No Place Like Home

The Pomonas, When You're Electric (self-released): When You're Electric is for people who, as kids, preferred the Monkees to those artificial Power Rangers. It's also an album for grown-up music lovers who think that words such as catchy and pop don't mean much unless there's plenty of sweet guitar in the context. In another era, our most underrated local band would have been a pack of bona-fide heartthrobs, never appearing in a teen-magazine pictorial without matching suits and British amps. Unfortunately, it's 2006, and not that many people heard the Pomonas — but those who did got electric.

Super Black Market, Will Sell Anything (Minnow Records): Warrensburg punks, whadda they know? A little bit, it turns out. They know that it takes more than three chords, a four-four beat and churlish disregard for authority to get people's attention. Either that, or it's just happenstance that led Super Black Market to inject about 50 CCs of irony into the flanks of its out-of-control, riffs-and-screams steed before riding it to the hoedown of disaffected youth. The lyrics are frat-boy simple (there's going to be a party TONIGHT!), but the metal-tempered rock would interest fans of Thin Lizzy and Fugazi alike. Smartest of all, Super Black Market jumped right on with a local label and made a powerful, good-sounding record to shove down the throats of the media-addled masses.
Listen to “There’s Going to Be a Party…” from Super Black Market.

The Esoteric, Subverter (Prosthetic Records): Its not the job of young, regionally popular metal bands to be innovative, progressive or appealing to anyone outside their white, adolescent, male fanbase. Evidently, local favorite the Esoteric had ambitions grander than setting a few Midwestern all-ages venues ablaze when it went in to record Subverter, because the band came out with a hardcore-rooted, devil-music epic that's fashionable enough to keep the kids' heads a-banging but classic and intricate enough for the horn-throwing connoisseur. Opening one-two punch "Destroy, She Said" and "Science Is Sexy" demonstrate enough ass-kicking conventional metal wisdom to deserve a spot between Motorhead and Pantera on late-night radio. Then, as if to mix it up, demonic ballads "Shipyards of Foreign Cities" and "Don't Waste Guts" (featuring gothtastic guest vocals from the Roman Numerals' Steve Tulipana) sprinkle a little romance into the hellfire.
Listen to “Destroy, She Said” from Esoteric.

Roman Numerals, Roman Numerals (Anodyne): Most bands riding the retro-electro-rock wave have members with all-'80s birthdates. So don't yell poseurs! at your elders in the Roman Numerals — they're playing the kind of music they actually grew up digging. The Nooms all have track records that include time in post-hardcore projects (Shiner, Season to Risk and Dirt Nap, to be specific) as well as thousands of hours logged behind turntables at the most popular DJ nights in town. (Is there anyone who hasn't boogied down with Steve Tulipana's and Shawn Sherrill's Strange Bedfellows?) Therefore, Roman Numerals is a natural blend of the jagged rock and danceable grooves that the band's members have dealt in since cutting their musical teeth in the '90s. So it's no fly-by-night study in trend following. That's why — along with our favorite New Order and Psychedelic Furs tracks, which still sound fresh — we'll be coming back to this record 10 years from now.
Listen to “The Rule of V” from Roman Numerals.

Further Listening: Blackpool Lights, This Town's Disaster; White Flight, White Flight; The Appleseed Cast, Peregrine; Flee the Seen, Doubt Becomes the New Addiction; Conner, Hello Graphic Missile; the Gaslights, Lines and Wires; the Roseline, A Wall Behind It; Chad Rex, Gravity Works Fire Burns; the Pixel Panda, Burial Suite; Jon Yeager, Foi; Drakkar Sauna, Jabraham Lincoln; Josephine, Every Scene in Vibrant Green; the New Amsterdams, Story Like a Scar; the New Tragedies, Vanity Vanity; Kristen Paludan, The Princess in the Tower; Lovers in Transit, EP