Millsted
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Millsted

New York City, New York, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2003 | SELF

New York City, New York, United States | SELF
Established on Jan, 2003
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"Millsted redefines punk hardcore with “Harlem”"

In the 2012 online video “Kill the Sound: The Millsted Reunion,” the noise-hardcore-punk band talks about the struggles they’ve faced as a band, such as personal turmoil and issues between members. Many bands, when times get rough, would easily call it a day, or splinter off into separate groups and move on.

Brooklyn-ites Millsted, with their eight-song LP “Harlem,” shows they’re back, still together, and ready to kill it some more.

Millsted, who call themselves “The Larry David of Hardcore” started in 2003 and released two albums, “Umm….Yea” in 2008 and “The Great Adventures of the Gold Red Rocket” in 2009.

Vocalist Kevin Uffre is at full throttle on “Harlem.” His manic-depressive shredding is a perfect bedfellow for Pete Belloli’s drums, which drill tightly through each song. Uffre comes down from the clouds once in a while to bring more mind-bending lyrics, while bassist Samuel Fernandez keeps it all steady. The work from guitarists Chrisopher Carambot and Robert Dume is actually a lot more varied than what you would expect from a hardcore punk band.

Most of the songs on “Harlem” are blissfully brief; having more would just be overkill for the power that explodes from each song. Millsted realizes that delicate but all-important distinction.

The exception is “Seafoam Lovers.” At an unheard-of 9 minutes for a punk song, it’s actually more of a quiet pyschedelic odyssey that was born from some dark underworld.

Millsted’s songs sometimes brings out the wackiness of Dead Kennedys, such as on “Televangelist,” where Uffre sounds eerily and unabashedly like Jello Biafra.

The single “Coyote,” with its anthem bark, is one of the harder songs from “Harlem,” and belies the melodic variety that is just underneath.

There’s a lot of depth to “Harlem,” so much so that it could almost qualify as a crossover hardcore punk/progressive/psychedelic album.

Millsted proves they’re hardcore pioneers who happily refuse to stay boxed in to one pure genre — this may be the key to their not-so-secret success.

Upcoming shows are Aug. 10 and Sept. 17 at The Grand Victory in Brooklyn.

Listen to Millsted’s “Harlem” on Bandcamp or Soundcloud.

Dig it or Ditch it: Dig it, for those who like unconventional hardcore. - Emilystrax


"NEW MUSIC: MILLSTED'S 'HARLEM' IS ONE OF THE MOST CREATIVE PUNK ROCK RECORDS IN YEARS. #SOUNDCHECK"

THIS is what music is supposed to sound like. I've been psyched about the new Millsted record since getting a sneak peak at tracks “Coyote” and “Benghazi,” but the full length is here and it is a thing of glory. Harlem is the album we need right now.

Millsted's latest opens with “Perfume,” an instrumental master class in their peculiar mixture of shoegaze and hardcore. Like just about everything they do, it's unexpected, strange, and triumphant. They quickly launch into the 1-2 punch of “Coyote” and “Benghazi,” which here retain their status of just generally being fucking great. “Raunchula” further cements the bands genius for off-kilter hooks and gut punching rhythms. There's a little bit of Black Eyes and Drive Like Jehu in their angular divergence from melody into raw noise and back again.

When the band gets melodic, as on the stunning intro to “Las Casas,” and the epic “Seafoam Lovers,” they show themselves to be just as capable of harnessing noise into beauty as they are at turning it into fury. The 9 minute run of “Seafoam Lovers” is hypnotic and amazing. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm still on quite a few painkillers for my lung, but man, I just sort of want to live inside their feedback for a while. Inverting the indie trope of “closing out on a looped noisy epic melodic jam,” the band ends things on the minute and a half rager “Gypsys.” As 21st century punk rock continues to reinvent and redefine itself, Millsted's sonic adventurousness is a landmark record in the new era of meta omni genre punk rock.
-Words by Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor - AfroPunk


"Let's Face It"

