Monty Are I previewed

Monty Are I
Beat Kitchen, Chicago
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

You may have known them once as simply Monty, trademarks be damned. Now with the grammarically defiant Monty Are I, the Rhode Island prog punk quintet drop an ambitious, soaring debut.

Wall Of People‘s 11 songs run apace the super-anthemic, paganistic indulgences of AFI, My Chemical Romance, and, to a degree, Muse. Never as truculent as it is heartbroken, Monty Are I give the production gods all they can handle, yet never connect on a visceral level. Effects galore, echoing reverb, and belted chorus after chorus by frontman Steve Aiello rob them of some immediacy. Gritty punk rhythm lines get punctuated by squealing guitar harmonics and swept arpeggios, while Andrew Borstein’s trombone is a vaguely ska nod on tracks like “O Brother.” God knows running this racket in Beat Kitchen would be like asking the CSO to jam in a VFW hall, but it’s doubtful the actual Monty, which we’ve never heard, could even boast that.

RX Bandits headline; State Radio and Desa complete the bill.

— Steve Forstneger

Click here for a Real Audio clip of “This Legacy.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly