Red Tank!

Arizona has fomented something of an alternative universe of punk music, with bands like Phoenix's Dogbreth building a catalog of suburban pop-punk and Destruction Unit deconstructing weirdo desert hardcore. Phoenix's Red Tank build off of late-'00s noisy punk, recalling the snottier sides of No Age, Ty Segall, and Harlem (remember freakin' Harlem?). Their tract-home anomie sounds less garage in terms of genre and more in terms of production: Red Tank's scrappy power chords and wails sound composed in an actual garage (and anyone from the Southwest knows "garage bands" are formed out of necessity—basements don't exist there). Funeral Gold, a Portland duo known for their similar scrappy triumph, rounds out the night's charged energy. MAC POGUE - The Portland Mercury

Uncharted territory has become expected of Phoenix/ Tempe based band Red Tank! Their garage heavy, primal sound and exuberance has been a mainstay of the local music scene over the last few years. They provide a street-smart, urban realist counterpoint to the Tempe college scene, as well as a self-aware momentum to Valley punk music.

Their latest collaboration comes in the form of "Anthropocene," a serene visual work that ties together the band's imagery and personal history with local arts culture and mass media. The video was directed by Mike Buckius. The video overlays are reminiscent of their early visual work with Fernando (local artist Verci) who reinforced a gritty, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic vibe which blended organic with technological.

This technique of video overlay helped them to organize some of the most visually stunning DIY events from houses in Tempe to the Trunkspace, projecting animated videos and images of doom over crowd-surfing kids with huge smiles and pent up energy to spare.

The video for Anthropocene highlights the band's tendency to play with dark, dystopian imagery. "Our aesthetic is jarring," Arnold admits. "There was a review of BIO/FEEDBACK where the reviewer thought from the cover he was going to be listening to some sort of sci-fi electro act, but then realized we were a noisy punk band."

With its stark, indie feel the video shows a millennial fascination with apocalypse fetishism and dying mediums. Its images flash vibrant flora and life over atom bombs. The band blasts through the song in a secluded bunker, creating a feeling of growth through the bleak and desolate. The video is just like the band, a fever dream of hope and possibility in a chaotic, crumbling world.

Red Tank! have cemented Phoenix music's place in a broader cultural relevancy, staying one step ahead of trends since their inception. They embody the punk attitude better than any local band and also bring our scene's best foot forward with their ideas and ethics. They grapple with modern aesthetics and the alienation associated with late stage capitalism without pandering or self-pity. They make punk rock that is modern and self-aware in the Internet age without being gimmicky. They are serious without being a downer. Their music is brave and hopeful. - arena.com

I Want You to Crowd Surf My Body at My Funeral is a fitting name for Red Tank!'s upcoming album because frontman Clipper "Danger” Arnold crowd-surfs pretty much every show he plays. But the appeal of Red Tank! goes much further than the chance to carry Arnold around any given venue by the crowd. There is an air of unpredictability to Red Tank!’s members and music.

“The album name is from a tweet that I made," Arnold says. "Well, it was a tweet first, then it was a poem, and the idea was like punk rock or music being a cathartic experience. It might be construed to be a little transcendental, like the idea of even after we die there is still something that remains. But I would probably go with the cathartic.”

Though Red Tank! may be looking to provide its fans with a cathartic experience, Arnold says his group’s music goes deeper than just partying. In fact, Arnold says the band purposefully masks its tracks about heavier topics — ranging from relationships both romantic and platonic to being sucked into the tendrils of capitalism — under upbeat and energetic music.

“I think it’s really important that it comes off as a cathartic sort of exercise that people can party and get down to. But at the same time they're not just getting wild for the sake of getting wild,” Arnold says. “There is certainly a deeper message, and I guess what it is depends on each of the individual songs.”

What shines brightest in any Red Tank! set is the band's otherworldly energy for live performance. It really is like nothing else. Even the great high-energy local acts like Playboy Manbaby and Treasure Mammal pale in comparison to the level of excitement Red Tank! brings to the table.

“The nature of our music, it’s not, like, violent, but it’s really energetic and a lot of times people construe our songs as violent because they're so high-energy. But to us, it’s not the anger or animosity, and it isn't manifested as violence," Arnold says. “It’s cool if people want to pick apart our music, but I don’t like to talk too much in-depth about lyrics like that because one of the key parts about music is that it’s ambiguous and there is a lot of open-ended imagery that people can interpret however they want, or in a way that feels more meaningful to them, and I don't like taking that aspect away from anyone.”

Even Red Tank!’s new video for the album's first single, “Sovereignty,” toes the line between energetic and violent. In fact, it literally crosses that line when Arnold connects a right hook to the face of his bass player, Elijah Pearson. Then Pearson highlights some of that good ol’ Red Tank! ambiguity when he inexplicably spits out gold glitter.

“The abstract, ambiguous nature of the glitter turned it into a weird absurd kind of thing,” Arnold says.

This post marks the release of the video for “Sovereignty” and on June 18, the band will be releasing the entire album with an all-ages show at Crescent Ballroom. Tickets are $5. Boss Frog and Snake! Snake! Snakes! will open the show. - New Times

Directed by Alex Blumentritt, this Red Tank! video is part performance clip, part cautionary tale in which their best attempts at harnessing the song’s electrifying essence go unnoticed by the female lead (Paulina Poleyumptewa), who’s coming to terms with the clutter in her life and trying to bring some order to the chaos as the song gets more and more intense.

As front man Clipper Arnold explains the concept: "The general plot dovetails with the imagery of the song. 'Hold fast to the void' is actually a line from an English translation of the 'Tao Te Ching. Both the song and music video deal with balance between order and chaos. The video specifically addresses this by telling a narrative of a girl who is trying to 'reorder' her chaotic life, or, in her own way, make peace with the chaos."

As for Arnold and his bandmates, they're not really factors in her chaos.

"I actually don't think the band really has any tangible presence in Paulina's universe," Arnold explains. "We act more as apparitions or minstrels who happen to be narrating her tale in the background."

"The Void" is among the raucous highlights of “I Want You to Crowdsurf My Body at My Funeral,” the brilliantly titled effort they released in June. And they’re already working on their next one as they gear up for another West Coast tour, which launches the day after Christmas, although they will be playing in Tempe at Cartel Dec. 18. - AZcentral.com