HiFi Handgrenades

HiFi Handgrenades review on Exclaim.ca

HiFi Handgrenades
Carry On
By Sam Sutherland

This is fun, catchy, dirty punk rock that would make Blake Swarzenbach proud. Just the right amount of rock’n’roll vitriol and earnest pop sensibility, Carry On is another fine addition to the current musical canon of aggressively mid-tempo punk that kids with beards and cut-off shorts always seem to (justifiably) love. Comprised of ex-members of the Fags, Suicide Machines and Grande Nationals, HiFi Handgrenades don’t sound much like any of their members’ past outfits. This is an obvious return to punk pasts, which comes in the form of the Dag Nasty-inspired title track and the Milo Goes to College bite of "Around Again." Despite production credits from some big time rock and roll producers, Carry On maintains an appropriate balance between clarity and grit, although it occasionally slides a little too close into radio rock clean. That said, any fans of the modern purveyors of Jawbreaker-style pop punk will get stoked on this, especially when they realise it perfectly packs its ten songs into a tight 22 minutes. (New Romance For Kids)

- Exclaim.ca

When Foo Fighters take the stage at the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise, Florida, tomorrow night to kick off their latest trek across North America, they will be embracing their inner stadium rockers to the max. “We’re proud to be an arena rock band,” says drummer and group cheerleader Taylor Hawkins. “We enjoy doing the bigass shows—making big noise with big toys.”

They’ll take that big approach on their first domestic tour since the release of the critially and commercially successful new album Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace last fall. Hawkins knows exactly why Foo Fighters, one of the few post-grunge bands still standing, remain relevant and will stand tall in the annals of rock history. “It’s all about Dave and how great a frontman he is,” Hawkins explains. “When we played Live Earth last year, Dave turned that stadium into a fucking club. All the great frontmen were like that. That’s what Freddie Mercury did every night.”

Hawkins says the set list will focus on their latest record but the band won’t shy away from their biggest hits. “We pander to our audience, there’s no question. We’re not going to pull a Radiohead and not play our biggest songs. Luckily, I like playing ‘Everlong’ and ‘Monkey Wrench.’ ”
The Foos aren’t going it alone. In fact, the tour has mutated into a post-modern “Monsters of Rock” tour, featuring some of the biggest bands in the country. Jimmy Eat World, Against Me!, Serj Tankian and about-to-break-huge Hi-Fi Hand Grenades will all join the Foos at various points on the run.
“We played together at a radio festival in the fall,” says Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel. “My bandmates were hanging out in the Foos’ dressing room saying, ‘Come on, take us on tour!’ We didn’t think it would actually happen, but here we are.” On the prospect of playing arenas for the first time, Gabel says not to expect any bells and whistles. “We don’t have enough money or know-how to add pyro or anything, so we’re just going to have to play really loud.”

It’ll be a mutual admiration society backstage, as Gabel is a big fan of tourmates Jimmy Eat World—“especially the last record.” Coming off their own tour for last year’s Chase the Light, the guys from JEW relish the idea of getting in front of crowds. “The way the business is now, looking at charts isn’t the best way to gauge how you’re doing as a band,” says frontman Jim Adkins. “People keep showing up and singing along to the songs, so we must be doing something right.”
Adkins, who is married and has a young son, won’t be taking the family on the road the way the Foo Fighters do, as each band member is a (relatively) new father. “Those guys roll deep,” jokes Adkins. - rollingstone.com

by MICHAEL LISI, Special to the Times Union
First published: Wednesday, October 10, 2007


HiFi Handgrenades made a few new fans with a high-energy performance to open the show.
The Detroit rock quartet slammed through its 30-minute set, reminiscent of Green Day, The Ramones and fellow Motor City rockers The Romantics. The band, wrapping up a string of dates with the Foos, lapped up this taste of rock stardom, grinding it out like they were headlining at Madison Square Garden.

Michael Lisi is a freelance music critic from Rotterdam and a frequent contributor to the Times Union.

MUSIC REVIEW

FOO FIGHTERS with HiFi Handgrenades

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Glens Falls Civic Center, 1 Civic Center Plaza, Glens Falls

Length: Foo Fighters, 120 minutes; HiFi Handgrenades, 30 minutes.

The crowd: About 3,200 Foo Fighters fans, most of them teens and

twentysomething males and couples in T-shirts and jeans, out to catch rock hero Dave Grohl and the Foos in an unlikely venue on a rainy October Tuesday night.
Highlights: "Learn To Fly," "Breakout," "Stacked Actors," "Cheer Up Boys," "Let It Die," "My Hero," "Monkey Wrench." - timesunion.com

by Courtney DeVores
Posted on Sat. Oct. 06,2007

At Grohl's invitation, Detroit's Hifi Handgrenades (featuring drummer Ryan Vanderberghe, formerly of the Suicide Machines) opened the show with blistering 3-minute punky, rock songs, including a cover of North Carolina indie legend Superchunk's "Detroit Has a Skyline." - charlotte.com

by Doug Coombe
posted November 7, 2007

Hifi Handgrenades frontman-guitarist John Speck and guitarist Tony Vegas approach life the same way they approach their music — they strip it down to the bare essentials. Their Ferndale bungalow is an ode to minimalism. The living room has a couch, TV, a few DVDs, classic Leni Sinclair photos of the MC5 and Fred "Sonic" Smith, two milk crates of records (mostly '80s punk) and a few concert posters. That's it.

Other walls in the house are mostly bare. The only thing in the refrigerator appears to be booze that they snatched up during their just-finished tour with Foo Fighters.

The heart of the house — the cozy basement practice space — sports vintage wood paneling covered in foam acoustic insulation, which can barely contain the roar of the Handgrenades' twin goldtop-model Les Pauls.

