As a troubled youth with an anarchic streak and an interest in punk rock, I found a home in the Grand Rapids DIY community. Here, I fell in love with house shows and hung out with a lot of kids who dressed in all black. I love this city, but the problem is: when you stay in one spot for too long, you forget what you have. It can be hard to remember that most towns don’t have the opportunity to see live music.
Having only lived in Grand Rapids my whole life, I saw the same people play in the same bands for years. In this limited worldview, I observed what I felt was a homogenous aesthetic develop. Slowly, as venues shut down and bands broke up, I got tired of seeing the same La Dispute clone, or another synth-pop act, or some new “electronic artist." Like every late teen, early twenty-something, I thought my scene was on its death bed. But through the beautiful serendipity that is the local scene, I found a band that reminded me how much fun it is to take a chance. I discovered Ape Not Kill Ape.
The first time I saw Ape Not Kill Ape (ANKA), I was drunk on gin, heartbroken and empty-headed. Some friend took me to some venue called something edgy like “the Deathhouse,” and I wore postmodern cynicism like a uniform — dressed in some stupid Hawaiian shirt with only two buttons. The spot looked like some lost "Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater" level, some kinda warehouse with half the floor space dominated by a crude plywood stage, the other half composed of a rickety bowl, skuffed by switches and righteous grinds. But that night, no one was skating. Everyone was wearing black and looking sad because someone didn’t love them, I guess. I too, was looking sad because someone didn’t love me.
I didn’t know anything about the band. Yet, even with no preformed ideas, ANKA defied expectations. My gut instinct told me to reject the four boys on stage, but a familiar face on drums reassured me they’d at least be playing in time. They opened with a bit of static from the dull hum of one electric guitar. The first guitar began to howl, and another joined in a strange discordant harmony, a sound like one resolved the others cacophony. Then the electric bass came in, walking smooth, with heavy steps. The effect is a hard-edged and ostentatious sound that feels deliberate, composed and well-organized. It builds until you feel the drone, the bass in your head and then the drums begin to strike with an intense precision. Once started, the whole band lurches forward, maybe a bit too quickly, like a clockwork doomsday machine run amuck, firing with deadly accuracy, stopping periodically for repairs.
Then, once you’re hypnotized by the intensity and the consistency of the rhythm, their singer lets out a low moan, spilling forth words as heavy as the music. In the bits and pieces I found amidst the electric noise, there was an accessible message. The lyrics, as I caught them, were poetic and filled with shockingly fresh, yet familiar imagery. Their entire aesthetic seemed to reject everything I had come to resent about local music: the obscure self-importance, the repetition of safe sounds and the vaguely cynical mode that had, over these years, jaded audiences, myself included. ANKA broke down barriers. They were counterculture in a way I hadn’t considered. They rejected the ironic detachment of our day with raw, emotionally charged sincerity.
Their live performance is a type of ritual catharsis. A longing, primal call back to days of browbeating and fire dancing. It’s passionate. It's emotional. It’s murderous impulse and a desire for mayhem condensed and filtered through amplifiers. It’s all the things I haven’t seen a rock band do in Grand Rapids yet, even after years of searching. They are the long-prophesied saviors to my punk rock dreams of seeing some kind of proto-Stooges or MC5 in an abandoned basement. They give me hope for the future. They are a lot of fun.
Their debut album Bushman takes the raw power of ANKA’s live performance, manicures and balances it, doing so without diluting the impact. Nothing will match the experience of sweating on your friends in a dark room shouting, “You think you’re...special,” while "Chaingang Depression" reaches its thunderous climax. But for what the record lacks in terms of physical experience, it offers clarity.
Bushman allows you to hear every word of Adis’ haunting baritone clearly before it explodes with the same fury as a mosh pit. The physical release even lets you read along. The record brings the same level of intense musicianship they put into their live shows with no downtime for fixing strings or replacing drumsticks or tuning, just a well-polished musical experience. In other words, all the fun of ANKA without spilling your beer in the pit.
The album really crystallizes that memory of the first show. Well, you’ve got to put the record on high volume and stick your head between the speakers to match the physical intensity of the vibration, but the music still puts you into that trance. You still find yourself wearing the thousand yard, grindstone stare. You still think about four young men pouring themselves into their work. Thinking about people giving themselves totally to something so inherently fleeting as a local act. But they demand to be heard, despite the absurd pointlessness.
Bushman slaps you awake and forces you to feel alive, in much the same the way you’re forced to feel alive when someone tries to drown you in a bucket. With their hand against your head, you can’t help but give up fighting against that sentiment. The music is like feeling the warmth of their palm on the nape of your neck, and as your lungs fill with water, you can finally remember that you aren’t alone, and that you love being alive. Then it stops. Truly if there was a cure for post-ironic cynicism, or proof of the value inherent to local music, it’s this album.
Listen to it on Spotify, find them on Facebook or support them off Bandcamp. Worth your time. They’d probably road trip to New Mexico if you asked nicely.
Grant Kammer is a contributor to Daily Lobo Music. He can be reached at music@dailylobo.com.
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