Man-Eaters

Reviews

Man-Eaters Twelve More Observations on Healthy Living LP

Chicago’s bad boys of rock return to slay with their second LP! I don’t know if that’s really accurate, but it starts out this review with a nice bang. Members of CÜLO, TARANTÜLA, etc. give it another go as their hard-rockin’, head-scarf-wearing ’70s cock-rock alter egos. The combination of classic-era hard rock and punk is nothing new these days—bands like JACK SAINTS, FANTASY LANE, MÖWER, and most noticeably ANNIHILATION TIME have tread this well-worn path before. With BLACK FLAG, SAINT VITUS, and the OBSESSED as their godfathers, these Chicago gents do a fine job of dirtheaded guitar worship. It feels like MAN-EATERS are a little more on the tongue-in-cheek parody side of this genre though, and they definitely fall more on the THIN LIZZY side with lots of boogie guitar licks and high struttin’ tude. My complaints here are that the guitar is not loud enough and the effects on the vocals are annoying as fuck. It’s a little too long for my attention span, but the artwork is cool and they’re probably a hoot(?) live. Smoke it…get high.

Man-Eaters Carbona Guerilla demo cassette

Hard to call this a mere demo since it’s already been given the pro-tape treatment by Pissed Off! in Malaysia, but here’s the latest from the TARANTÜLA/CÜLO family tree (technically the “latest” would be the Gentle Ballads… LP on Feel It, but I’m referring to the band itself). These kids have now doused themselves completely with rock’n’roll fluid, and perhaps this band is the match. Comparisons to ANNIHILATION TIME are inevitable, though our Windy City friends lean more heavily on a straight-ahead, four-on-the-floor lifestyle led by a relentlessly reverbed lead guitar. Punk disappearing in the rearview mirror, drugs and volume abound…this is primo gutter rock.

Man-Eaters Gentle Ballads for the Simple Soul LP

MAN-EATERS emerged from the corpse of TARANTÜLA who emerged from the corpse of CÜLO and if you know the lore of those bands you’ll be primed for Gentle Ballads for the Simple Soul being a sinewy salvo of chemically-altered rocking hardcore punk. You’ll get that, to a point, but you may be unprepared for how vast and preening the riffs are on this thing. A clear-as-daylight love of ’70s arena rock and proto-metal is baked into each of these ten songs: some of the solos could have been ripped from a NAZARETH record, or something equally archaic and pointedly pre-hardcore. The movie sample intros are like something you’d hear on an ELECTRIC WIZARD joint, and “Man-Eaters” (who among us doesn’t love a self-titled song?) tips things into FU MANCHU levels of gum-chewing dudeliness, but tempos here are generally amphetamine-fast. Danny Babirusa—formerly of BLEEDING GUMS, and the only non-ex-TARANTÜLA member—is the perfect vocalist for this sound, one which plenty of bands from POISON IDEA to TURBONEGRO to ANNIHILATION TIME have offered up before, but if anyone’s doing it as well as MAN-EATERS right now they’ve evaded my ears.