Schoolyard Heroes
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 29-Nov-07 @ 01:22 PM|
HQ: Seattle, WA NOW PLAYING: Abominations (STOLEN TRANSMISSION) WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: Fronted by former musical theater enthusiast Ryann Donnelly, this band of self-proclaimed geeks and nerds weave musical tales of human horror and apocalyptic foreshadowing. YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: X-Ray Spex / My Chemical Romance / Yeah Yeah Yeahs STORY: Taylor Mason PHOTO: Brion Topolski "I feel that now is the time for an apocalyptic album," says Schoolyard Heroes' fro-headed bassist Jonah Bergman. "There's so much crazy shit going on in the world right now that it feels like there is a storm that's about to happen. The apocalyptic rain is about to pour down." Delivered with razor-sharp, prog-punk riffs and blood-curdling shrieks, the songs on Schoolyard Heroes' Stolen Transmission debut album Abominations induce the kind of terror that rivals that of a fatalistic doomsday double feature. Spawned from the creepiest place of all-high school-and the same Pacific Northwest scene as bands like Blood Brothers, Botch and Pretty Girls Make Graves, Schoolyard Heroes have been cranking out odes to darkness, not to mention a couple Misfits covers, since their inception in 1999. "I told Jonah I knew how to play guitar because I really wanted to be in a band and I totally couldn't," remembers the white-lie telling frontwoman Ryann Donnelly, who's appearance resembles an uncanny combination of the flame-haired Columbia from Rocky Horror Picture Show and Blondie's fearless leader Debbie Harry. "It was like NOFX with a girl singer, honestly," says Donnelly of the band's initial sound. "It was a 15-year-old girl in love with pop-punk, singing lyrics written by an 18-year-old boy that was equally obsessed with NOFX, the Vandals and Guttermouth." With two albums-2003's The Funeral Sciences and 2005's Fantastic Wounds-behind them, Schoolyard Heroes have definitely dropped out of Pop-Punk University and delved into some pretty sinister subject matter with the release of Abominations. Recorded over an 18-day period with producer John Goodmanson (Sleater-Kinney, Blood Brothers) at Seattle studio Electro Kitty, what can be called the band's most mature album to date is packed with boisterous and frenetic horror-rock anthems, like "Dude, Where's My Skin" and "Cemetery Girls," that'll have you shaking in your Creepers, if not rolling over in your coffin. Add the band's volcanic live performance, capsized by Donnelly's hypnotic onstage antics-and you've got a recipe for disaster-but in a good way. "She has that intangible thing where she can fully captivate an audience just by standing there," says Bergman, who's also known to read excerpts from zombie books in between songs. "It's something you can't teach or learn. You just have it or you don't. "Abominations focuses on a lot of individuals who are people who kind of walk the line between being human and being creatures in the sense of their compassion and their relationships with people," he goes on to explain. "One of the ideas that we actually had for the album was instead of having song titles, we'd just have the phone number of each person that it's about... But I think it would have been [too much work for our lawyer] if we had done that." ALT Under The Influence: "THE MISFITS' Static Age teetered on the line between pop, punk and metal with really good choruses that are simple but totally memorable," says Schoolyard Heroes leader Ryann Donnelly. "Plus, they all had crazy muscles, wore tight pants and had these things called devil locks running down their faces. They were serious showmen." ALT |
