The story of Mister Miracle follows an American police officer-turned military consultant as he attempts to solve the murder of one of his Iraqi police trainees in war-torn Baghdad in 2004. The series was based off of King’s own experiences in the Iraq war as a CIA officer. King also won the 2017 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series for his Vision miniseries.

Mister Miracle was originally created in 1971 by comic book giant Jack Kirby, known for helping to create characters for Marvel such as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk. Mister Miracle was a part of Kirby’s famous Fourth World saga, a story that followed the exploits of the New Gods, who hailed from the technologically advanced planets of New Genesis and Apokolips.

After a millenium of warfare, Highfather, the God of Life and ruler of New Genesis, and Darkseid, the God of Anti-Life and ruler of Apokolips, agreed to a truce. Each god exchanged one of their sons in a show of good faith to support their pact to end the war. Scott Free, son of Highfather, was sent to Apokolips where he was thrown into the slave pits and subjected to decades of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the diabolical Granny Goodness, who called the slave pits her “orphanage.” Darkseid gave his son, Orion, to Highfather where he would live a life of bliss and comfort on New Genesis.

After the decades in Apokolips, Scott Free escaped the slave pits along with the love of his life, the 7-foot tall leader of Darkseid’s all-female death squad, Big Barda. The lovers fled to Earth where they joined the Justice League and lived lives as superheroes. Scott Free also took the stage-name Mister Miracle and became known as “The World’s Greatest Escape Artist.”

King and Gerad open Mister Miracle with the titular character being taken out of the hospital by his wife, Big Barda, after having attempted to commit suicide. The explanation Scott gives is that he’s an escape artist. The greatest trick of all is escaping death. Immediately after returning home, the pair of them find Scott’s brother Orion who informs them that war has begun again. Highfather has been killed and Darkseid has the Anti-Life equation, which gives him the power to infect and dominate his enemies’ minds, making them believe that their lives are worthless and they willingly submit to Darkseid’s control. Orion informs Mister Miracle and Big Barda that they are to return to New Genesis to fight in the war to save the universe.

However, King isn’t interested in epic space battles. He wants to show these characters as broken, depressed, and utterly human. Mister Miracle is constantly getting flashes of his dead friends. Reality seems to fizzle like a staticy TV, and the panels of action are occasionally broken up by an all-black panel that simply reads “Darkseid Is.”

As the reader, you’re never entirely sure if this is Darkseid and the Anti-Life equation invading Mister Miracles’ mind, or if Scott has just finally snapped after years of abuse. Mister Miracle is essentially the Jesus of the DC universe where he’s the son of God (Highfather) and was traded to the devil (Darkseid) to make peace between the heaven and hell. He was raised by the devil and tortured his entire childhood and even when he finally escapes that torture, he would have lingering pains from a childhood spent in torture chambers and from the pain of being sold by your father into those chambers.

Scott needs an outlet for this pain and manifested itself in the shape of an attempted suicide. Much of the book is devoted to mundane activities like grocery shopping, getting angry at the traffic, and, essentially to the narrative, having a child. Scott is desperately trying to escape his brutal past and create a new, quiet life for himself and his family on Earth. He has no interest in fighting some cosmic war.

The dialogue is quick and snappy and gives the book a little bit of a distant feel, like how someone’s voice sounds underwater. Perfect for story where your main character is depressed and suffering from psychosis, unhinged from reality. It waxes philosophical but the words are brimming with anxiety about their own possible meanings. This makes sense when you consider that Tom King said one of his main sources of inspiration was a panic attack he suffered in 2016. One of my favorite moments in the series sees Scott question the existence of everything by attacking Descartes’ famous “I think therefore I am.”

As this example shows, the art is always in a three by three panel grid. This form deviates only six times in the entire 12 issues, first in a scene at the end of the first issue where reality turns to static and Scott is no longer sure if the life he has been living is real or not. The comic never answers this question.

