Tag: murder ranks

If you catch one show this year, make it this weekend: Warlock Pinchers are back!
August 6, 2010 Off

If you catch one show this year, make it this weekend: Warlock Pinchers are back!

By Billy Thieme

If you were anywhere around the scene in Boulder and Denver in the late ’80s, chances are you were not only familiar with the Pinchers, but you probably carried some of their merchandise with you daily – clipped to your backpack or in your pocket – or you wore out your shield t-shirt as you attended other local shows, PETA rallies, and the occasional CIA hiring protests. These boys – King Scratchie (AKA Daniel Wanush), and K.C. K-Sum (AKA Andrew Novick), EE-Rok (AKA Eric Erickson), DD-Rok (AKA Derek van Westrum), 3KSK (AKA Mark Brooks) and a drum machine – were tearing up backyards, basements, punk venues like Boulder’s Ground Zero and warehouses with a fusion of Faith No More and Beastie Boys’ funk/punk/hip-hop, industrial and hardcore thrash, all wrapped up in intelligent and hilarious, tongue-in-cheek punk rock rage directed towards a spineless, shallow and directionless society.

Murder Ranks plays a fantastic fun brand of dancehall and hard dub, welcomes the highly anticipated return of Denver’s beloved Warlock Pinchers
May 25, 2010 Off

Murder Ranks plays a fantastic fun brand of dancehall and hard dub, welcomes the highly anticipated return of Denver’s beloved Warlock Pinchers

By Billy Thieme

Legendary front range provocateurs and pranksters Warlock Pinchers are getting back together for a show in August, and they’re determined to cash in on the nationwide – worldwide – “remake trend.” Of course, unlike much (most? all?) of the other remake grout that’s been piling up in our entertainment culture for lack of bricks, these guys promise to offer premium, relevant and fun entertainment, chock full of their characteristic DIY, punk rock/hip hop/scramble-wave hybrid mayhem.

Odds are they’ll be among the few projects that will deliver – and deliver over and above. And there will be plenty of merchandise to boot.

The show, scheduled for August 6th at the Gothic Theatre, promises to hold numerous surprises – from airborne meat (likely as not raw) to go-go dancers to cellophane-wrapped band members, in the vein of past extravaganzas. Those legendary shows featured shenanigans like all of the above, as well as various liquids and solids being dumped, sprayed or otherwise unleashed upon their audiences – all in front of pre-recorded (on cassette!) drums and live bass, guitars, screeching, rapping and scratching. In a word, unpredictable. In another word, unmatched – maybe unmatchable. This time, though, all instruments will be live, as the band has taken on Melvins drummer Dale Crover up on a decades-old offer to play with them.

The “Denver Sound,” long dead, makes room for lighter, noisier, funner genres in the scene
March 3, 2010 Off

The “Denver Sound,” long dead, makes room for lighter, noisier, funner genres in the scene

By Billy Thieme

The world-famous “Denver Sound” has petered out.

Which is not to say that the beautiful, often over-the-top and heavy handed gothic alt-country sound isn’t significant anymore – not at all. That sound helped put Denver back on the musical globe in the ’80s and ‘90s, and still attracts its fair share of fans. It’s still appreciated world-wide, and many remain ravenous for it – especially in Europe.

But it exists currently in a type of atrophy in Denver – it’s taken a back seat that has allowed an insurgence of more than a few different genres to begin to flourish, or re-flourish, as the case may be. Denver has a strong music scene – perhaps the strongest in the US (at the moment) – and part of its strength comes from its wide variety. So if the sometimes overbearing popularity of the “Denver Sound” – indeed the often overweighted nature of the sound itself – is waning, it can only be good news for the lighter, the more pop-y, the innovative and indie, or the more aggressive and punkier genres.

And that’s exactly what’s happening in the bar, dive, club, backyard and warehouse scene right now.