Allez Allez say Night Marchers

Swami John Reis and the Night Marchers sat on this set for more than two years. Reis posts that it’s because he wanted each vinyl pressing hand-stamped. The only living human who does this, apparently, does about two or three a day…etc. etc., and down into the rabbit hole with our favorite local punk-rawk ne’er-do-well. More likely, with the impending Rocket reunion, the time is ripe.

Allez Allez hits more like Crypt than anything else Reis has done outside the silo, his buzz-saw guitar carving songs out of tree stumps, his throat burning with bile and the (too) occasional rocker-affect “Woo.” Unfortunately, for wood-art connoisseurs with more than a middle school mentality, the images he’s carving are pretty base: crotch-sniffing, piss-taking, decapitation, fisting...you get the gisting. No one’s ever accused the Swami of lyrical import, and on “Loud, Dumb, and Mean,” he seems cool with that (“The only things that speak to me/ are loud, dumb, and mean”).

The volume-craving two-chord blam opening “Tropical Depression” sets the table for this platter of classic grind and garage-built club rockers that hit their high-water mark around the stupid-fun punk of “All Hits” and “2 Guitars Sing,” the pop-rock-y “Pain,” and blues-groover “Big in Germany.” I keep going back for more “Tropical Depression,” though. I’m a Jehu girl.

Record: Allez Allez
Artist: Night Marchers
Label: Swami Records
Track list: (1) Tropical Depression (2) Loud, Dumb, and Mean (3) All Hits (4) Thar She Blows (5) Pain (6) 2 Guitars Sing (7) (Wasting Away in) Javalinaville (8) Big in Germany (9) I Wear the Horns (10) Ned Lud (11) Roll On (12) Fisting the Fan Base
Tour dates: 2/21, Café du Nord, San Francisco; 2/22, Satellite, Los Angeles; 2/23, Alex’s Bar, Long Beach; 2/24, Casbah, San Diego; 2/28, Underground Arts, Philadelphia; 3/1, Ottobar, Baltimore; 3/2, Glasslands, Brooklyn; 3/3, Great Scott, Boston