ISSUE 21 - FICTION

CONSTITUENT
By John Hunter


Pullum Frontonianum, or chicken a la fronto, is a tricky little dish. You have to fry the chicken first. Not bake, but fry. And this works for the whole chicken. This recipe was one of a literal two hundred or so that I had collected that year. Sarah called my collection “a clear symptom.”
“Make sex to me, Errol.”
Like an aide memoire, her passion started as a low, breathy flow of lust, originating in the bedroom and extending from her lips, wrapping around the hallway and ending in a barely audible proposal in the kitchen.
Of course it can’t be that simple. Then all you have is fried chicken. Nothing calls out a boring menu more than fried chicken. Find a nice wine, perhaps Madeira for its longevity, and coat the chicken with it. Also add dill, fresh leeks, cilantro and a little olive oil. Liberally add saturei; that is if you have a good dose of it.
“Make sex to me, Errol.” Her pining swelled above an undertone, simmering above the room temperature whispers of the previously broadcasted yearning. Her nightly routine.
As soon as you season the chicken, you discontinue the frying and place the chicken in the oven on bake for about 60 minutes on 200 degrees. This gives you enough time to deal with the bedroom situation.
I always knew that I would fall in love.
“Ohhhhhhhhh...Errol!”
Through time, she always changed in my mind; the ideal woman I mean. Sometimes she was blonde, sometimes brunette. The small details. But somewhere between the cookie-cutter notion of what the ideal woman should be, the lines became distorted. The hourglass figure, the angelic face with no laugh lines, the well adjusted, All-American pin-up from Everywheresville, Nebraska; the masturbatory pipe dream that I was throwing my self into; all of those prerequisites are just the set-up.
“MAKE SEX…TO ME!”
You’ve seen her before. You couldn’t forget her. Even through the endless rotation of recycled emotions spread thin on the daytime television that you watch, you couldn’t take your eyes off of her. When she was on the model-turned-talk show host’s mid-afternoon extravaganza, you tuned in. You probably chuckled to yourself. When she made the local news, you were there. Your eyes were peeled. When she had her own one hour special hosted by the best selling author/psychologist, you watched. And when she got her own show, you glued yourself to the screen.
You watched every minute of the sensationalism. You watched as the audience members pretended to wipe the tears from their eyes, the tissues conveniently placed under their seats, careful not to stare at the camera upon the cue.
You can’t be held responsible. It is tough. No, it is impossible to look away from my wife. In fact, it is preposterous to think that anyone could avert their eyes from anyone who weighs 814lbs.
“ERROL!”



