The Men - From post-hardcore to new southern rock

The Men's adventure kicks off in Brooklyn in 2008, with their first chaotic releases taking the form of a couple of cassettes and a self-produced EP, We Are The Men, useful mainly for spreading the band's name around their home turf. The initial core forms around the two singer/guitarists Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi, joined by bassist Chris Hansell, who would be replaced by Ben Greenberg in 2011. The line-up would later be expanded with drummer Rich Samis and Kevin Faulkner on lap steel.

Scrolling through the track titles of their blistering debut, Immaculada (2010), you'd think you were in the presence of some apocryphal noise concept album about the New Testament, given the repeated evangelical references. The starkly lo-fi instrumental "Stranger Song" serves as an introduction to "Problems / Burning Up", which after two minutes of scene-setting lets us hear the Men's vocal approach for the first time, in a blender that grinds up Minor Threat and Jesus Lizard as few others had managed to do before. In one stroke, the aesthetics of the historic Dischord and Touch & Go labels are brilliantly fused together. The following "Grave Desecration" is a blanket of foggy, harrowing noise that only clears in the final thirty seconds, settling into a gentle guitar arpeggio.

The momentary truce continues through the more than seven minutes of "Madonna: The Star Of the Sea", an acid rain that leads into "Lazarus", a garage-beat number coated in distortion, though beneath its tough shell you can make out distinctly sixties echoes. "Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition" is steeped in hard psychedelia, while "Oh Yoko" and "Immaculada" are the nuclear bombardments that close out a truly thrilling debut. It's impossible not to notice such a distinctive record, however heavily derivative it may be. And indeed the band would earn a fair amount of respect on the underground circuit, and shortly after would be signed by Sacred Bones.

Just one year later, a long, atmospheric intro serves as a prelude to a hymn-like tremor, wrapped in a cloud of insistent noise. This is "If You Leave…", the opening track of Leave Home, the New York band's second album, even more extreme and devastating in its sound than its predecessor. The band pushes hard on the pedal of abrasiveness, betting everything on visceral impact and amplifiers cranked to the max, battling to the last breath and ending up building a wall of sound that's at times impenetrable and hostile. After the punk torpedo of "Lotus" and the histrionic noise-rock of "Think", things grow ever more incandescent, culminating in the existential collapse of "L.A.D.O.C.H." (Khanate raised on Jesus Lizard?), the decisive track of the record.

On vinyl, side two opens with another punk-noise variant, "()", while "Shittin' With The Shah", for about three-quarters of its length, is an instrumental with idyllic tones that offers a chance to catch one's breath before the closing "Night Landing", which reveals a clear post-punk legacy, brilliantly crossed with the noise-hardcore heard so far. Despite not breaking into the charts that matter, Leave Home quickly becomes a cult record, and the name The Men starts circulating ever more insistently in underground alt-rock circles.

But the breakthrough record arrives the following year, in 2012. The band loves to test itself and decides to further broaden its range of stylistic solutions. Open Your Heart will be widely recognized as one of the best independent alt-rock records of the year. While the opening Stooges-style torpedo of "Turn It Around" and the ferocious rock-and-roll glory of "Animal" still seem to tie us to the previous record, if only for the raw virulence animating everything (which we'll find again further on in the near-hardcore assault of "Cube"), things start heading in a different direction from there. And the band throws it in our face right from the title: "Country Song", as if to say: "Watch out, we're switching gears now, try to keep up…"

And so a shimmering landscape unfolds, resting on guitar twang, a sort of spiritual frontier that suddenly comes alive, flowing naturally into the epic space-rock journey with a kraut flavor (not too far from Neu!) of "Oscillation", where the interplay of the two guitars revives the Californian glories of "black stars" launched beyond the wall of eternity. The band is driven by a sincere, all-encompassing passion, one that also leads them toward psych-pop-punk vertigo ("Please Don't Go Away") or, in the title track, to brush against the shaggy mane of the Replacements.

Open Your Heart is a little digest of genres and styles, a delightful roller coaster that sets off again from the country (via Meat Puppets with traces of Gram Parsons) of "Candy", brushes against the tattered shirts of desert grunge on "Presence" and flows into the least radical Sonic Youth on "Ex-Dreams".

Their personal masterpiece seems to be getting ever closer, but just when everyone expects an infernal noise triumph, the band decides to shift gears once again. While Open Your Heart hinted at a certain softening, the sound remained for the most part sharp-edged, on a record that represented a miraculous balance between what The Men had been so far and what they would become afterward.

The follow-up, New Moon, reveals an unexpectedly chameleonic band. Having digested noise-rock, post-hardcore, psychedelia, garage and punk, The Men land squarely in classic-rock territory, without shying away from forays into country and cow-punk. If the opening leaves a bit of a puzzled impression, with those lazy, bored-summer-of-love-style choruses and an overall sleepy mood ("Open The Door"), things already fall into place by track two, "Half Angel Half Light", presenting us with a kind of raw, earthy Neil Young, "Mirror Ball" era (when he had the then-fearsome youngsters Pearl Jam backing him), complete with circular wah-wah guitars in the background. New Moon's sound is that of a band perfectly in tune with the rock tradition of its own country, a sound made of sweat and dust, which the harmonica of the sweltering "Without A Face" seems to want to mimic in its sharpest forms.

