Antioch Arrow
Gems of Masochism

THE REVIEW

A rather unique character, Aaron Montaigne: punk drummer and singer, former U.S. Army sergeant and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and former member of at least two seminal bands in the evolution of West Coast hardcore punk: Heroin and, indeed, Antioch Arrow.

In 1995, he finds himself in San Diego, around twenty years old and with three EPs with Heroin and a couple of twelve-inches with Antioch Arrow under his belt: "The Lady Is A Cat" (1993) and "In Love With Jetts" (1994), which would later be combined into a single CD in 1997.

Both bands, together with Justin Pearson's Swing Kids (who would later join the Locust and found three-one-G records), are considered among the founding fathers of screamo, a subgenre of the so-called "emo" (my God, what an ugly word) that would reach its formal maturity around the turn of the millennium with bands like Orchid and Saetia, generating countless followers worldwide, and especially in Italy, and briefly reaching (in a much, much watered-down form, of course) the mainstream audience around the mid-2000s, with its accompanying parade of awful hair and koi sleeve tattoos.

Recorded in December 1994 at the Beastie Boys' G-son studios in Los Angeles, "Gems of Masochism" marks a sharp stylistic shift from their first two minis. In fact, while "The Lady Is A Cat" and "In Love With Jetts" were still closely tied to the hardcore roots of the first wave of emo (though with more chaotic structures and occasional synth forays), the band's first (and last) real album almost entirely abandons the punk aesthetic in favor of gothic atmospheres, at times almost glam.

You can tell just from the cover: no cardboard sleeves with black and grey stencils; Aaron and the others (Andy Ward, bass; Mac Mann, guitar; Ron Anarchy, drums) stare back at the listener, eyeliner on, surrounded by gemstones and flashy gold jewelry. The wall of guitars has been torn down: now the music is skewed, loose, incoherent, chaotic.

Listening to this album is a bit like having a fever dream at 102 degrees, or looking at those pictures that are supposed to illustrate what someone sees during a stroke:

It all feels very familiar, it's definitely goth rock, you can tell they've listened to the Birthday Party, that little church organ on "Too Bad You're Gonna Die" fits perfectly; but as soon as you think you've latched onto some logical thread, you lose it in a magma of intricate polyrhythms and (seemingly) random guitar riffs, and you find yourself back at square one with the disorienting feeling that you haven't understood a damn thing. And meanwhile, they've even managed to slip in a kind of ballad for voice and piano ("Dead Now").

The album was never toured; Antioch Arrow broke up before its release. That didn't stop it from developing a certain underground following, enough to be cited as an influence by people like At the Drive-In.

Your mascaraaaaah is running!