Errol was Errol Flynn. If Jesus was resurrected, he would have become an actor named Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn, according to her.
Because of her condition, she was bedridden. The bedroom became a virtual home theater. Stacks and stacks of movies, any television channel from here to London, the universal remote, anything that would distract her from remembering that she was who she was.
It was The Adventures of Robin Hood that did it for her. That was her favorite Flynn movie. He was the archetypal hero. At that exact moment, there was nothing more appropriate that she needed.
“There’s no need to be jealous,” she would say to me. “We have all had something taken from us. We all need someone to steal it back.”
So while Errol was and his Merry Men were saving the day, I was busy taking care of the dirty work.
Between treating her outbreaks of cellulitis or changing her soiled sheets, along with cooking meals or changing movies, I barely found time to eat. “Starvation,” Sarah called it. I always found that little things like eating and sleeping got in the way of time that could have been spent with her. Despite Errol’s best efforts, even he couldn’t steal back wasted time.
It all becomes a routine. The recipes are the same. You look for something more exotic, something you can work with. You seek out the ingredients, you mix them together and you work your life around it accordingly. But then, just as life happens, something occurs. It’s not in your cookbooks or your self-help, one-shot fix everything cd’s. Its something that you can’t find on your instructional, idiot’s manual to life.
“Oh! It is perfect!” Those are the first words I remember her saying. Well, she was in fact screaming at the top of her lungs.
She was in a dressing room of a higher end department store. I was searching for new pants or a clever tie or some other article of consumerism that would fill the gaping holes in my life.
The door opened and the six mirrors outside of the dressing room paralleled something so lovely, so exquisite that the incessant desire to fill the gap was gone. The holes were sealed by the beautiful mess dressed in a hideous evening gown.
“My god! It’s just the thing,” she continued. She waived her arms out by her side and spun around in miniature circles. The old, rich housewives gawked. The store clerks were either too apathetic or too afraid to stop her. Every movement drew me in farther.
Her face was plastered with a sarcastic leer. It was all a production. We were the joke. Our expressions were the punch line. I wanted in.
I carried a camera everywhere I went then. I wanted people to know that I was a high profile photographer, goddamnit. I was the one that captured the images on the covers of the magazines that told women how to lose the pounds and gain a man. The spread of the actress with her newborn twins; that was mine. I was an artist who deserved their curiosity. I helped manufacture that masturbatory pipe dream. Now I have never wanted anything less.
Click-click-click! The snapping and the flashes from the camera drew even more attention to us. “So lovely!” I shouted. “In all my years as a professional, I have never…”
She pouted her lips and put one hand on her hips, the other on her head. “It’s not even so much me, darling,” she said in a mock French accent. “It’s this fabulous dress”.
She wasn’t always obese. She will tell you herself. In fact, she was a perfect size four the day that I met her. She will probably tell you that she was overweight as a child. She could even tell you that she often would go home and laugh herself to sleep thinking about the slight pandemonium that she caused. “At least they will have something to tell their bored husbands,” she would say.
But without a doubt she would never tell you about her Uncle Bruce. The words would stop in her throat and nearly suffocate her if she talked about Bruce, who was no blood relation but rather a family friend. She could never bring herself to tell you that he took her to the old theater downtown every Saturday afternoon to watch the matinee of the old classics when she was around eight years old.
While watching The Philadelphia Story he put his arm around her. When Gene Kelly was dancing to the title song in Singin’ in the Rain, they giggled. And when Jimmy Stewart was introducing everyone to his giant rabbit in Harvey, Uncle Bruce was forcing her to fondle his uncircumcised penis.
“That’s what pretty girls do,” Bruce would say. “And you are such a pretty girl. You’re like one of those fashion models in the magazines. You are so special to me.”
“So you can’t tell Mommy and Daddy, because then Uncle Bruce would have to do something really mean to them.” His words were breathy and crisp. “You understand?” He was the kind of serious that she knew not to put to the test. But she would never tell you that.
It would stir it all up again if she were to tell you how it only got worse. She couldn’t tell you that she hated being pretty. Anytime someone even suggested that she was beautiful or gorgeous or even cute, she would lose control, sometimes scream, sometimes hide behind her mother. “Reticent” is how her parents described her.
She wouldn’t tell you that. She would never tell you that she ate. That was her way of fighting back. She ate and ate. She was swallowing her way to freedom. She didn’t want to be just chubby. She wanted to be grotesque, fat, obese. She couldn’t be that pretty girl anymore.
