I can't find the actual link, but here's our only review thus far. This technically is review of our old line up, but It's a kind and flattering review. Thanks!


Bat Attack came onstage and after a bit of fidgeting tore into a remarkably loudass version of (was it Chuck Berry's?) "Maybellene." Something of a country-blues-oldies-inspired power trio (sounding much more like Deer Tick than Cream, or Sour Boy, for that matter -see my entry from the other week-), Bat Attack executed rather precisely the old-fashioned "turn it up to 11" - either that, or the reverb of the raw space did it for them. As numerous moments of long, dramatic, and cleanly articulated group pauses made clear, we were listening to a band in control of their onslaught, which was an onslaught of high contrast - consisting of moves from the excruciatingly loud to the near-silent, from traditional vocal melodies styled akin to Son House to the beating of the shit out of their instruments. And there was more than a little humor involved in this dialectical game of almost violent hopping between musical opposites, a comedy that BA not infrequently inflicted upon themselves from within: "I sound like I'm beaten down and broken. I sound like Batman," commented axeman Ian, acknowledging his hungoverly cracking voice. Bat Attack then proceeded to showcase this voice in all its brokenness on a gentler number, which I remember as a kind of sparse waltz - much less instrumentally busy than the bulk of the band's repertoire. The simplicity of song structure and the sanitary, relatively quiet style in which BA now played worked to set up another kind of high contrast scenario with Ian's bruised vocal pipes. Over the rather muted background of the band, the voice hauntingly crackled its way up and down the contours of a melody whose notes it couldn't fully grasp, but whose ghastly shape it encouraged us to imagine. High contrast, Bat Attack seemed to suggest, works kind of like a magnifying glass - getting our ears closer to, more up in the saddle of, the contrasted aspect - be it a tour-ridden voice, bitching loud amps, or the quietest quaintest little country melody. by MONROE at THEDELIMAGAZINE.com