One of the more confusing and saddening trends in indie music today concerns a growing sense of apathy at live shows across the country. Crowds of kids stand around, arms crossed, with their brows tilted just enough to accentuate the wave in their studiously combed bangs.
Maybe heads nod, maybe even feet tap. But the distance between band and audience is vast, sometimes continental. Even the heaviest of metal bands and the peppiest of dance groups may fail to get a reaction.
An Albatross may be the last in a rare breed of acts that surpasses the stage and immerses itself in the crowd in a communal art experience. Or its members may be the architects of a new movement, considered dangerous by many authority figures, who constantly try to shut An Albatross shows down prematurely after watching kids lose their social inhibitions and come together in an apparently confusing and unexpected departure from the dreary standard prevalent in today’s world.
With a dominant stage presence and a Mick Jagger strut, founding member and vocalist Edward B. Gieda III exemplifies An Albatross’ audacious and addictive formula.
Known for frenzied noise rock and grind-core foundations, beyond the dissonance and shattering momentum of its recordings, the band really comes alive on stage. The songs are so fast and chaotic that any number of spasmodic movements is appropriate. More than an avenue for outbursts of energy, the Wilkes-Barre, PA quintet excels in creating a psychedelic, visionary mood with a chaos anchored by tight rhythms and conceptual gems.
Gieda discusses his band with a dedicated and genuine sentiment. “A band simply playing music without trying to apply something a little bit broader and greater to it is really a shame,” says Gieda from his home, unwinding from a long Monday at work. “It’s the responsibility of the musician to use that as an art form and a tie that combines the human experience.” This idea of a shared experience as a universal goal is a weighty and recurring theme with An Albatross.
“We are desperate to put our connectors out there and have a meeting of the minds on a nightly basis with people who feel as if they can really relate to what we’re putting down,” says Gieda.
If this sounds a bit normal, the front man points out that bringing people together in a real-time scenario and sharing in the collective experience is becoming less and less a spoke in the societal wheel. The need for this collection is essential to the daily ritual of touring and living in general.
Including Gieda, An Albatross is made up of five very strong individuals who function quite wonderfully as a single unit. Bassist Jason Hudak and organist Philip Reynolds Price are also founding members; drummer Stevie Vaiani and guitarist Daniel Schlett are the two latest additions to the kin.
Gieda proudly points out that there are also several extended members. In fact, the credits of musicians on their newest album runs almost twenty names deep, incorporating artists from the greater Northeast, now finally and rightfully declared a family.
All of this collective spirit is encapsulated on the band’s latest full-length, An Albatross Family Album (Eyeball Records). The nine-song, thirty-minute carnival is the most complete and true expression of An Albatross ever put to tape. Full of the signature bedlam and devotion to performance that has defined the group, this record captures the band in a new space, full of chemistry and community.
An Albatross, in one incarnation or another, has been producing music together since 1999. The childhood friends and communal souls began amassing cassette demos quickly after forming, with morphing lineups and extensive touring bringing new perspectives to each recording.
Their first proper release, Eat Lightning, Shit Thunder (Bloodlink), was less growling grind-core and more prog-rock, speed-metal mayhem.
The next album came after more than a year of intense tours and was a much more complex and erratic piece. We Are the Lazer Viking (Ace Fu) marked an entrance into the realms of so called Nintendo-core, as synths and organs vamped the sounds of an electronic tremor over the noise rock.
The group’s 2006 release, the exhaustively titled Blessphemy (Of the Peace Beast Feastgiver and the Bear Warp Kumite) (Ace Fu), again changed the sound just enough to represent the new members while still staying true to the essence of An Albatross, sometimes nightmarishly so.
An Albatross Family Album has a slightly more melodic feel. The songs are longer and more accessible to the ear. There are more definitive structures, and some songs come complete with breakdowns and building rhythms.
Gieda acts as ringmaster in a more noticeable way, allowing for spoken-word moments of vivid narration. With the organs grinding at impossibly fast speeds and the dominant wall of sound reverberating through the background, it’s still a very traditional An Albatross expression.
“I think it’s a compound of where we were at the time and what we were doing,” Gieda says. “We were really interested in elongating parts and building repetition, and it’s an interesting conglomeration.”
This mixture of 1970s psychedelia and modern rock (Gieda cites acts ranging from S.O.D. to Queens of the Stone Age as influences) brings an even representation of modern and classic approaches to heavy and discombobulated music.
The new album opens with “Neon Guru” and “…And Now Emerges The Silver Pilgrim,” two blistering and intense pieces, simultaneously aggressive and playful, almost inviting in tone.
Then things get a little out there. In “The Hymn of the Angel People,” the normal tempo is slowed and dismantled while a woman gently recites a poem, spoken through an Asia-meets-Led-Zeppelin psychedelic landscape, of pilgrims with visions, winged two-headed beasts, and all sorts of trippy imagery.
The album continues as more swirling, frenzied songs, strained through Korgs, Moogs, and other prog standbys, bring the energy to full tilt before another epic, “3,000 Light Years By Way of the Spacehawk,” closes it out.
And the album is epic, with more fury and depth than anything An Albatross has put forth before, very much departing from the minute-long eruptions heard on earlier albums. And yet this album best translates the group’s live energy, a feat not before adequately accomplished. All the members have been somewhat displeased with every previous recording, and have been disparaged by devoted fans for not holding up the live sound and energy.
“We decided to take it upon ourselves to bring that in the studio with meticulous recording and mixing,” says Gieda. “We spent more time than all previous recordings combined together, almost limitless studio time, with über-meticulous, massive tinkering.”
An Albatross produced the record itself, bringing a new and challenging task. “We all lost a little bit of weight from it, especially towards the end, but ultimately, it paid off because we’re all happy with the way it turned out,” Gieda says.
Layers and layers of strings, horns, flute, organs, and Gieda’s raw and stunning vocals complete the sweltering and thundering rhythms. The guitars are furious while staying afloat in fuzzed riffs and piercing fretwork. This is a vision accomplished.
“We’ll definitely be on tour forever after the album drops,” Gieda jokingly confirms. In this respect, the real nature of An Albatross comes out. It tries to ensure that the experience is massive and inclusive, which actually seems to be the more natural state for the band.
Though recording can be turbulent, Gieda describes the hours on the road as truly life affirming. Being in the groove, on the road, entrenched in the now, not thinking of the past or the future really lends itself to getting on stage and unleashing one’s self with the music.
Gieda credits everything from the hum of the road to the typical intoxicants as an inspiration for performing, but more or less, their band’s energy has a lot to do with the luxury of performing music nightly in front of friends and loved ones.
“The true language is not what we speak, our verbal language, but the intrinsic rhythms felt in live performance,” says Gieda. “Having played 800 shows plus has gifted us with a cultural capital that is unparalleled, and we’re very appreciative of our position. We haven’t been on the road for months, so my brain feels like it’s mush. I don’t feel alive until I’m actually on tour, stirring up some kineticism.”