And it was until that Saturday, the one that she came home wearing blood soaked panties, her legs smeared with red streaks, the day that she first saw The Adventures of Robin Hood that it continued. Enter the hero, Errol Flynn, taking back what was once stolen. But you would never know.
She had almost stopped eating all together when Uncle Bruce after Bruce’s sentencing.
A year into our marriage, Bruce was killed in prison. He was serving time for molesting a mailman’s daughter.
It all came back. The guilt poured in. She was responsible for his death, or so she thought. She ate. She didn’t stop. But you would never know. I never did. She wouldn’t tell you. Not until years later. All you would see was an 814 lb. woman.
Thus became my formula for life. But everybody always wants more. A steady routine of an even mixture of love and pain can cause even a man on top of things to miss the obvious.
For example, you spend a day out gathering the ingredients for minutal marinum and running errands. Routinely you lock the door. It isn’t even a routine. It has become a biomechanical reaction, as if breathing or coughing. But today you come home and there it is, not only unlocked but slightly open.
What do you do? Panic, right?
So here you are, scurrying through the house, looking for signs of an intruder. What you are really looking for is a trail of blood, a barely recognizable corpse, one with a wedding ring. Her wedding ring.
But even more horrifying, even more sickening, you find absolutely nothing. No sign, nothing to stop the brutal murder imagery from punching and kicking your head until it causes a throbbing pain right above your eyelids.
So you head to your bedroom. But as you hit your heroic, gallant stride, you crumple like a piece of paper. You grab your stomach and writhe on the ground. You feel like you are going to shit yourself, but you can’t.
How embarrassing. Your wife is missing and all you can do is collapse because your body is eating itself. And you bought the wrong broth for the minutal marinum. Sarah calls it “poor insight”.
In a sick, desperate move, you crawl to the bedroom. The room, her bed, is empty. Nothing. And right before the inevitable blackout, you notice the enormous hole in the bedroom wall.
The beeping sound is the first thing that I heard when I awoke. A heart monitor. The stinging feeling in my hand was an IV. The hospital.
“That was your wife on the news tonight.”
My mouth felt like a wasteland.
“What? Who?” I asked.
“She was lifted from your house with the crane. They rescued her, you know.”
She read the monitors in the room and took notes on her clipboard. Her hourglass figure was draped in all white attire. Her name tag read SARAH.
“That guru, the fitness guy, he found her. Apparently one of your neighbors called him. Said they were concerned,” she continued.
“Rescued? What happened?”
“You collapsed. You haven’t eaten in, oh, probably six days. Your wife, they took her away. They are going to help her.”
I wanted to rip out the IV and run clear of the hospital. I wanted to scream. But I was almost too weak to speak and the catheter in my urethra had me chained to the bed.
She turned on the television. Every channel showed the same scene at different angles. My wife was being “rescued”. Everything went dark again.
For the next week and a half I spent time in or around the hospital talking to doctors, shrinks, dieticians and nurses. They all saw her on the news, my wife. I know this because they found it necessary to tell me.
Sarah walked me out the day that I was cleared from the hospital. “It’s not your fault. You can’t save everyone. I have tried,” she said. She handed me a card with a telephone number written on it. “We all want to feel needed. Call me.”
For the next year, I tracked my wife through the daytime television. When she filmed the “very special” weight loss episode with the fitness guru is Seattle, I was forbidden from the premises. During the special hosted by that balding, mustached psychologist, I was tried to find which hotel she was staying in.
Calls were never returned. Letters were never answered. Doors were closed. I was floating at the bottom.
For weeks I watched as she had her stomach stapled, as she lost weight, as she crusaded to help others. Months and months on end I watched. I was helpless.
“We have all had something taken from us,” my wife would say. “We all need someone to steal it back.”
And as I watched, I ate. And I ate more. For days, weeks, months, I ate. I stared at the screen everyday, eating my way back to her. I needed her to save me.
Yeah, you have probably seen me too. I am the house ridden man from the viral video on the web, the giant orca who can’t get out of bed. I too have made my way through the day-time television circuit. I have had my own half- hour, heartbreaking segments. But all you saw was a humungous man who has eaten himself into a death sentence.
Sarah calls it “a serious attempt at romance.” She has been taking care of me for a few months. While my wife is saving the some obese mother of three, Sarah is busy taking care of the dirty work. “Mental health days,” she calls my time in bed.
“You know, its funny,” she said. “God set us free with that apple. He gave us the ability to choose, to make decisions. We have to decide what color socks to wear, what the best type of toilet paper to use, what to eat, what to watch on television.”
She climbs into the bed beside me and grabs my hand.
“But the most important of all decisions, the one we want to control…you can’t choose who you fall in love with. You can only choose how you deal with it.
She holds my hand tighter and lays her head on my chest. For the first time in a year, I turn the television off.

