Live music review: Murder City Devils brought rock and roll fury to Mohawk
I love a show where the band is not there to fuck around. No small talk, no rare material, no rambling monologues about the world. Just pure rock and roll fury. At the Mohawk on Sunday, November 23, The Murder City Devils crashed into Planet Austin and left no survivors. The band barely tours anymore—just fly-in one-offs where they show up, sell the same three merch designs they’ve had for twenty years, and play the hits.
Ripping through songs from mainly their first three albums, the crowd of aging punk rockers ate it up. It’s always a treat to see balding dads lose their minds, pointing fingers in the air and howling along to “I Want a Lot Now (So Come On)” while everyone else racks up big bar tabs. As someone firmly in that cohort now that I’m in my mid-forties, it was fun to see old friends at a show again. Most of us have jobs, kids, and sensible bedtimes, but we still made the pilgrimage to the ‘Hawk to get our throats kicked in.
The Devils — Spencer Moody on vocals, Dann Gallucci on guitar, Derek Fudesco on bass, Coady Willis on drums, and Leslie Hardy on keyboards — remain one of the great snarling beasts of Pacific Northwest punk. They tore through “Idle Hands,” “Boom Swagger Boom,” “Press Gang,” and “Rum to Whiskey,” all cult bangers that make you want to throw a drink, light a cigarette, and walk into the night feeling invincible.
Of course, during “Idle Hands” an Austin crowd has to go full throttle for the band, considering the song is about our city and a girl he met here back in the day on tour. And as Moody hollered, “these idle hands, they do the devil’s work!” the crowd responded in kind screaming back in one of those fucked up “call and response” moments, considering a lot of the people I knew in the crowd have spent plenty of nights alongside our demons seated in Better Days and Sidebar just down the street – the devils work abounds aplenty in these parts.
The spooky keyboards, Moody’s shrieks, the guitar that sounds more like the Cramps than any punk standard—whatever the brew, the crowd took it with them. The show was barely 45 minutes. The band left nothing for want, played what we came to hear, and would have moved on to the next city to fill holes in other people one more time had there been another date on their schedule. They must have figured Austin was the best place to finish the tour. They’re not wrong.
These are the shows where the music is the centerpiece, the thing that forged a lot of these friendships in the first place. Nights like this remind us we’re not our parents. Even if we’re drifting into some of their habits, we’re still the ones in Vans, covered in tattoos, willing to stand in a crowded venue on a Sunday even if our backs hurt Monday.
All photos by Troy Gonzales
You must be logged in to post a comment.