Across the Earth

If you are lucky enough to catch Kansas City’s best new band playing around the town, be prepared for a full fledge musical blitzkrieg. The dynamic duo of Chris Bohatyritz (guitar, vocals) and Nate Lewis (drums, vocals) met while Nate was visiting Florida. Shortly after that, Chris moved to Kansas City and Tarkus Attacks was born.

Though they have barely been together a year, Tarkus Attacks play with the intuition of a veteran band. The center piece of their unique sound is Chris’ searing guitar which, when combined with Nate’s driving bass drum and perfectly timed fills, makes for bombastic sounds that are sure to please any rock fan.

As impressive as the band's skill and energy is, the most intriguing thing about Tarkus Attacks is their genre defying sound. The complex structure of their songs is reminiscent of progressive rock, but Nate prefers to call it by another name: “storming the castle rock”. Which is a description that fits quite nicely.

Wednesday, July 29 Tarkus Attacks will storm the stage of The Record Bar. If your social calendar has the room and you’re in need of a live music fix there will be no better show in town.

Check Tarkus Attacks out on myspace. - Kansas City Rock Music Examiner

In the Dark Ages, Christian mystics expressed their faith by lashing themselves with nasty-looking whips and looking for excuses to get burned at the stake. Their modern counterparts aren't as hardcore. They start freaky-ass rock bands and wail about Christ's blood over fiendishly distorted guitar riffs. On its debut, In the Valley of Elah, Kansas City's Tarkus Attacks sets a fine, self-flagellating example for its brethren. The duo preaches the good news of lo-fi prog rock by spewing instrumental shrapnel jagged enough to rip a sanctuary curtain and by screaming proclamations of faith like someone being tortured by the devil. Consisting of Chris Bohatyritz on guitar, lead vocals and occasional keys and Nate Lewis on drums and backing vocals, Tarkus Attacks lurches between polyrhythmic cadences and stomping breakdowns, channeling the fury of Samson slaughtering the Philistines. The band isn't completely nonsecular, however. Both the band name and the song "Tarkus Story" pay tribute to the 1971 Emerson, Lake & Palmer album — or, more precisely, its famous armadillo-tank-monster cover art. Christian heavy-rock bands are nothing new, but Tarkus Attacks' ecstatic primitivism is more likely to win converts than, say, Stryper. - The Pitch Weekly

Prog is cool again.

This is the impression I'm getting, sitting at a table in the mostly empty Czar Bar on a Thursday night. I'm watching two dudes in jinky sorcerer capes and hoods summon the eldritch gods of the misty mountains using a fat guitar rig, clattering stop-start drums and young-Geddy Lee screeching.

Paging By-Tor.

The band in my geek sights is Tarkus Attacks, a stripped, rampaging duo consisting of a tattooed beardo on guitar (Chris Bohatyritz) and a Michael Cera look-alike on drums (Nate Lewis, to whom I apologize for that comparison). Shambling, intricate and barely held together, they rock like a scimitar-wielding Ray Harryhausen skeleton warrior.

Also, as I will learn after the show, the Tarkusians (who took their name from the Emerson, Lake & Palmer album with the hybrid armadillo-tank beast on the cover) are openly Christian.

Hey, Jesus is just all right with prog.

Of course, these aren't the only proggers in town. Floating atop the area's topographic ocean of geek rock is Be/Non, whose instrumental chops and electro savvy put jet boots on Queen. The group's upcoming LP, A Mountain of Yeses, cannot come out soon enough.

And on the poppier, more Supertramp side of the spectrum, we have the Khrusty Brothers and Klangs collective, who are also Christian. They write kooky, elaborate songs about robots and create detailed fictional band histories and probably wear masks to high tea.

I can't explain this prog-liferation, but I like it. It is a grand tradition, one that runs the crystal sky from the brute riff-welding of Black Sabbath-influenced metal to the genteel horizon of starry-eyed Elton John-mainlining orchestral pop.

One is bold enough to envision a day when skinny-jean wimps dancing behind samplers and Neutral Milk Hotel plagiarizers will no longer sully the stages of rock bars around town with their bleating ironic agony.

When this Vampire Weekend of indie-rock dominance collapses, I'll be standing on its smoldering, scarf-riddled ruins, Foxtrot LP and wizard staff in hand. - The Pitch Weekly