ISSUE 21 - TARA TEE

What are you attending school for currently? I am studying Business Marketing.

Hometown? Sacramento, Calif., NorCal, Baby.

When did you begin modeling? I began pursuing modeling after participating in a Miss Junior Sacramento Pageant when I was 12 years old.

Is it something you plan to pursue regardless of school? I wouldn't give up my education to pursue modeling, but I enjoy it and will make time for it when I can, because I see it as a form of art. I don't model to put my name and face out there.






What are you involved with outside of school/modeling? I love being involved in music, my favorite thing about Austin, TX is that it's the "live music capitol of the world." Music is really my passion, as well as musicians!







Age? Nineteen

Why did you leave Wilmington? School? Sadly, I left Wilmington to go to the University of Texas at Austin, Home of the Longhorns,
I miss Wilmington everyday! The guys in Wilmington are ALOT better looking!

What activities do you enjoy? I enjoy making fun memories with friends, taking pictures, surfing or sunbathing on the beach, I love to
bake, as well! I'm well known for my "Hella Good Cookies"!





What about yourself would surprise people, something no one would know? People are usually surprised that I'm into the pursuit of knowledge and maturity, and I'm constantly improving my character, which they don't expect from a 19 year old blonde. Oh, and people are usually surprised that the secret ingredient to the "hella good cookie" is that I bake them naked.


Photos: Tea Beserivic

ISSUE 21 - SEX & THE PORT CITY

The Perfect Workout: Tacos with a Cold Beer
by Sloan Devaney

The other day, I was at my fitness club. I was changing my clothes in the locker room and as I pulled socks from my gym bag, out came flying a condom. It flipped from the bag and landed at my feet. I really have no memory of how in the world the contraceptive device got into my gym bag. To make matters worse, the condom was wrapped in a cherry bright red wrapper. The locker room had two other men present. Did they say anything or even laugh at the expense of the fool dropping his latex? Heck no! There was a sudden uncomfortable silence and even quick ashen looks away. Have these Wilmington men never seen a plastic intended to prevent the escape of





semen? I should have made a joke myself. During the embarrassment and wondering why no one was reacting, I was leaning over to pick it up and right before I reached it the condom took on a life of its own. Somehow my foot kicked it and the condom skidded across the floor. The silence was still hanging in the air. The men more hurriedly got on with their various forms of changing clothes. I presumed they wanted to get out of there, anything to getaway from the rubber boy. You tell me how to be nonchalant about retrieving a runaway cherry red wrapped condom? I could not at this point pretend it was not mine. I picked up the darn thing and stuck it back into my bag. Maybe this crazy moment would make a good television advertisement?

The modern preoccupation with the health club, often seen as a sign of contemporary life, finds its real origin in ancient Greece. Our preoccupation with bodies and exercise is not new at all, but another classical inheritance. Choosing your gym, worrying about your appearance, exercising the body, adopting a diet, hiring a personal trainer—this is all good ancient Greek civic activity. If you attend a gym, are you looking to attract a mate or hoping to keep the one you have or trade up? Will making yourself fit and trim help you find miss right or mister right now? Is it an ideal that many people, consciously or unconsciously, share?

As an observer of human behavior, I watch how people conduct themselves in public areas. Often I compare these places to wilds where monkeys swing in the Amazon jungle, or more placid environments, like a field of dairy cows. The gym I attend is the third club in town that I have held membership with during my many years of living in Wilmington. Someone like me, a natural born cruise director, has a hard time in places like these. I come in saying, “Hey hey, is everybody happy!?” Socializing distracts the goal of getting fit but I cannot help myself and a lot of others cannot either. So how do we get around this performance of interacting with other gym members without interacting? In the animal kingdom a gym is a barn fowl-yard. The people in a gym are chickens and geese and pea-hens and that other funny looking bird no one recognizes.

