People! You must flock to see Made Out Of Babies, for unlike some hoax in a box, they are true monsters roaming among us disguised as mere mortals. I had only been to Southpaw in Park Slope, Brooklyn once a few years ago for a Big Daddy Kane show, a life/world re-organizing affair that was so dope of a concert I was forever after forced to categorize things in life as either “Kane” or “Un-Kane”, with “Kane” obviously being acceptable and the latter things you shouldn’t allow into your life like raspberry flavored coffee instead of black Colombian goodness, for example. This visit, on a Tuesday night no less, for the noise rock band Made Out Of Babies was no less world shaking, if mainly serving less as a new personal philosophy than as a stark reminder from Made Out Of Babies’ front woman Julie Christmas and company why you shouldn’t settle for less as a music fan. Bands this good aren’t a dime a dozen, but they sure make a lot of stuff we’re used to digesting look like so much detritus. This is music that zooms in on the grimy minutiae of New York and the psyche, jumps fully on board and rides it to hell and back.

The sound system of the club is one of the best in the city, well worth the trip out there, like L’amour but with a better bar and old record sleeves on the wall as well. It’s a cool little spot. Beer is reasonably priced but we’d started up the street at some tiny dive bar that reeked of suicide and is allegedly the only place in Park Slope to really get a cheap drink, even though the jukebox of said shit hole didn’t play my George Jones song. Bastards! I was thrilled to have moved on to Southpaw and was fighting it, hungover as hell from a three-day bender, but was super excited. This was probably the band I’d most wanted to see live since my friend Elodie from the French magazine Noise sent me a copy of their debut album Trophy a few years back. I had seen plenty of live footage kicking around the internet, and knew the band thundered, and that Julie was very evocative onstage, but was glad to have the chance to have them bash some cymbals around my ears. It was a fitting and inspiring end to a weekend of recording my own band and staying on eleven for three days, spilling into the beginning of the week. This was a Tuesday night that felt like a fucking 4 a.m. on a Saturday!

I only caught a little bit of opener Pistola, but the band was tight as hell and their singer Patricia was great and melodic ala PJ Harvey over the groups rattle and indie-melody. I’d definitely like to check their full record The Bleeder out more and liked the tracks on their MySpace I dug on a few days later.

PIGS was the second band and were fucking awesome, featuring Cooper, the bassist of Made Out Of Babies and creating and wallowing in a deep racket that veered into hypnotic dementia and heroic antics of deafening drone. They didn’t have a record or any merch and made fun of themselves, but kicked ass and got people excited. It was a good crowd, especially for a Tuesday night.

By the time Made Out Of Babies’ Julie Christmas took the stage, more people had filled in, and from the get-go they didn’t disappoint, with material like “Cooker” from their brand new LP, The Ruiner, on The End Records, shattering eardrums and riding and reaching for brittle yet anthemic crescendos. Their heaviest stuff always has dark melodic tendrils laced into the clattering train guitar tones and mellower intricate textures, often courtesy of guitarist Brendan Tobin, even as the rhythm section stampedes onward. The textures really compliment Julie Christmas’s vocal range, which veers from howling screams ala Reichian therapy to soulful yet often disturbed melodies or chants. On “Cooker” in the intro when she shouts “dragging and kicking and screaming” you feel like it is happening to you.

Bassist Cooper’s bass tone on record is growling and wild, especially jarring on their sophomore release Coward, as recorded by Mr. Steve Albini. The band is often compared to Unsane and rightly so, but live, Cooper’s tone was a whole other beastie, like a wild boar banging over a bunch of burn barrels out in some no man’s land. Matthew Egan’s drums were a cacophonous storm that drew me in to such a degree that a lot of songs blended together because I found myself air drumming along like Animal from the Muppets forced to live vicariously, but also because I was still pretty wasted and engulfed in the overall waves of sound.

I was startled also to realize that their guitarist is a really tall dude! It is refreshing to see people that look like real musicians instead of cloned emo boys trying to play heavy music like Underoath or other bands I am sick to death of being touted as genius. Ughhh!!!! This crop of New York bands was all so much more envelope-pushing, and even when based on a lot of ‘90s influences (like how the Jesus Lizard are worn proudly on Made Out Of Babies’ sleeves), it’s fully satisfying.

Julie was great in that her stage presence wasn’t wholly focused on using movement as a crutch. I love crazy front people like Iggy Pop or whoever, but even Iggy can also draw you in with stillness at times, which Christmas can really do to great effect with sort of laconic stares that leave you wondering if she’s amused in there or wants to dip you in acid or what. It’s great.

Watching Christmas sing, I was also really fascinated that it seemed like she never took a breath. I know this is impossible, but it seemed at times like she would keep her face deadpan and the volume of her words would just shift themselves. She was moving around and rocking out with the band, don’t get me wrong, but it seemed like the words just launched themselves out of her effortlessly. I had to comment about it to John Lamacchia (ex-Candiria and currently in the exciting project Spylacopa which Christmas also contributes to vocally along with Greg Puciato from the Dillinger Escape Plan) who just nodded and grinned at her onstage antics.

“Mr. Prison Shanks” from Coward was another highlight, with guitar as buzzsaw slicing up the nervous system. One thing that’s so cool about Made Out Of Babies is that when they aren’t sludging and trudging, the other riffs brought to the table on top of the herky-jerky and careening rhythms are often custom tailored to build anxiety, it seems. “Mr. Prison Shanks” is a song you feel in the back of your neck as the hairs rise just as much as from the punch to the gut. It’s akin to being in the midst of a shipwreck while really strung out, or something.

I wish I could catch some of the band’s current European dates. They are not to be missed, and you really get your money’s worth, or in this case my friend’s money, who I had to borrow the door from like a scumbag because I had accidentally spent it all on my Sunday night bender when I didn’t get in until 7:30 AM and missed the whole first day of tracking in the studio with my own band like an asshole! That’s a rarity, like Bigfoot and bands as good as Made Out Of Babies, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.