GET LAID

Up for best punk act of 2010 - Local spotlight-boston music awards

Complex, sophisticated, lady-fronted hardcore from Massachusetts. Spastic blasts of screaming thrash is peppered with a pounding and plodding, metallic, sludgy trudge and then interspersed with the squirming bass lines and exotic chords of Jehu and Hot Snakes. Occasionally abrasive, but consistently interesting and concisely packaged into a slab of clear, red vinyl. - Razorcake Magazine

With three very loud and very live bands playing tonight, the Enormous Room is certainly bound to live up to its name. The cushy couches and plush interior will be psychologically transformed to feel like your dark and dingy rock club..
Noisycore band Get Laid headline the night. They are getting ready to celebrate the release of a split 7-inch with Merrimack Valley heavies Now Denial on Get Young Records. They are quite sexy and will definitely help you go all the way. - Boston Band Crush

NO REQUESTS “With very few exceptions, the only things I’ve ever been able to play are songs I wrote,” says Aaron Lang (lower right).

Guitar punk rock has a long and, frankly, dull history. Unless you’re venturing into retired-punk-bar-band territory, where misguided confidence grows like rust on cinder-blocked Cadillacs, it’s hard to find anyone ballsy enough or stupid enough to reach for the stars with a mere six strings. People like Black Flag’s Gregg Ginn or the Butthole Surfers’ Paul Leary.

Aaron Lang is like that. A weirdo transplant from Akron, Ohio, he’s never had a guitar lesson and would probably get the boot if he ever tried. Atop a minefield of rhythmic left turns on Get Laid’s new EP, Pretty Weathered, he throws in old-school hardcore, molten out-of-key melodies, and shards of funhouse-mirror metal. It’s a heroic effort that fits the band’s delirious attack — which is led by singer Shannon Elkind’s hyena howl — like brass knuckles.

Take “Jump Off” — three-quarters of the way through the song (which is all of 40 seconds), Elkind drops out of the picture after a tidy thrashing and the proceedings lurch to a halt. The band trudge forward in half-time, groping for wrong notes in a pit of musical loose ends. Soon a sickly, hobbled shadow of what might have once been a blues solo emerges. Bent way out of shape, wandering into a rootless stupor, it’s one of the best moments on the record.

At Elkind’s apartment in Lower Allston, Lang slouches in a hoodie, ripped-up black jeans, and thermals. “I basically never learned to play the guitar. With very few exceptions, the only things I’ve ever been able to play are songs I wrote.”

We’re huddled in a sparsely decorated living room with a TV, a stack of records, and a bitter draft creeping through the window. In addition to Elkind and Lang, there’s bassist Alex Pepper. (Drummer Matt Kenney completes the line-up.) Elkind apologizes for the wobbly end tables set up in front of the couches. “We got drunk and were blasting CCR and smashed the coffee table. I did clean up the mess, though.”

Get Laid — who play a matinee at O’Brien’s Pub this Sunday — were started as a whim two years ago by Elkind and Lang. “She got laid off and I wasn’t working and we were just bored,” says Lang. “Now, it’s two years later, and the whole band is unemployed.”

Certain stylistic touchstones that were established early on still keep things together — notably Black Flag. In fact, Get Laid have a lot more in common with nasty early-’80s LA punk than with most East Coast bands, from the gleeful disembowling of forms to the near-parodic treatment of everything from instrumental breakdowns to pick slides. The heavy machinery of mathy hardcore is also omnipresent. Kenney and Pepper make a brutal rhythm section, but it’s all a bit askew. Thin rakes stand in for power chords on occasion, tense drum rolls replace big crashes, and Elkind shrieks maniac tantrums over it all, as though yelling “Told you so!” for thinking you had a handle on it.

“The last step is to make the song as annoying as we can,” says Lang. I wouldn’t doubt that his growing up in Akron’s de-evolution ground zero has something to do with that approach. “It’s your typical post-industrial wasteland full of meth and petty crime. Everyone there is a drunk except for Chrissie Hynde, and I heard her vegan restaurant is crappy. Still, I didn’t want to leave, because it was all I knew.”

Over the past couple of years, they’ve careered through gnarly underground shows in warehouse spaces and basements throughout Boston and completed two US tours that have sent Elkind to hospitals for surgery after smashing her knee on floors in Providence and Baltimore. They’ve seen hair set on fire, bottles smashed over heads, and bands with house-arrest bracelets; they’ve even opened for the late G.G. Allin’s still touring Murder Junkies. “I hate everything about them,” says Elkind, “but a show’s a show.”

Still, they swear they’ve been working on their good behavior. Pepper chimes in, “We don’t necessarily dress like punks. So people aren’t expecting us to get shitfaced after a show, which we often actually end up doing. But we don’t wreck the place, and that puts people in good moods.”