In the 11th issue, he is told “Where you are is not where you should be, Scott Free.” He was told he could wake up in the real world and give up the act. It forces the reader to question whether Scott actually succeeded in killing himself in the opening scene and has been in Hell this entire time. Perhaps that’s why he is constantly miserable, forced to fight and be tortured forever. Maybe in hearing this and choosing to ignore it, Scott has given up trying to escape. However, it’s equally as possible that this is heaven and he decided not to escape it. After all, behind all the weariness and pain and doubt, this life that Scott has found is also filled with joy. He has a wife who loves him and a son who grabs his nose and laughs.

Or, maybe everyone is lying. Maybe Scott is still alive. I hope so, anyway. When Scott tried to kill himself he wasn’t trying to escape death, he was trying to escape life. By the end of the series we’re reading about someone who has completely given up a life of adventure and life-and-death stakes. All Scott wants the normalcy of two kids and a condo in LA with his seven-foot tall wife. This entire story has been one of Mister Miracle learning to escape past trauma and getting to a place where he can choose — actively choose — to leave behind the pain that defined his existence for decades in favor of happiness. I think that is beautiful. Also there is a scene where the biggest bad guy in all of comics double dips. It’s awesome.

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At a first glance, you wouldn’t expect the two best friends would be able to effectively blend their respective musical styles. Farren writes sweet, soft tunes for the lonesome with pop hooks that will burrow into your brain and won’t let up for days. Rosenstock, on the other hand, wails 19 words a second in his punchy, punk rock odes to everything wrong with the world today.

When the duo teams up as to blend their pop-punk talents as Antarctigo Vespucci, they blend their power to create catchy pop-punk chorus’s and form something far bigger, and more infectiously sunny than anything they create on their own.

Most of the lead vocals on Love in the Time of E-Mail is Farren, which makes sense. He has more of a soulful voice that suits their lyrics, absolutely dripping with nostalgia. For example, on Breathless on DVD, Farren croons to a ex-lover from over a decade ago, “I haven’t seen you in a long time/Are you still 27 and mad at me?” Rosenstock’s iconic, burly vocals are barely heard.

If I’m not mistaken, he only sings on a single song. You can catch his back-up vocals on three tunes across the album.  But when the Antarctigo Vespucci sing together they fill up the entire room in that wonderfully aggressive punk style. Rosenstock’s presence is still felt throughout the 40 minutes with his electrifying buzzy guitar chords and piano smashing. 

Love in the Time of E-Mail is about, well, exactly that. Maybe not so much email anymore, but rather all the anxieties that come with being in love in a time of the internet and smartphones. Farren and Rosenstock even spell E-Mail in the old-person type of way as a little nod to how out of touch they are with the kids’ new types of online relationships.

Image the panic you get when it’s 2 am, you just texted the person you have a crush on and you see them typing to text you back. Then the three little bubbles go away. That feeling is spread throughout the entirety of this album.

Not all of the fears and neuroses on display are due to modern day relationships. Farren brings up a fear that never really goes way “When you really know me, and I mean really know me, will you wanna know me anymore?”

Anyone who is a fan of Jeff Rosenstock (or seen his Pitchfork set where he bashes an inflatable Donald Trump with a guitar) knows that his albums are heavily politically motivated, but his anxieties about our current climate only bleeds over into Love In the Time of E-Mail in one lyric: “I blacked out on election day.”

Overall, this is an album that functions as a collection of still images capturing relationship fears that ring deeply true, whether they’re relationships from the time of email or not. There’s the description of breaking down down in front of someone you don’t even properly know yet: “Kimmy, I’m a disaster, and I don’t wanna pretend / That I’m not gonna get more intense when we finally connect.” There’s the way we perform electronic autopsies on old relationships: “I read through all the emails that you sent to me / And again to the ones that I sent back to you.”

There’s the tortured and reluctant way we keep tabs on our exes online: “I wanted to see you, to see if I still wanted to see you.” These feelings aren’t going away anytime soon. As long as they’re around, Antarctigo Vespucci will write a catchy tune about them.

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Here Lies Man hit the scene with their explosive, self-titled debut album in 2017 and haven’t slowed down since. Often described as Black Sabbath playing afrobeat, the quartet plowed through their set with riff-heavy psychedelic rock and distorted vocals that give their experimental style a genuine sense of chaos and intensity, like a crowded street about to break into a riot.

