to their recordings — a quality that is amplified in their ridiculously unique, hella-shticky live show.
Throwing down silly tracks like “Nightlife Commando” and “Pleasure (Pleasure),” the band was instantly likable on Saturday. The stage set-up alone was unique.
In front: Three guitarists, including a true shredder on a Flying V, and a bass player. On the backline: Between six and nine singers, each with their own mic stand and sweet headbanging moves. The drummer in the way back kept the beat, and the stage picture was so drastic that the conversation in the pit was rampant.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say, ‘I haven’t seen anything like this ever before.’ ”
“I’m a total closet metal head, and this is great.”
“God, can you imagine their sound check?”
“If I was listening to this on a CD, I’d be totally bored. But this is amazing.”
“It’s like a high school talent show!”
“I can’t tell if this is hilarious or terrible. But I can’t keep my eyes off them.”
“This is among my top three live bands, ever. No, seriously! They might have passed Fugazi.”
“I just had a ‘Living on a Prayer’ moment.”
“This is like Arcade Fire as a heavy metal band … only without the nuanced songwriting.”
“I think Bang Camaro just brought me back to high school.”
And my personal favorite: “This is definitely the dumbest hour of my life, but it’s fun.”
The fans weren’t the only ones hamming it up. The band played the part with aplomb. “Fellas,” one of the singers said halfway through the set, “I need you to free your minds! Ladies, I need you to lose your shirts.”
Unsurprisingly, the men outnumbered the women at this rock show about 10 to 1. But the dudes weren’t afraid to get involved. When the band came back on stage to encore with “Nightlife Commando,” one of the singers poked fun at his band’s simplistic lyrics. “This song,” he said, “is called ‘Nightlife Commando.’ If you don’t know the words to the chorus, it goes, ‘Nightlife Commando … just a Nightlife Commando.’ ”
Everybody laughed, but a few seconds later the pit was flooded with dudes joining the “pit choir” and helping the already sizable “stage choir” close out the night with a bang.
The music isn’t anything to write home about. It’s regurgitated throwback metal.
But the presentation is absolutely worth seeing. It’s not the Polyphonic Spree or Everything Absent or Distorted, or Broken Social Scene. It’s a bunch of dudes singing and shouting in unison, reincarnating the spirit that infused Def Leppard’s music with so much juvenile glory.
The wicked riff in “Rock Rebellion” sounds like something that came out of the Queens of the Stone Age camp, but the mammoth wall of vocals that comes next completes the mix. “Push Push Lady Lightening” was as infectious and dancey as Franz Ferdinand’s debut. And with lyrics like, “I wanna take you higher / Let’s make electric fire,” the kitsch-metal spirit is alive and well.
They make the kind of headbanging, axe-wielding music that was born to have a starring role in the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” games, and sure enough, “Pressure (Pressure)” is a favorite on “Rock Band.” Oddly, Bang Camaro guitarist Bryn Bennett is a part-time programmer at Harmonix, the company that created both “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band.”
Ricardo Baca is the pop music critic at The Denver Post.
Photographer Doug Beam is a regular contributor to Reverb.
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