“People have one thing in common: they just want to rock and roll all night.”
These were the first words spoken by Titus Andronicus frontman Patrick Stickles, as the New Jersey punk outfit took the stage at The Frequency last Saturday. The band would go on to prove their claim with a thrashing performance that literally rocked into the a.m.
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The band’s set lasted roughly an hour and a half as they played songs off their critically acclaimed 2010 release The Monitor and a recently released triple LP opus The Most Lamentable Tragedy.
From the first somber chords on Andronicus’ opening song “No Future Part Three,” the band held the energy in the palm of their hand and never let go.
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It was a tight fit at The Frequency with the six-piece band taking up almost every inch of space on the stage. But the band’s ability to translate the immensity of their rock opera sound into such an intimate venue left moshers with sore necks and burning shoulder sockets. When the crowd got moving, it became quite difficult to discern who was in the pit and who was in the band.
Andronicus’ sound took elements of east coast hardcore, such as harsh vocals, fuzzed out guitars and thumping rock beats, and combined them with more grandiose and thematic elements that felt heavily Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired.
The way these elements contrasted made for an extremely engaging formula. Their music’s trajectory resembled that of a train wildly skirting down a railroad.
The punk riffs shoveled the coal that kept the train rolling, the thematic elements created the notion that the train was starting to fall off, and just as it felt like things were about to derail, Stickles’ howling vocals would put the train back on track and send it hurling forward.
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But it wasn’t just the concept of their sound that made them so engaging; the true marvel lied in how well Andronicus performed their music. With abrasive vocals, three guitar players, a rhythm section and a keyboardist, there was an overwhelming amount of instrumentation.
It’s a daunting task to be able to serve such a large array of instrumentation in a way that is remotely digestible, but Andronicus did it effortlessly. The instrumentation never muddied together — the keyboards and guitars layered over the rhythm section perfectly and within each layer the coinciding guitar riff and melody was always discernible.
Andronicus’ range was prominent through the show’s conclusion when they paid homage to Wisconsin’s music history with a cover of The Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun,” leading into the band’s last rebellious roar, “A Pot to Piss in.”
Titus Andronicus’ ability to distill their grandiose discography into a high-octane shot of punk adrenaline shook both the crowd and the ceiling above them. The Frequency is probably still rumbling.
