ONEBIGMESS

Boston's still-independent, hard-rock/punk band ONEBIGMESS has just released their new studio album, Viva La Mess, on September 13th at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA. Showing a bit more depth than the bands' last release (The Mess'd Up EP) the groups' second full length effort hits you in the gut, and barely stops to let you breathe. This latest album puts the bands' roots right in the foreground. You know where they came from, but have no idea where they are headed. ONEBIGMESS has been kicking around the Boston music scene for a few years now. With their carefully-crafted, brutally-honest music the band has slowly been building an amazingly, tight-knit group of die hard fans during that time. Vocalist Rob Kelley's deeply personal, highly-explosive lyrics propel the band with such raw energy that even people who are not normally fans of their genre will stop and listen. The emotion and intensity of the music doesn't make you want to listen, it makes you have to listen. Viva La Mess kicks off with "The Death Toll Starts With One", a pure blast of intense, chaotic power-chord mayhem started by Chris Devine (guitar), and pushed even harder by the bombastic power of Chris Deao (drums), and the rapid-fire Rickenbacker attack of Seldawg (bass). Going from song to song, barely letting you catch your breath, ONEBIGMESS maintains a high level of energy to the end, with tracks like the bittersweet, lamenting of love gone wrong in "Come Out and Play", and the maddening, spiraling out of control, doomed from the start meltdown of "Dog Piss". ONEBIGMESS also lets their guard down and puts their hearts on their sleeves with songs like "All I Can Do", a clean verse/heavy chorus track about realizing that no matter what you do for someone, it isn't ever going to be enough, and the touching "Calling You", about the time when you realize that your situation isn't going anywhere, and finding the courage to move on from the impending doom. "We tried to keep the heaviness of The Mess'd Up EP, but we also wanted to add a little more depth," says Devine. "We got away from the quieter songs when we put out the EP, but we wanted to bring it back to the table with this one." Deao agrees. "This is a record that we can all stand behind. It's honest and powerful, and people can relate to it, and sing along to it." Since the Mess'd Up EP, the band got used to crowd participation at their shows, so they tried to keep an element of that in the new songs. Songs like "Adhesion" and the in your face attitude, crowd chant-along of "Miss Timid" will keep the crowd singing and thrashing along. The album ends with "Runt", a controversial song that puts the singer in the shoes of a High School student who is sick of being picked on and decides to retaliate by shooting up the school. The chorus is delivered with a chilly indifference through powerful lines such as "take your life, let you live, it's all the same to me, anything to stop the pain is what will set me free". ONEBIGMESS doesn't take the righteous stance of right or wrong, nor do they allow you to sympathize with the killer. They just put it out there for you to decide. Right from wrong, black from white, it doesn't matter. The honesty is what comes through, and it is what Viva La Mess is all about.