VIEW THIS PAGE Rockin' on stage can get bloody for American band Story of the Year, which is known for its raucous, high-energy shows.
“I’ve been hit in the head a few times [by guitars] and blood will just be running down your face,” said lead vocalist Dan Marsala in an interview with the Taipei Times from his hotel in Nagoya, Japan, where the band just finished a run of shows.
But gore won’t be the centerpiece of Story of the Year’s concert tonight at The Wall (這牆) in Taipei. “We’ve been doing it for so many years that we’re really good at dodging each other now,” said the 28-year-old.
The band, originally from St Louis, plays modern hard rock, melding guitar-driven genres that thrived in the 1980s underground: thrash, hardcore metal, grunge and emo.
While not a household name, Story of the Year has enjoyed modest success and a large enough fan base to keep the group on a steady schedule of touring and recording. The band broke into the US rock scene with its debut album Page Avenue (2003), which went gold, and toured with groups like My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park.
Since the release of Story of the Year’s last album early last year, The Black Swan, the band has toured non-stop touching down in the US, Europe, Brazil and Japan.
“It’s what you’ve got to do to be in a rock band these days,” said Marsala. “It’s how people make money, now that nobody buys CDs anymore.”
Nonetheless Story of the Year is focused on making music with a message. Songs like Welcome to Our New War clearly show the members’ rage against the machine: The power elites wear the thickest disguise/Setting the rules as the classes divide they keep their heartless/Eyes on the prize and leave the masses with a lifetime of poverty and crime.
“I grew up listening to a lot of punk bands,” said Marsala. “That’s definitely where the inspiration for our politically driven music came from. Some of my favorite bands were Bad Religion and Propagandhi — a lot of political punk bands that I grew up listening to ... I’ve always been into music that had some kind of message, rather than love songs.”
Despite the “serious” content, the band still enjoys being a little “goofy” on stage. “You want to suit the music but you want to have fun at the same time,” he said.
Marsala says he particularly likes playing clubs like The Wall, which holds a maximum of around 500 people.
“If you’re playing a huge arena, you’re not going to feel the energy of the crowd,” he said. “There’s just something magical about a small room full of people, just screaming and having fun.”
Story of the Year’s show tonight begins a big weekend for The Wall. Tomorrow the venue hosts The Band Apart, a Japanese indie-pop group with a loyal following that regularly fills 1,000-seat venues, according to The Wall’s Miyuki Yang (楊懿琳), who is in charge of booking international acts.
The Tokyo-based band plays groove-oriented music full of jazzy guitar riffs, pop hooks and sweet vocal choruses. All the lyrics are sung in English by singer and guitarist Arai Takeshi.
Taiwanese audiences and indie musicians will relate to The Band Apart’s origins — its members started out as a heavy metal cover band but moved on to writing their own songs. The Japanese indie-music blog keikaku.net notes their “eclectic” influences such as bossa nova and emo, which can be heard in their song Shine on Me, which also has a strong J-pop feel. VIEW THIS PAGE
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built
RSS