Oh to be assaulted by the anguish of my generation. That’s the only way I can describe the noisy, noisy post-rock band Junius. I wasn’t quite expecting to tap into my inner angst last night, but their passionate playing was like a giant monument to turmoil. Dark and loud and tremendously angry, these guys blew away the Silverlake Lounge.

I almost wrote them off as some cliché radio emo-group when they got on the stage. All four band members were dressed in black and started playing a pre-recorded intro track without any stage lights up. But the second the guitars blasted and blinding blue backlights pulsed, I knew this band was awesome. They played their first song (the haunting “Stargazers and Gravediggers”) completely backlit. Their dark silhouettes were only interrupted briefly by a strobe light placed underneath their effects pedals. It was thrilling to see them pull off such insane lights on the tiny stage.

With a black hoody and full scraggly beard, singer/guitarist Joseph Martinez looked like a full-fledged unibomber. He had a deep, pained croon that gave fittingly tortured lyrics (“I tremble and shake… at the day of the cataclysm” during the song “Dramatist Plays Catastrophist”). Most of the time, though, his vocals were completely obscured by an extremely intense wall of sound. When his vocals did come through, it was like listening to a drowning man gasping for air before inevitably succumbing to evil distortion. And I mean that in the best of ways, as the whirlwind guitar noise is exactly what kept the music from falling into melodrama. Martinez and guitarist Mike Respach-Nieves were a force of audio nature.

Grounding the noise were crushing bass riffs by Joel Mungia and really stellar, fast-paced rhythms by Dana Filloon. Filloon’s talent was his ability to keep the songs from spiraling into pure noise-drone. Instead Julius’s noise-rock was almost danceable. It was certainly head-bangable, like a kind of a dance-static. Then again, one of my favorite things about post-rock is the way it paralyzes you into just swaying along and staring. Can you get drunk off of noise? Hmm… Probably not, but it can certainly feel that way.

Junius‘ most striking moment of the evening came from the song “Holding Knives.” Throughout the course of the song, the band’s silhouette’s would be bathed in blood reds and piercing golds. By the end of their set though, Junius had returned to their melancholy ice blue bulbs.

I’ll concede that noisy post-rock isn’t for everyone. Not everyone is down with extra fuzzy guitar riffs ripping your skull in two. And yes, the music is dark and angsty and easy to make fun of. But, Junius have a great deal of talent and offer a fantastic live show. So if you’re ever in need of indulging your inner anguish, these guys are right up your alley.

-Rachel K.
www.loudvine.com