A tinny solo bleats from a CCR record spinning in the corner. Bendy blues notes, jaunty ups and downs — it’s the sound of a song treated kindly, with good behavior. I only hope Lang never learns to play along.
- The Phoenix Newspaper

Get Laid is from Allston, MA and plays self-described "thrashy weird punk", and that's cool, because I'm not really sure what the hell I'd call this stuff on my own! To make a comparison maybe two or three people will actually recognize, they kind of remind me of that German band Gentle Veincut I've written about a couple of times (which is a very good thing in my book) – mostly due to the unique vocals, but also because in addition to the punchy energy and rugged attack of their "thrashy weird punk", there are also lots of caustic, angular "noise rock" types of riffs and textures happening all over the place. It's a cool blend that certainly prevents the band from being pigeonholed into any standard genres, and I have to say I'm way into it. Some of the songs are kind of catchy and explosive with hammering basslines driving a subtly rocked out hardcore/punk vibe, while others have a little more bite in the peculiar twists and turns of their controlled chaos. I'd totally love to hear more from this band ASAP. I'm getting pretty tired of the norm and it's great to get the opportunity to check out bands like this that are doing something a little outside the box.

Get Laid "Decca A.D."

This one's limited to a mere 500 copies, all on red vinyl with hand-screened sleeves. There's a digital download code as well, so those of you like me who are too busy/lazy to deal with vinyl will still be good to go. It's only $7 and there are only five copies left on Etsy right now, so… pick one up while you still can! - Aversi Online

Lesson 1 for those of you in unsigned bands hoping to get review coverage and notice in the music industry – first impressions are key. And no I’m not just talking about the fact that the first 30 seconds of your first song should be killer (that’s a no brainer folks) but it’s the little things, like the look-n-feel of your packaging. Some bands subscribe to the notion that they should put airplane size bottles of booze in there (awesome and much appreciated, keep ‘em coming!), others have cute 8×10 press cuts (yawn, please no more brick wall photos, thanks!), and then the inventive take it from the very first look – what and how you pack your music that’s sent via the mail. Get Laid nailed it – excuse the pun. Not only did they use Simpsons stamps, which is universally noted as ‘awesome’ but they put their vinyl in a decorated package. Going that extra mile means the world and shows that you really REALLY want folks to open it up to see what surprises lay inside. “Pretty Weathered” is a female-fronted proto-punk, spazz, and crusty indie rock outfit that deploys intriguing stop-and-go guitar chugs while firmly nodding to their hardcore brethren. “Decca A.D.” is oddly a B-side but could be their lead track. Easily mistaken for D.C. era post-hardcore and dare I say, emocore, Get Laid is one up-and-comer that everyone worth their salt in the music biz and Regular Joes who just want to be in the know for the next best band. Love it. - Smother Magazine

It seems like I’ve been hearing more and more from the Allston, MA based Get Laid over the past couple or so months, enough to where I eventually plunked down the cash for their 10-inch EP Pretty Weathered that they put out. Don’t see too many 10-inches, so that was pretty neat to begin with. I wasn’t necessarily aware that it had been out since last year though, where was I during this? Either way, this is a rather cool/impressive debut that turns out to be a bit more of a mixed bag of styles than I’d originally anticipated. The band delivers a set of songs that that range between straight up hardcore to a slower more aggro pounding at times. However, generally the pacing here is quick and to the point, as displayed in the 7 song 13 minute run time. Get Laid have no trouble though reeling off a flurry of riffs in this rather brief introduction and you have to hand it to them for not simply sticking to homage and chugging through these songs. It’s hard to tell exactly what Get Laid are, but it’s those sort of challenges that they present that make this record a bit more interesting. Wherever they may be heading, I expect it will be good. - Built On A Weak Spot

Reviewed by Chaz Hewitt
Messy, fucking weird, female-fronted punk music. One minute they sound a bit like an old Three One G band, the next kind of like hot snakes, and then at times they just thrash the tunes out. Maybe too many ideas and sounds going on on one record, but across a 10” I think they get away with it. The vocals are great, and there are some bits that are strangely catchy. Overall this is pretty killer stuff, would love to see these guys play live.

If you like punk bands that twist and turn and then twist a couple times more this is for you. - Collective Zine

Get Laid have a weird mashup of styles on their Pretty Weathered EP--everything from '80s hardcore to spazzy thrash-punk and frenetic '90s post-hardcore. Somehow, it works.

If all this wasn't enough, "FU Barbarian" adds a throbbing, doomy hardcore vibe to a band that's already dousing their songs with frantic, Jehu-style guitars and sharp, snarled female vocals at the forefront. "Jump Off" is thinner but ridiculously erratic for most of it before going into a slower-burning path. Closer "Dear New York" finds a way to integrate a punishing mid-song breakdown but with crooked guitars. Overall, it kinda reminds me of a crustier take on the old Red Knife Lottery stuff.

There's an interesting enough collision of styles and modes on this EP to make it interesting despite its inherent disarray. - Punknews