#- Modern Life is War - Witness
This week, Marshalltown, Iowa's, Modern Life is War broke a 5 year hiatus, unleashing their new record Fever Dreaming. While the jury may still be out on it, this seems like as good as time as any to reflect on their landmark 2005 album, Witness, as I found myself doing last week.
I've written and spoken at length about how Give Up the Ghost's 2003 finale We're Down 'Til We're Underground marked an end to a certain style of hardcore which already by that point had found itself increasingly moving towards metal. Keystone records like Botch's We Are The Romans and Converge's Jane Doe changed the face of what it meant to be a hardcore bands; these bands were still that in spirit, but their sound had progressed to so much more. Give Up the Ghost were the last crusaders of an already dying genre, and by the time of 2005, no-one was really just a hardcore band any more.
Modern Life is War were in a lot of ways just a tiny bit too late to make a huge impact. The cultural significance of being a hardcore band as it was known had shifted dramatically. What kept them relevant was their highly encouraging début My Love, My Way. Released at around the same time Give up the Ghost disintegrated, Modern Life is War quickly became a cult band who they reminded many of then American Nightmare's Background Music. Modern Life is War were keenly encouraged to carry the torch now that AN/GUTG were gone, but the difference was, many of those fans by now had moved on to other things.
This worked incredible things for when MLIW sat down to write their follow-up, Witness. Here was a band with an incredible amount of pressure, tipped to be the saviours of that "classic" hardcore sound in a genre that can be highly parabolic, and yet at the same time, the majority of the music world ignored them, not satisfied with being "just a hardcore band" any more, particularly with so many of their peers and heroes disbanding at this time.
What an incredible thing this follow-up turned out to be then. Weighing in at a measly 9 songs and 25 minutes, Witness uses all the force of it's fallen heroes, old - "We're Still D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S" - or new - it was released on the then fairly young Deathwish Records, run by Converge's Jacob Bannon (who also designed the album's powerful artwork) and recorded by the peerless Kurt Ballou.
Witness is such an incredible work, it's tough to know how to begin talking about it. Even it's artwork perfectly encapsulates the alienation and frustration this record is constantly tearing at the seams with, capturing a Marshalltown, Iowa from 1896, in monochrome, a town which presumably, by listening to the record, feels stuck in the past and aggressively colourless to this day.
Right from the opening guitar line of "The Outsiders" Witness is an empowering record. I still to this day remember the feeling of the first time I listened to it nearly a decade ago (16, growing up is absolute nowhere town of my own), and to use a cliché, not only felt the hairs stand up, but felt an urge for everything inside of me to be thrown out into the ether. It's still the case today. And from the moment Jeffrey Eaton offers up the question "SO WHAT THE FUCK, ARE YOU GOING TO DO KID?" there was nothing else that could possibly have spoken more directly. There are scarce comparisons to a more perfect opening to a record, this is the frustration felt by millions of teenagers everywhere, striving to better themselves but not knowing how, and none more brilliantly captured than by these 5 guys who are laying all their guts out for all to see.
What's really evidently stunning about this album is that it's one of those rare occasions where every single member of the band seems perfectly in tune with each other. That's what makes this such a cohesive record, it's a short, sharp, shock which doesn't attempt to thrill you clever experimentation nor stick too closely to the perceived conventions of hardcore (rather like that other hugely loved and respected aforementioned band) but merely to write songs which tell a story of pure loneliness, frustration and alienation. There are plentiful examples of this incredible skill, such as when the drums and Eaton kick in to "The Outsiders" or the way that before you can catch your breath, you're suddenly in the double-time, disorientating chaos of "Martin Atchet"; the moment of reflection turned dizzying crescendo on the simply titled "Marshalltown"; the fact that they somehow managed to write a catchy single in "D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S"; the absolutely heartbreaking, emotional breakdown of "I'm Not Ready"; the closing moments of "Hair Raising Accounts...". Perhaps the example in which they really shine however is the penultimate The Who referencing "Young Man Blues" a disconcertingly upbeat song from it's initial classic hard-rock guitar riff, until about half way through where the song turns into a minute long build-up, piling layers upon layers of nervous tension before the brief explosion and quite possibly most succinct statement of the band's career, when Eaton proclaims
"I am the 4 a.m. Arcade Street white bloodshot witness. I'm just another kid in the chorus. An empty street corner prophet...
In this modern life... Cheap and disconnected... Where there is a siege going on and the besieged will be the last to know"
it is a purely thrilling moment.
For though it certainly doesn't hurt that Kurt Ballou makes this record sound absolutely massive from it's very first guitar strum to it's final drum shot, it is Eaton who somewhat steals the show here. He already showed he was a more than capable lyricist on My Love, My Way, but rather like Wesley Eisold before him, his vocals lacked the clarity or confidence to really make their full impact. There is absolutely no mistaking it here. From that very first, aforementioned line, Eaton's voice has this incredibly powerful tone which can tell dozens of stories from it's intonation alone. Hardcore music is at it's best when it reaches a genuine honesty in it's emotional make-up which is so rarely found in countless other genres, but increasingly by this point, was lost in many "hardcore" bands. Part of the reason the genre's relevance was dying was because it's many front-men and even often supporting band so rarely felt like they really meant it; Eisold merely put a witty and ironic epigram on it's tombstone. But the pain and torture in Eaton's voice is somewhat scary as it is stunning; the emotion and frustration of it runs exactly parallel to the deep lyrical content, and yet remains powerful and memorable to give it real impact. The stories of Marshalltown could and are those of thousands of nowhere towns and the largely alienated individuals which inhabit them, and Eaton captures them with the same brutal honesty and imagination as a young Bruce Springsteen once did about his native Ashbury Park, New Jersey. Both men looked around them and saw the great depression of America largely exhibited in Witness' artwork, saw all those around them in financial woe or drugs or worse and saw themselves potentially going the same way if they didn't act fast, what possible better inspiration could one have to write music that really matters and speaks to people than the one which surrounds countless others every day. That's what I mean when I say Witness is an empowering, inspiring record; it's content may be largely depressing but as exemplified by "D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S" the ability to make something of yourself, using that angst as a tool to aid it, is an incredibly moving thing to anyone who's ever felt disappointed by their home.
Modern Life is War would never re-capture the sheer strong-minded spirit of Witness because they would never quite feel such a purely focused source of anger again. Sure, their following records still find lots of things in the world to challenge, but nothing will ever feel as important or as life-affirming/defining as channelling the spirit of millions of alienated young men and women who are fed up with the way their lives are and are desperate for change.
As an epilogue, if you'll indulge me, this album and this band will always have a special place in my heart because they were the first band I went to see by myself (by that I mean without my parents, I went with some friends) in London at the Camden Barfly in February 2006. It remains one of the greatest spectacles I've ever witnessed, as well as one of the first hardcore shows I went to, completely opening (and blowing) my mind. All that tension and expectation from listening to the record was not only recognised, but fully blown apart, such an intoxicating experience this was. I can't even begin to explain how perfect it was, it was everything I hoped and more, and remains an incredible and even important moment from my adolescence which I will take with me to this day as a huge point of inspiration.
(That's a 17 year old me standing just behind Jeffrey Eaton, in complete awe)
















