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You see them everywhere; on the covers of magazine,
thrashing about in music videos, rolling off the
assembly line with their perfectly messy hair via
Queer Eye endorsed product, maybe one is completely
shaven, ones a screamer while another croons for
the ladies. The era of cute boy bands has transformed
into a false sense of mojo sponsored by The Buckle,
leaving many yearning for the real sex, drugs and
rock and roll we came to know and love oh, so many
years ago.
Thankfully there are also those musicians who make it easy to keep the question,
“Say it ain’t so Joe!” tucked
nicely on the shelf collecting dust. Denver based
band The Omens offer up the grit,
grime and gregarious celebration of punk, blues
and an era of surf that didn’t play out
on the Beach Blanket Babylon set, unless you ordered
up the X Rated version, Beach Bondage Babylon.
Transforming from the Down-n-Outs into The Omens,
lead singer and guitarist Michael Daboll
has clocks in years of debauchery, and
is now equipped with Forrest Bartosh
(formally of The Gamits and The Swayback) on drums,
Matt Hunt on bass and Greg
Dahl, who’s organ, blues harp and
maracas provide the lubricant to the band’s
carnal fervor.
According to their website, www.the-omens.com,
the boys are big fans of caffeine, which we like
to hear. But you can go in cold stone sober into
this deal and still feel like you must have swallowed,
snorted or drank some kind of substance without
your knowledge, because you can’t keep from
flailing around in state of uncontrolled lunacy.
Although The Omens have kept themselves busy
playing about and spreading the mayhem, including
gigs in Texas and at SXSW in Austin this past
year, Destroy The ESP
debuts as the band's first release on Hipsville
International Records. With enough hormones to
wake the dead, Destroy starts off strong with
the first track, “I Lost My Mind,”
and doesn’t let go until the last chord
flies on “You’re a Dirty Liar.”
The instrumental “John Fante” goes
from a strip tease saunter to a full-out, throw
down orgy. A fragment of the chorus from “Make
Time” actually sounds a tad like Eric Halborg
from The Swayback. But where The Omens' real kindred
spirits lie is with the psyche beat, rock and
blues bands that filled the dark and dirty clubs
in the ’60s. That kind of passion screams
on “Heart Full of Lies,” where Daboll
gives his lover a piece of his mind after he’s
given her his heart, along with more than a few
rounds of Jack.
The party goes down tonight at Larimer Lounge,
along with a rock poster showing by the legendary
artist Lindsey Kuhn, The Symptoms, Machine Gun
Blues and Jim Yelnick. Things get started early
at 5pm with a free keg of beer, so if you want
to start your weekend off right, you best be there
on time ‘cause I can’t imagine that
beer will last very long.
www.the-omens.com
www.hipsville-records.com
-Kim Owens, July 22, 2005
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