Glassjaw Guns Down The Joneses

Glassjaw hasn’t released an album since 2002’s Worship And Tribute, but at the time, it was pretty much the coolest thing around. It was shockingly heavy, beautifully melodic, effortlessly everything nü-metal looked pathetic trying to be.

These days, the band is a ghost. There’s a third album supposedly in the works, rumored to be coming later this year or early next, to be preceded by an EP. There tend to be more tours rumored than actual shows scheduled, and even those occasional shows aren’t always guaranteed appearances, as frontman Daryl Palumbo suffers from Crohn’s disease, which can suddenly strike him out of any game without warning.

When tickets to a Glassjaw show at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles went on sale, I picked a pair up without even really thinking about it. I hadn’t listened to the band in a few years, but it just felt mandatory. It was the first of only three scheduled dates in California before a short jaunt with Brand New that started last night in Philadelphia, and then a few shows in the UK in January.

Rx Bandits took the stage at 9PM sharp, a truly killer supporting act. These guys have been touring steady for about 14 years now, and it shows. They were every bit as professional and tight as had been promised by our mutual friends at Sargent House. Their newest album, Mandala is in the running for one of the best of this year if I have anything to say about it, and the live versions reinforced my appreciation. Check out our in depth review if you dig The Mars Volta, Portugal. The Man, or, of course, Glassjaw.

Glassjaw began their set a few minutes early, just a bit after 10PM. Huddled around Durijah Lang’s drum kit, the four piece band had such a small footprint that it seemed like (as with most hardcore bands) Glassjaw doesn’t really know what to do with more space than you get at your average underground house show.

The band opened with (You Think You’re) John Fucking Lennon. It’s one of the band’s most psychotically aggressive to date, a new song they released via their website around this time last year, and the first song recorded since 2001 to be heard by the public.

I was surprised not only by how well the old songs still sounded to my ears so many years later, but also by the realization that I still knew every note and word. And the crowd did too, despite its age; 16 to 25 for the most part, aside from older creeps like myself. They trashed the pit for Worship And Tribute highlights such as Mu Empire and Stuck Pig (which Palumbo introduced as a “song about fucking”), and sang their mother loving hearts out during Ape Dos Mil, The Gilette Cavalcade Of Sports, as well as Lovebites And Razorblades from their first album, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence.

There were three other new songs played besides Lennon: Star Above My Bed [the reworked version; thanks Tom], Jesus Glue, and Natural Born Farmer. You can’t take any of them home to grandma, but the crowd enthusiastically approved. Palumbo has been quoted as saying that some of this new material is “far more aggressive” than he “ever thought it would be,” but there are also rumors that there’ll be a contrasting side to the album to balance things out, hopefully as effectively as they did on Worship And Tribute.

With no encore breaks whatsoever, Glassjaw finished their set with Motel Of The White Locust and the relentless Babe from Silence, and walked off triumphant. As the lights came up, I watched the pit disperse under a cloud of evaporating sweat. A couple kids were limping, a couple others had lost their shoes. This crowd didn’t watch the show through their camera phones, they devoured the night, and would have happily kept going. I admit I felt old, alienated from such irresponsible lunatic behavior. But I was happy to see that there’s more to this town than pathetically jaded hipsters that don’t seem to know the difference between being there, and being a part of something.

Glassjaw
November 11th, 2009
Mayan Theater
Los Angeles, CA

Setlist:

1. (You Think You’re) John Fucking Lennon
2. Tip Your Bartender
3. Mu Empire
4. Star Above My Bed
5. Ape Dos Mil
6. Pink Roses
7. The Gillette Cavalcade Of Sports
8. Jesus Glue
9. Stuck Pig
10. Two Tabs Of Mescaline
11. Natural Born Farmer
12. Siberian Kiss
13. Lovebites And Razorlines
14. Pretty Lush
15. Motel Of The White Locust
16. Babe