The band plays to an audience of a little over fifty people standing shoulder to shoulder in Gabe’s. Despite being easily categorized as a metal band, this isn’t music made for people to leap into a mosh pit. Here Lies Man opts for an easy groove and basslines that’ll rattle your teeth and gets the crowd bobbing their heads to the beat instead of dancing.

A projector sets images against the back wall of the stage of Jackson Pollock-esque designs: splashes of color that are continually shifting in both pattern and hue. Over time, the color and form slowly fade away until there’s nothing but static before snapping back into a vibrant green for the final song. This adds to the low-fi stage presence and gives the audience visual stimulation they otherwise wouldn’t have considering the people on stage aren’t moving all that much.

About fifteen minutes into the set, frontman Marcos Garcia pauses to talk directly to the audience, the only time he does so before saying goodnight at the very end of the set. He says, in a quiet, almost shy tone of voice, “We like to take this time in the show to explain what it is we’re doing here. This is the soundtrack to a movie. The soundtrack to the move we live every day. Thanks you for coming out and supporting live music and music festivals. . .this is how we stick together during tough times. With that said, this is the part of the movie where everything goes wrong.” Then the band drops back into their set and don’t stop again for 45 minutes.

Due to the nonstop riffing, there are a few times when it stopped feeling like you were watching a professional band play a gig, and more like you were watching a garage jam session. They drift in and out of ambient distortion with a muddy baseline and synth and nothing but sharp percussion.

They have a couple of solos which start out fun but go on just too long to the point that they feel a little tedious. Even when they are clearly playing songs and not just providing a backdrop for each other to improvise to, they rely heavily on guitar riffs. This is obviously on purpose since Here Lies Man is very vocal about their Black Sabbath influences but I think it makes their tunes feel somewhat samey and doesn’t allow for enough variation in style. However, you can’t deny that what they come up, even if there is a little too much of it, with is catchy.

Here Lies Man puts on a solid show. I believe the trick to enjoying them is managing your expectations. Don’t think that just because they’re a metal band that you’re going to have the opportunity (or excuse) to leap around like a maniac. They’re good for grooving out and appreciating how what you’re hearing is different than pretty much anything else around right now. While they might not explore that sound to its fullest extent, it’s still plenty fun. Relax, let the movie go wrong, and enjoy what comes with it.

The post Witching Hour: Here Lies Man @ Gabe’s 10/12/2018 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The first track will tell you pretty much everything you need to know. “That’s What Heaven Feels Like” screams into being with the sound of feedback from an amp that gives way to a catchy guitar riff and Betham belting out the lyrics “I’m a million impulse decisions tonight.”

The Dirty Nil is not a complicated band trying to reinvent the wheel and reshape the music industry. They’re impulsive and raw and everything that makes rock & roll fun.

Bentham’s vocals have the charm and snarl that make every great punk front man a compelling performer. Not to mention the fact that he once managed to snap a picture with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while wearing a shirt with pot leaves sewn on the shoulders. Personally, I feel that should earn anyone a spot in the punk hall of fame.

The lyrics touch on topics that are familiar to anyone even remotely versed in punk music. Lyrics such as a friend who’s struggling and the narrator doesn’t know how to help which they show on “I Don’t Want That Phone Call” in which Bentham shifts from a softer tone into a howl on the line “You said you’d straighten out / AFTER YOUR DUI”  a trick that seems a deliberate throwback to the pop-punk of the early 2000s. “Auf Wiedersehen” gives us an infinitely relatable line for anyone who’s ever had a bad friend, “I mean this in a nice way/F*CK YOU.” On “Smoking Is Magic” he gives a whiny performance that you can’t help but compare to Billie Joe Armstrong.

The Dirty Nil are, at their core, a backroom rock group. Listening to their album through headphones doesn’t really do them justice as this type of old-fashioned, audacious rock & roll is meant to enjoyed from the heart of a mosh pit. The closing track on the album is a punk cover of Metallica’s “Hit the Lights”. A metal cover ought to feel out of nowhere compared to the rest of their anthemic pop-punk output; however, it instead proves how connected to the history of rock they are and serves as a testament to their ability to make a genre that’s somewhat fallen out of fashion fun again.

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