For the relatively brief time they were around, Guns Up! were an absolute force. For a few solid years, they brought a style of thrashy hardcore that drew on the best of bands like Killing Time, Outburst, and even their contemporaries in No Warning. They were also a vibe.
For those of us lucky enough to have spent time with them, we felt Guns Up!’s collective personality. Former Backtrack vocalist Jame Vitalo puts it best, “Guns Up! changed my life. I dropped out of high school to go on tour with them, and I have had a life in music since. They barely knew me, and they put their arms around me and treated me like family.”
I can attest to all of that, having been on that tour myself. If you were chill, GU! embraced you with open arms. Playing shows with them was as much about their absolutely crazy live sets as it was about getting a chance to hang with people that were truly down for hardcore culture.
Outlive, the band’s lone full-length, was released in 2005 on 1917 Records, and was a punishing sonic assault. Yet, the lyrics also had an uncanny sense of introspection and self-awareness. To be sure, Outlive was a celebrated record in its moment. Guns Up! toured across America and Europe with some of the era’s best bands in support of that LP. Retrospectively, though, Outlive deserves more acclaim that it’s necessarily gotten for being such a standout record.
The LP aptly opens with the title track, and GU! waste no time punctuating their aggressive thrashy style. The musical composition is what really brings out the energy in the song. Particularly, as the vocals and bass drop out after the first two verses, Mike and Greg’s pounding guitar riffs and Mullet’s drum beat bring the listener into a driving high-octane buildup to one of the record’s best breakdown sing-alongs.
And it is in that breakdown sing-along that Guns Up! put their musical aptitude on display. It’s thumping, anthematic, mosh-laden, and it’s subtly insightful. Dan screaming, “I guess there’s a time when you learn to live. I know there’s a time when you have to outlive” as the guitars grind along with the bass and drum beats set the tone for the rest of the record: high energy, confrontational, perceptive.
As hard as the the title track hits, what lies beneath is a thoughtful and accurate frustration with the world at large. A theme threaded throughout the entire record.
The next standout song, “Won’t Change for Me,” kicks out with as much as octane as “Outlive,” but it also offers a very clever, if not easily missed, homage to a less-than-likely musical influence. The song’s breakdown is a near mirror image of the opening to Entombed’s song “Demon” from Wolverine Blues.
The band made no bones about that homage which made the whole thing an even cooler way to pay respect to an unlikely influence. And what’s best about that nod to Entombed is that “Won’t Change for Me” stands strong as a great track even without that breakdown.
“Life’s Ill,” the record’s fourth track opens with a frenetic and clever high-hat beat with choppy guitar riffage that segue way into a quick but sick drum fill that intros a heavy tone for the rest of the song. Really, “Life’s Ill” is about Mullet’s drumming.
Whether the high-hat intro, the pre-breakdown drum fill, or the seemingly simple bass drum beats over the final breakdowns, Mullet’s innate understanding of what does and doesn’t work gives the song dimension. This one also closes out with one of the sharpest lyrics on the record: “Are you looking to the sky, or just to me?” Confrontational indeed.
Before getting into Outlive’s best song, it has to be acknowledged that Guns Up! wove an instrumental song into the record. “A Means” is a gloomy and mid-tempo song that trudges darkly along. It doesn’t come off as filler or forced. It’s a great vibe change just as the record is almost done. And it transitions perfectly into the LP’s closer, “To An End” (get it?!), a great track in its own right.
Ok, so for me, Outlive’s best song is “Test My Will.” Newcomb’s (Nukem!) opening low-end bass line screams for a creepy crawl mosh pit. As the song picks up, the drums and guitars come in, pounding out the best thrash hardcore the LP has to offer. All of this complements the angry melancholy of the lyrical content that Dan opens with. The gang vocals shouting “It’s too late” as Dan screams back “It’s too late for me” is powerful as all get out.
And then there’s JD from Shipwreck AD. What an absolute force he brings to this song. JD comes in as the breakdown looms, and offers the listener a real response to a shit world: “Another day my blood runs cold. Stuck at the fork in the road. Why bother trudging away to emptiness?”
This all to have Dan come back in screaming, “Why should I love a world that won’t love me back?” as JD responds, “Why should I love a world that won’t acknowledge me?” Existential dread. Honest questions. All laid in front of some of the best hardcore the era has to offer. Not to mention, those lyrics found their way into multiple songs with multiple responses by some of Boston hardcore’s greatest bands of that era.
Nonetheless, “Test My Will,” to this day, strikes hard with me. It’s a sonic reminder that we don’t have to be happy all the time, that the world is under no obligation to care about any of us, but that we also have every right to react how we see fit to those conditions.
Just to refocus here. Guns Up!, and their full-length Outlive, have a defining role in the shape of 2000s hardcore. As with so many hardcore bands, their time together was ultimately short, not counting a few choice shows here and there in more recent years. But they spent that time well, and left an impact on others.
“I fucking hate to say this, but a bunch of guys from Massachusetts took my love for NYHC to another level,” offers James Vitalo. And, if you know Vitalo, you know his love for NYHC runs deep. But you can hear the GU! influence in Backtrack and other contemporary hardcore bands for sure.
It simply cannot be overstated, Guns Up! did the fucking thing in a relatively short amount of time. They toured. They helped younger bands. They made lasting friendships. They released a tremendous record with Outlive. And they made something really special out of their time together.
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Tagged: 2000s hardcore week, guns up
