Christopher wrote:Seeing them live doesn't help, either. It just gets worse.

You mean they do Q&A sessions?

It's been a while since I've listened to Shellac themselves and I honestly thought that this was a Shellac cover/tribute band. Can I take my NOT CRAP vote back?

for the duration of this message, i will be in devil's advocate mode. be forewarned, and please don't take this message as anything more than a load of bullshit.

Track 1 - sounds like Unwound
Track 2 - sounds like Helmet
Track 3 - sounds like The Jesus Lizard, musically. vocals sound like Tool
Track 4 - wow, alright, that kinda sounds a *lot* like Steve's guitar tone, doesn't it... vocals sound like a cross betwen Thought Industry and Melvins
Track 5 - again, rythmn section straight out of Unwound, vocals sorta Melvins-esque. guitar sound = quite steve. definite TJL and Helmet in there again, aside from it being steve's guitar sound and all
Track 6 - okay so yeah, this is pretty Shellacish. but also, the drum beat is a pared-down version of the drum line from "Don't You Forget About Me" from the breakfast club soundtrack, with fills from an Unwound song, or Immigrant Song or some shit by Zepplin, or yadda yadda etc etc...

i guess my point is, if they sound too much like Shellac, does anybody else out of the other cast of characters (Unwound, Melvins, Jesus Lizard, Helmet, Tool, Thought Industry, Simple Minds, Zepplin, potentially ad nauseum etc) sound too much like any of those other bands, too? or a different question, if it wasn't for the production quality sounding as it does, or the guitar tone sounding so much like Steve, would so many people be so freaked out by it? i mean, that bass sound, i can track that way further back than Bob in Shellac, and i'm sure everyone else can, too. Voivod in the early-to-mid-80's was certainly not the first to use it. come to think of it, wasn't Voivod using the odd meter and diminished chords that might today be identified as sounding like Shellac or the Jesus Lizard? woah!

i'm not denying it sounds quite a bit like Shellac. but doesn't it sound like other stuff, too? doesn't your band sound quite a bit like XYZ if you really get down to it? is it just a case that this band has crossed the line and gone too far with sounding like other folks? have they reached the critical mass of shellacisms all in one package?

and a broad and generic question, if two different groups of folks both have the same inflences (like let's say your band and my band both loved the Kinks and Thin Lizzy and, uh, Retsin) and the two bands end up sounding similar, does whoever did it first get to lay claim to that sound?

again, not in any way trying to say that these kids didn't go out and try and become Shellac. i don't know them or anything about them, so i can't speculate. alls i know about them is that a good friend of a good friend of mine in philly is friends with them, so by proxy i believe them to be good people. by association and all.

and shit, they have a song called Vostok! that's a russian watch manufacturer. that's cool, no? this Vostok song, she sounds like the Shellac for sure! but she also sounds like the guitars we used to hear in the Brainiac guitars, doesn't she? yes, she does. oh and the vocals, they sound like the Shellac, too. but maybe they sound like the Prong, eh?

i love the "it sounds like" game as much as the next guy. but hopefully there's at least some kinda food for thought in my blatantly-turning-a-blind-eye-to-the-Shellacisms devil's advocacy.

and yeah, the fact that he plays a harmonic percolator instantly kills any thought that maybe none of them are trying to be Shellac. they wanna be Shellac. probably.

and Bradley, that "I'll make you sick like you make me sick line", what are you claiming he's gone so far as to surgically alter his vocal chords to have a Steve-like timbre? or is it just the phrasing or presentation or something?

gotta disagree with you mr. advocate for his devilness.....
so many coincidences= shellac cover band.
you even unearthed another one. they named a song after a watch company. shellac has " a watch song." yikes now I am really afraid.
its all int the bread and butter sir.

buzzsaw wrote:gotta disagree with you mr. advocate for his devilness.....
so many coincidences= shellac cover band.
you even unearthed another one. they named a song after a watch company. shellac has " a watch song." yikes now I am really afraid.
its all int the bread and butter sir.

okay, so wait, now you're telling me that since my KGB watch was made by a Russian watch manufacturer, that now I'm only allowed to be in cover bands?!?! WTF! well at least i'll go with a band that's already done and pick Unwound.

something else that kinda plays into it, to me, is awareness of what they're doing. if they're going for a Shellac-type sound, i think that works in their favor. how many bands would say "i want our *sound* to be like ACDC", and especially with a band like that, if you're writing for that genre, you're bound to have similar riffs, too. cause that's the genre. i guess maybe Shellac is officially an entire genre at this point? surely there's a ton of folks out there who idolize them to the point of wanting to be similar. kinda like Fugazi-inspired bands. or TLJ-inspired bands. it bugs me a little when people listen to Haymarket Riot, for example, and their opinion of that band is "it sounds just like Fugazi". no it doesn't. their riffs structures are pretty different, to me. the stuff the guitars do may sound similar because of the type of interplay, but i still think they do it quite differently than Fugazi. they're doing *their* thing, and yeah, it's post-Fugazi for sure, but still, i think saying they "sound just like Fugazi" does them a serious injustice and downplays what they do. maybe Technician has crossed some generally-agreed-upon-yet-still-subjective line, where it's just too much. but like i say, i hear other bands in there, too, that predate Shellac.

one last thing... do their riffs sound like exact copies of specific Shellac songs? or is it just the *sound*?

okay, yeah, fine, i submit. [devil's advocate/off]

using the harmonic percolator! if it wasn't for the total obscurity of that pedal outside of Steve's using it, i could seriously work this angle so much better!

So they're not a Shellac cover band?

I heard they were going to change their name to "Shellike".

buzzsaw wrote:gotta disagree with you mr. advocate for his devilness.....
so many coincidences= shellac cover band.
you even unearthed another one. they named a song after a watch company. shellac has " a watch song." yikes now I am really afraid.
its all int the bread and butter sir.

That song is about a specific mission during the old Soviet "Vostok" space program. I'm sorry you guys don't like our vacation photo. Thanks for all the comments.

Addendum: Not only does the song have little to nothing to do with Russian wristwatches, but I wrote that song with Greg and our old drummer, Chris St. Pierre (we never played a show) -- it was on our first CD, which came out after our seven inch, quite a few years before "1000 Hurts" was released. I think I did crib the riff from some instrumental that Shellac tried out live once back in college: in fact, I'm sure of it. I made reference to this song at Greg's wedding in my "best man speech" (long before "1000 Hurts"), and then wept like a baby. As for "I'll make you sick": first and last "girl" song. I had a rough year, and we wrote that on the fly to save time. Sorry.

buzzsaw wrote:they're right behind me aren't they?

After seing the post above, looks like it now.

hello mr. / mrs. technician.
I feel like we have been bullys.we are a very open minded audience, so feel free to comment/ defend yourselves, although its your right not to as well.
I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.