Let’s face it; we all love a band that walks it like they talk it. Too many insipid groups of tame indie oiks label themselves as ‘crazy’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘full of attitude’. When you finally hear a band who do sound genuinely crazy, dangerous and full of attitude it is like a welcome breath of fresh air in the middle of a waterboarding.
Millsted are one such band. Having formed in New York 2003, and putting out two albums towards the end of that decade, they then retreated back into the pits of the underground that they had spewed forth from in the first place.
Now, five years after their last outing, Millsted return with Harlem – a short, sharp shock of an LP weighing in at just under half an hour in length, what it may lack in quantity it has in spades in utter bone clattering quality. Make no mistake, this is hardcore punk done right, by a band who know their stuff.
Harlem kicks off with a largely instrumental introduction called Perfume which squeals its way towards a cacophony of an ending. It is noisy, it is doomy and it is completely brilliant. As far as statements of intent go, this is one hell of a ballsy opening shot, but it really is only an appetiser for what comes next.
And what comes next is the fantastically mental Coyote! It is everything you’d expect: breakneck riffs, drums that tread a thin line between keeping time and falling down the stairs and an absolutely relentless, eye popping vocal assault. Coupled with all the noise is a gang vocal chorus with an absolutely massive hook that will get lodged in your brain for weeks.
Elsewhere on the album, Millsted show that they can do more than beat you down with huge tunes played at murderous pace. Televangelist features a more measured, brooding and menacing side to the band while Seafoam Lovers starts off unable to settle on being either a crossover hit or descending into weirdness. After a while it plumps for the latter and descends into an overly long experiment in noise. It might not be the albums most compelling moment but you have to admire their conviction in putting it in there.
Of course, Millsted’s real strength lies in pummelling the listener into submission and there is thankfully plenty of that on show. You get the dissonant clatter of Benghazi, the unhinged almost Tomahawk-esque Las Casas as well as Raunchula, which has a verse that does not sound a million miles away from their UK contemporaries Hawk Eyes, despite the bands coming from thousands of miles away from each other.
Harlem is an incredibly interesting listen from this absolute powerhouse of a band. This is hardcore punk that has not been diluted or fucked with. This is a band doing what they want to do because they want to do it.
Harlem is out on July 17th
Find Millsted:
Millsted.bandcamp.com
Soundcloud.com/millsted
Facebook.com/Millsted
Twitter.com/Millsted
Words by Ben Walton - The Handsome Press UK


"Tuneful, Noisy Intensity from Millsted"

Millsted are way more tuneful and interesting than you’d expect a band who unassumingly call themselves “noise hardcore punk” to be. They’ve got a new album, Harlem – streaming at Bandcamp – and an album release show at Bowery Electric at 9:45 on July 18.

The album’s opening track, Perfume begins with a squall of icy high feedback and sheets of reverb, then Pete Belloli’s machinegun drums kick in along with the menacing, chromatic stomp from Christopher Carambot and Robert Dume’s guitars. It builds to a long, raging tremolo-picked peak that brings to mind Noir Desir or some of Jello Biafra’s more metal-flavored projects. Frontman Kelvin Uffre delivers a literally explosive ending before bassist Samuel Fernandez winds it out with a creepy little solo riff.

They keep the chromatic intensity going with Coyote, veering between a biting stadium rock pulse and a noisier, sideswiping sound. Benghazi is slow and deliciously abrasive in a vintage Live Skull/peak-era Sonic Youth vein, with twin reverb-drenched guitar lines that disintegrate into a skin-peeling of eerie, chilly textures.

The album’s best song, Televangelist brings back an uneasy, hammering pulse, built around murderously direct East Bay Ray-style horror-surf riffage that spirals out in acidic sheets of reverb, hits a misterioso interlude and then rises again. Raunchula opens with screechy feedback and then hammers along with SY-ish downstroke guitar: the way the two guitarists pair off midway through, one adding a funky edge, the other wailing up and down on the strings, is a cool touch.

Las Casas is a characteristically assaultive mashup of hardcore, prog and noiserock, ending with a nonchalantly savage pickslide. The album’s longest track, Seafoam Lovers, doesn’t mesh. The long drony outro is cool, but it feels like the band is just phoning it in up to there – New Order ripoffs are obviously not their thing. The rampaging, cumulo-nimbus closing track, Gypsy brings a headbanging focus. We need more good, loud, uncompromising bands like Millsted. Maybe the best thing about this album is that it’s available on transparent vinyl: a sound mix as rich as this deserves it. - New York Music Daily/Lucid Culture


"FREE DOWNLOAD: MILLSTED IS BACK WITH TWO NEW SINGLES! #SOUNDCHECK"

12 years in, and you'd think a band like Millsted would be out of ideas and out of passion. (Granted there was a bit of a hiatus in there.) That kind of fire can only burn so bright for so long. But the two singles released from their forthcoming LP Harlem show that time has only sharpened their fury and righteous noise.