The clients in a gym, moving from machines to the weights, are quacking ducks scooping mud from a puddle. They are puffed out turkeys who promenade back and forth in front of the stationary bikes and colorful peacocks, looking at themselves in the mirrors, wanting all the attention but pretending to hardly notice anybody else around. Everyone wants to be desired without being obvious about it. Isn’t that part of the game of love and sex?

In a fowl-yard there is the top-cock-of-the-walk. He struts into view and just by his attitude intimidates the other birds. Any gym I have attended has a top-cock too and he is usually the manager. In my gym, Rooster Rocco knows he is the top-cock. He is in tip-top shape. He has the perfect workout top-form and a perfect top-tan. When Rooster Rocco is working, the minion staff chickens (Snap, Crackle, Pop and Sue) scurry around doing his bidding. When Rocco is absent they tend to be more relaxed, and I say that kindly. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.

Rooster Rocco has a top-cock strut. With a brooding disinterested mood he saunters around the gym floor, scanning the clients and staff but not always to see if they are well. He is most often aloof. Rocco physically reminds the subordinate fowl and want-to-be-top-cocks that he is the boss. I offer some free advice; try to keep friendly with the top-cock. He may let you walk through the barn-yard without leaping at you or withhold revoking my club membership for lampooning him in Bootleg. Garr-ruff roar!

My fitness club also has a mother goose. She is the top woman manager and if ever you need someone to walk down dark scary alleyways with you, Minerva is the one to bring along. She is no one to tangle with and like an upset goose, charges in and chases away interlopers. Interlopers are the dunderheads dropping weights on purpose. “Duhhh, me like the noise it makes.” One time Minerva was so angry at these guys she yelled, “ALL right, get OUT!” They left and everybody else in the place flocked for the door too, leaving machines in mid motion. You know when it is over before it begins. You don’t mess with mother goose Minerva. Thump!

In the barn fowl-yard, it is all about better plumage, laying more eggs and the pecking order. What is the real bottom line reason about making ourselves better? Is it about sex or is it about success or is it both? We believe our bodies display what sort of people we are and how we live. This all-round perfection is what athletics promises, and maybe that is really why we go to the gym. Cock-a-doodle-do.

CD Review - Old Man Brown

Return

It can take years for a band to find their sound and create magic on an album. The journey means hard work, replacing band members or losing one in the process. Old Man Brown’s original drummer John Scott Wakefield passed as the band was finishing tracks for their demo. They carried on and recorded Return, an astounding album that conjures up the blues, gospel, soul and rock while eschewing associated stereotypes.
On Return, Old Man Brown captured lightning in a bottle, getting back to soulful and earnest songwriting. Return just flows, as if without effort, sounding timeless, as though the album has been lying around waiting to be played again. It is emotional yet smooth, something fresh by the likes of four young men from the Baltimore area. Recorded in Nashville, the band marks a return to southern soul, taking familiar music and making it new again. Think Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or The Black Keys.
Adam Scott-Wakefield’s vocals sound older than his age, coming off as if Ray Charles and Steve Winwood were singing at the same time. Tracks navigate from the soulful ‘Fool to Love’ to the blues of ‘It’s a Shame’ and ‘Like Bees to Honey.’ Mixing funk and rock on ‘Steal Away’ the track elicits a different take on relationships, trading a life of marriage for the road. A man don’t need a woman, a ship don’t need no anchor/Mama taught me self reliance/I’m gonna thank her.
Standout songs include ‘Seek My Arms,’ ‘Return’ and the fantastic mini-epic that is ‘Come Rain, Come Shine.’ Part slow ballad, with its church service feel, the Hammond organ lends character to a song already rich in the tapestry of Wakefield’s vocals singing I can’t keep holding onto you/I know you’re longing to stay too/I could always be your gentle warm breeze/that lifts you up when your cold man drops you on your knees. It’s a beautiful song that collides Muscle Shoals with Motown-era loveliness.
‘Return’ opens with a guitar melody a la Eric Clapton during his mid-nineties, elegantly acoustic period. A song about the comfort of home when things get hectic, it strides along coolly, not letting the blistering sound of guitar over power the whole.
‘Seek My Arms’ is sure to be a ladies’ favorite. Shuffling, bouncing and a smooth dance number, its descending riff and funky piano playing make it ripe for the dance floor. The piano and guitar play off one another, the middle like a mini-jam. If some tracks call to mind the jazz flow of The Allman Brothers it didn’t hurt that Allman brother Johnny Neal recorded the album and played organ as well.