You can hear them practicing a few doors down, but that doesn't seem to faze the neighbors. One of their neighbors told Tony that his other bands' practices (the Grande Nationals) actually helped their kids fall asleep.

John Speck sums up the appeal of their pad: "I prefer a spartan lifestyle. We're here for practice, sleep and showers. That's it." Oh, and drinking beer and listening to Misfits records. - metrotimes.com

Thursday 29/11/07 The Futureheads, Dananananaykroyd, HiFi Handgrenades @ King's College, London

by Jack Langridge on 05/12/2007

“We haven’t played in England for 25 years,” announces The Futureheads’ frontman Barry Hyde to a jubilant King’s College crowd. Having been unceremoniously dropped by label 679 for an underwhelming and underperforming second album in News & Tributes, tonight’s performance, their first English gig in over a year, has all the hallmarks of a landmark show.

With the first single, ‘Break Up The Time’, from their forthcoming third album harking back to the spiky punk-pop of their brilliantly bizarre debut, things seem on the up for the Sunderland quartet. Playing to a crowd that included music journalist heavyweights and industry exec’s, the band tear through a glorious set of old and new with the gusto of a returning heavyweight champ.

Earlier though, as the elevator to the fourth floor Student Union groaned under the weight of the rapidly arriving masses, Detroit’s Hifi Handgrenades’ blaze through a set of Descendents-esque punk-pop with songs like 'Sunset to Sunrise', 'Stupid' and 'Smiling Judas' taken from their soon to be released debut album.

Stumbling on stage like a bumbling bunch of misfits from University Challenge, Glasgow six-piece Dananananaykroyd quickly incinerate that misled, ill-advised theory. Lambasting the stage with the kind of experimental noisecore-indie or as the band call it: ‘fight-pop’, usually reserved for a Blood Brothers album, they bludgeon through a mentalist’s set-of-dreams. To say insect-thin frontman Calum Gunn is a nutter would be lying – he’s fucking disturbed! The wee twiggy even went as far as pointing out the punters watching from the mezzanine and signed the cut-throat motion. In-between fits of violent writhing and twisting like some kind of demented animal in serious, serious pain, Mr Gun and the equivalent of musical Shock and Awe, Dananananaykroyd, put on an... erm, interesting show...

Still, for all the support act’s theatrics, the sheer joyous punk-pop gobbledygook of songs like ‘Meantime’, ‘Decent Days and Nights’, ‘Skip To The End’ and ‘A to B’, makes the Scot noise addicts look like an intellectual musical wank. Why? Because The Futureheads are back, and after what seems an age in indie exile, the band has never sounded fresher. Appearing along side the majority of songs from their debut album, and the unmistakable absence of almost all from ‘News & Tributes’, are new, fresh spiky gems of weirdness. Akin to the originals such as the raucous ‘Piece Of Crap’, tonight making an appearance in the band’s encore, that made us say “What the...?” and fall in love at the same time, it’s clear the band want to resurrect their career. And with their third album due for release early 2008, The Futureheads have already set the standard for new music in the New Year. - gigwise.com

Hi-Fi Handgrenades

By Eric Allen

Dec 11, 2007, 11:45

Starting a band is hard enough, but starting a band, recording an amazing EP and playing a near perfect first gig in the span of three months is damn near impossible. Well, damn near impossible for anyone who isn’t named the Hi-Fi Handgrenades.

The Handgrenades have taken the Detroit scene over in the 11 short months they have been a band. Playing with legendary acts like Bad Religion, Dropkick Murphys and the Foo Fighters has only cemented their status as Detroit’s newest up-andcoming punk rock band. The group just finished up recording on their debut full length, which should see release in spring of 2008, and a short European tour with the Foos. Vocalist/guitarist John Speck took some time to talk to Real Detroit about the band’s quick rise to fame and their adventures with Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters.

Obviously, you guys have all known each other for a long time from playing around the Detroit scene, but how did you choose that you four would be the members of Hi-Fi Handgrenades?
Right around late-December last year, I was talking to Robbie, our former bass player, and he was pestering me to get something together because I wasn’t playing in any band at the time. It kind of just started as a fuck around — play once every month-and-a-half and just have covers that sounded like one cohesive band. After one practice, I felt kind of embarrassed because the level of musicianship was high and we were just getting together to do covers and arrange them. We were just kind of like, “Huh?”

What made you guys pick up the melodic hardcore sound of bands like Naked Raygun and the Replacements?
Robbie said we should do something like the kind of stuff we listened to when we were teenagers ... stuff like Descendents, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion, old Replacements and Naked Raygun — shit like that. With the new material we are writing, it’s a lot more broad in scope.

I remember seeing your first two shows. How did you guys get so good with only a couple of months of practice?
I think that everybody has the experience of being in enough bands to know how to pay attention and open their ears. Everybody has played with really good musicians and learned from them. You have to learn under the gun and practice a lot. Robbie isn’t with us anymore, because he had personal stuff back here, and we got Rich from the Suicide Machines. He and Ryan go back, before the Suicide Machines even — about 11 years.

How did you guys get friendly with Foo and open for them on tour?
Our manager is a good old friend of mine named Gus Brandt. He has worked with the Foo Fighters for about 14 years and he just arranged for us to go to California for a little down time at Dave’s once they were done with their new record. We went out there, and the last day we were mixing down some stuff and Dave happened to walk into the room. We didn’t notice him — he was sitting in the back. The song ended and he was like, “That was really cool.” Dave goes, “What are you doing in a couple of weeks,” and that was the Foos tour. | RDW

Hi-fi Handgrenades • 12/15 • Magic Stick

www.realdetroitweekly.com - Real Detroit Weekly