“Benghazi” thankfully has nothing to do with America's favorite non-scandal (unless that's just another part of the conspiracy. Is Kelvin Uffré the one secretly providing the talking points? America deserves to know the answers!). It's a slow burning hardcore jam with touches of psychedelia on the fringes, like a (slightly) more focused Black Eyes. “Coyote” on the other hand is a full on hardcore assault. A song about a turf war, the almost exuberant chants of “Coyote!” belie the execution at its heart. Saber-toothed riffs cut and burn while the band jumps and juts through an arrangement full of more left turns than otherwise.

Harlem comes out in July. If these first two tracks are any indication, it'll be well worth the wait.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor - AFROPUNK


"MINI LIFE REVIEW"

Millsted is a band that has all the bases covered: a tight, explosive rhythm section, a vocalist with broad abilities and great command of his voice, and guitar work that is both innovative and hook-filled.

They roll this all together to create highly charged indie rock with a sound that, while being up-to-the-minute modern and catchy as hell, also employs a complexity that raises the interest level above a lot of standard indie fare.

Throughout their new full-length album, "Umm… Yea," the band's progressive tendencies mix with their pop sensibilities, and it is this synthesis that I think defines their appeal. The instrumentation provided by drummer Peter Belloli, bassist Samuel Fernandez, and guitarists Chris Carambot and Robert Dumé brings a remarkable amount of energy and movement to the music.

The relentless drive of songs like "El Delve" and "Hit the Lights (Rock House)" frankly make me want to jump around and freak out (in the best possible spirit of jumping around and freaking out). Then you have songs like "The Fucking Bronze" and personal fave "Dirty Elvis," where vocalist Kelvin Uffré treats us to his vocal croon via sweet melodies and ethereal harmonies, which, placed over the band's punchy arrangements, figure heavily in the band's charm. (But be sure to also check out Uffré getting his scream on in songs such as "The Culprit" and "1043").

Overall, I think what strikes me most about "Umm… Yea" is how physically engaging it is. Put this on at a party and watch the mood pick up and the body parts start moving. Infectious? Umm… Yea! - miniLIFE


Discography

Discography

Harlem
2014
  1. Perfume
  2. Coyote
  3. Benghazi 
  4. Televangelist 
  5. Raunchula 
  6. Las Casas 
  7. Seafoam Lovers 
  8. Gypsys
The Great Adventures Of The Gold Red Rocket 
2009
  1. The Gold Red Rocket
  2. I Got Soul
  3. Trouble Times
  4. Little Legs
  5. Coffins of Love
  6. The New Japan
  7. ...
  8. Throw Your Bones Away
  9. Rabbit Rabbit

Umm... Yea
2008
1.Hit The Lights
2.El Delve
3.The Culprit
4.The Bronze
5.Kill The Sound
6.Dirty Elvis
7.Sad Satan
8.That Kind Of Saturday
9.The Anticipation Station
10.Rosestem
11.The Black Anger
12.10:43
13.The End.

Millsted (Brief Case E.P)
2006
Track listing:
1.Televo
2.The Culprit
3.Car Bomb Derby "06"
4.10:43
5.Flux

The Culprit E.P
2005
Produced By: Millsted, Shane Stoneback, Dan Coutant
Promotional Use Only
Track Listing:
1.Car Bomb Derby
2.Interlude
3.A Sight Fore Sore Eyes

Millsted S/t 
2004
Produced By Shane Stone Back & Millsted
Track Listing:
1.All Your Friends Are Pretend
2.Che Guevera In A Bar Fight
3.A Door To October
4.A Walk Along The Rosestem
5.Ladies And Gentleman Start Your Engines

Photos

Bio

Millsted is a Noise Hardcore Punk outfit that's been around since 2003.  The current members are Kelvin Uffre (vocals) Christopher Carambot (Guitar), Robert Dume (guitar) Pete Belloli (drums) and Samuel Fernandez (bass) and have released two albums since 2008 (2008 Umm... Yea and 2009 The Great Adventures of the Gold Red Rocket).  Their success in the underground music scene led them so deep underground that it took five years to dig themselves out. Harlem (2014) was inspired as a result of digging through all the bullshit. An attempt to break the ice of censored social commentary; The Larry David of Hardcore.

Band Members