Around the core duo of guitarist Nick Chiericozzi and bassist Mark Perro, with drummer Rich Samis holding down the rear, the new arrivals Kevin Faulkner (on lap steel guitar) and Ben Greenberg have joined, the latter also playing some bass parts here as well as handling production. A group of friends who, without too many airs, put their passions for good old ballads on display ("The Seeds", "Bird Song"), for electric cobwebs coiled around the icon of Neil Young & The Crazy Horse, even showing glimpses of a frontier romanticism ("I Saw Her Face"), a romanticism that finds its most direct and sentimental expression in the tiptoeing sketch of "High And Lonesome", counterbalanced by the restless filigree of the lengthy "Supermoon". The noisy, garage-rooted impact of the past, meanwhile, lives again in the deafening, extremist weave of "The Brass", in the power-pop of "I See No One" and in the one, launched at breakneck speed down the highway, of "Electric". And there's also a touch of Dinosaur Jr. on "Freaky", helping to compose an engaging and sincere mosaic.

The results of their guitar jams around the campfire are collected in October 2013 on the EP Campfire Songs, which gathers acoustic versions recorded live during the New Moon sessions.

On March 3, 2014, Tomorrow's Hits is released, continuing and refining the vision of the previous record, confirming a smoothing of the rough edges that highlights the band's most mellow side. It's the sublimation of the "normalization" process applied to the music on offer. But it's a normalization that keeps paying off: even though sparkling horns and lush arrangements replace the jagged guitars of the early days, even though the vocals grow less raw and the overall atmosphere becomes more reassuring, the energy radiating from their compositions remains unchanged. It's simply rendered in a song-form that looks different from the past, but the quality of the final result stays high.

The album confirms Perro and company's growing closeness to the tradition of the great American open spaces: southern echoes are everywhere, starting from the opening notes of "Dark Waltz", where Creedence Clearwater Revival merge with Neil Young (just listen to that guitar solo…). "Another Night", with piano and lush horns prominently on display, sounds like a Springsteen-esque anthem, as does "Different Days", a child of Springsteen, one of those storming songs the Boss hasn't managed to write in years. "Sleepless" and "Settle Me Down" are two slide-soaked mid-tempos that reek of "Americana", while "Get What You Give" pays tribute to the pen of early Tom Petty. But the track that makes everyone jump out of their seat is the lethal rock'n'roll of "Pearly Gates", a crazed explosion of energy sung with the indolence of peak Dylan. There's also open applause for the liberating electric gallop of "Going Down", which closes the record by invoking the most electrically anthemic Pearl Jam, the one of "State Of Love And Trust", to be precise.

The Men, looking back and reflecting on 50 years of American rock history, write what they ironically call "tomorrow's hits", because often the secret to success lies in the careful observation and reworking of past stylistic tropes. A very Reynolds-esque statement for a record that on one hand has a vague flavor of conversion and repentance, and on the other demonstrates a versatility few can match. At this point in their artistic trajectory, the band manages to excel even while radically changing register, and that's their true greatness — reinforced by the fact that today it's far harder to surprise an audience by playing classic-rock than by playing hardcore-punk.

In November 2016 comes Devil Music, stamped with the newly founded label We Are The Men Records, on which Perro and Chiericozzi return to the rugged and far less reassuring post-hardcore paths of their early days, a record that burns as if it had been made by a bunch of twenty-somethings. The first four tracks unleash unresolved rage and unexpected new electricity, a sensational barrage that finds only momentary calm with the more rounded "Patterns" (indeed the fifth track in the sequence) and with the minute-plus acoustic interlude that gives the whole collection its name.

Just reading the tracklist is enough to sense how this musical package is a time bomb ready to go off at any moment: "Crime" (one minute and fifty-six seconds that come straight from the circles of hell), "Violate", "Gun" and "Fire" certainly can't be mistaken for titles fit for schoolgirls. The sound is always extremely powerful, a glowing magma that reaches its highest temperatures on the hyper-distorted "Lion's Den" and "Hit The Ground", diabolical closing solutions in which it's almost hard to tell the guitars apart from the sax. Devil Music is material that becomes highly flammable once again, music certainly not suited to those looking for tranquilizers to fall asleep, a fresh jolt of healthy energy.

In March 2018 comes Drift, the New Yorkers' seventh record, sealing ten years of activity for a band that amazes not only for its prolific output, but even more for its innate ability to shed its skin and change style. The nervy garage gait of "Maybe I'm Crazy", the enveloping elegance — at times Pink Floyd-esque — of "When I Held You In My Arms", the sax-driven psych-rock of "Secret Light", which sounds like the chronicle of a late-night chase through the streets of Manhattan, and the trip redolent of Spacemen 3 / Spiritualized on "Final Prayer", are so many facets of a prism that captures colors and reassembles them into new combinations.

Even though what we hear within the grooves of Drift is a swift trans-stylistic compendium of roads the American band has already traveled, including a revisiting of their country-folk roots, which this time characterize the album's central section ("Rose On Top Of The World", "So High") and closing section ("Come To Me"). Post-hardcore drifts survive in the formidable "Killed Someone" – built on the power of untamed, towering guitars – which, together with the following acoustic sketch "Sleep", forms the eloquent embodiment of the two faces of The Men's sound, skillfully interwoven to craft solutions that are as cohesive as they are wide-ranging.

Punctual as Swiss clocks, Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi arrived at their eighth album on February 14, 2020, Mercy, once again released by Sacred Bones. Still hard to pin down, they confirm having finally found a certain stability in their lineup, thanks to the reliable presence of Rich Samis and Kevin Faulkner. Recorded live, with no overdubs, Mercy is a genuine crash course blending fifty years of music with admirable ease. In order of appearance we get the alt-country midwest landscape of "Cool Water", the loose-reined jam "Wading In Dirty Water", a fusion of Neil Young's acid gallops and the lysergic keyboards of the Doors, the aching guitar-only ballad "Fallin' Thru", and the reverb-soaked, blatantly '80s "big rock" number "Children All Over The World".

And then there's the amphetamine-fueled Dylan of "Call The Dr.", the garage rock'n'roll calligraphically indebted to the Rolling Stones on "Breeze", and the warm final embrace of "Mercy". A variety that few bands in the world are capable of offering, with ever-shifting scenarios and no fear of taking on reference points that could prove awkward for anyone else. Records like Drift and Mercy present themselves in a sophisticated, polished way, confirming a rare eclecticism and a skill for shifting register, even within a single album, an attitude that never undermines their formal unity.

At the start of 2020, the pandemic catches Chiericozzi and Perro just as they're beginning to sketch out material for a new album. Confined at home by lockdown, aided by a drum machine, they channel all the unease of that period into raw, immediate songs capable of bringing the band back toward the rawness of their early days. As soon as it becomes possible to meet again in a recording studio, Rich Samis's drums and Kevin Faulkner's bass step in to support the vocals and strictly electric guitars, completing The Men's garage-rock record, their first released on Fuzz Club Records after years with Sacred Bones. Released on February 3, 2023, New York City is explicitly dedicated to their hometown and to places like CBGB and Max's Kansas City, where the American punk movement found a home and flourished for a few seasons, leaving behind musicians and albums still revered today.

Inspired by the hard, pure sounds of the Stooges and MC5, the first half of New York City races by branded with the most incendiary proto-punk, pure garage essence distilled into nervous, unstoppable tracks like "Hard Livin'", "Peace Of Mind", "Echo" and "God Bless The USA", a rock-solid, uncompromising run. In the second half the pace slows a little, but the atmosphere stays just as murky, also shaped by the filthiest blues, the kind filtered through the lens of John Spencer and BRMC. The only points of discontinuity arrive at the end, with an "Anyway I Find You" that leans toward hyper-saturated alt-country territory, somewhere between Crazy Horse and Wilco, and a "River Flows" that tilts toward a "classic-rock" format, complete with an epic guitar solo. All born from an irrepressible need to release positive energy.

For Record Store Day 2024, the New York band released, exclusively on vinyl, Manhattan Fire, containing a handful of unreleased tracks and eight preliminary versions of songs that would appear on "New York City". The tracks were recorded in mono and performed solely by Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi in December 2020, during the halt of live activity imposed as a measure against the Covid-19 pandemic. Only one track was released on streaming platforms, "I See The Fire", a filthy rock'n'roll number done their way, stylistically in line with the content of the previous album.

In 2025 comes Buyer Beware, which presents itself as even meaner, both in sound and overall attitude, captured straight to tape by producer and sound engineer Travis Harrison, so as not to dissipate the gritty live charge the American band brought to the recording sessions. The approach is devastating from the energetic opening of "Pony", setting out a frontal attack steeped in proto-punk, in the filthiest "Detroit sound", that of the Stooges and MC5, to put it plainly. An enviable drive that stays constant across all thirteen tracks, in which the healthy meanness never gives way to any kind of sonic compromise. One after another come a series of furious songs ("At The Movies", "Nothing Wrong", "Tombstone") that in many cases clock in at well under three minutes.

So many incendiary ingredients: the saxophone trying to carve out space among the guitars on the title track, fuzz scattered pretty much everywhere, the blazing hardcore one-two of "Fire Sermon" / "PO Box 96", the nineties alt-rock of "Charm", which you could picture in the hands of early Dinosaur Jr., the dirty, mean rock'n'roll of the filthiest Rolling Stones on "Black Heart Blue", the seemingly out-of-control noise of "Control" (go figure). After the interlude "Dry Cycle", the final three tracks push even toward "metal" horizons, between the Sabbath-like doom stride of "The Path" and the nod to Metallica on the closing "Get My Soul". An urgency that lets the album slip by with ease, never giving the listener a chance to get bored.

Contributions by Francesco Nunziata ("Leave Home", "Open Your Heart", "New Moon")

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