For fans of Allman Brothers, Jack Johnson, The Black Crowes and Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise.


- Brian Tucker

CD Review - Nate Nelson

a sing-song fashion e.p.

Singer songwriters come and go in popular music, sadly, few stick around. John Mayer has been successful and grown as an artist. James Taylor, probably the most famous singer-songwriter, made a substantial career of it. Many come along and never return, even the best. Some merely end up on a year-end CD compilation, thankfully.
But those with substance, who produce something that reminds us what it feels like when a soul aches, experienced sadness or emotional loss, they transcend popular music. It’s magic when a performer can produce music capturing that, songs both moody and upbeat.
Nate Nelson’s a sing-song fashion e.p. is proof that sometimes just five songs can elicit magic. His vocals are tender and transcendent, sounding like a young Michael Stipe (both from Athens, Ga.) combined with Adam Duritz circa 1996. Add to that the stillness of Springsteen’s Nebraska with sweeter melodies. There are even brief moments recalling Alanis Morrisette and Tracy Chapman’s vocal traits.
There are brooding, rather, haunting rhythms underneath ‘A Sing Song Fashion’ which make up half of the song coupled with Nelson singing against acoustic guitar only. It is double play, two styles opposing one another to create musical juxtaposition with the ending guitar riff recalling Crosby, Stills and Nash’s echoing playing on ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.’ Perhaps the strongest track on the album, it seems to encapsulate the heart and style of Nelson’s playing.
Nelson sings beyond his 18 years while retaining a youthful, changing voice. His vocals are raspy and smooth simultaneously, a slightly gravelly voice also gentle. It would be easy to place him in the Damien Rice category, but it wouldn’t be accurate. On ‘Big Beautiful Fake Smiles’ he sings of a city with lost streets, the one you love is miles away and necessary immaturities from both sides. It’s an honest look at emotional duress and its symptoms.
a sing-song fashion e.p. is a promising start for Nelson, promising that he may well create songs that live long after their creation.

- Brian Tucker

CD Review - Fuzz and Mac

Together Again EP

Fuzz and Mac (Fuzz Jackson and McClain Sullivan) come together on this EP to produce seven tracks that are catchy, groove you and head straight for the soul. Mac’s sweetly pitched vocals and Jackson’s even keeled warm rap style sound solid, transcending typical rap offerings.
Mac doesn’t over sing, she doesn’t have to, channeling Billie Holiday and Res but keeping it all her own. Her vocals are sultry on ‘In the Evening’ sounding peaceful and harmonious. It is a tune for the ladies, a slow groove with spice. The beats are firm, laced with sparse piano. I never needed you like I do today/I never thought these words I’d have to say. Jackson trades off with echoing vocals, a blend of KRS-ONE and Kanye. I just do my thing/rap the underground…Just doing my thing/What you expect from me?
‘Valerie’ is a cautionary tale, a mid western girl caught up in a scene forgetting self respect. It is the heaviest track musically, fuzzed out keyboards with Jackson laying out a sermon and Mac mixes up spoken word with harmony, partly fiercer than Jackson, a welcome, different approach. This wasn’t to be me/I was supposed to get married/Have a family portrait of three…Somehow I got lost between the beginning and the end/Got caught up in the shady life where the devil pretends to be your best friend.
‘Thank You’ is musical appreciation for parental support, shades of Jay-Z and The Commodores in there also. You never left my corner/I never changed for this biz Jackson throws out. The outro goes long but on it you hear Jackson sing. It would have been excellent to hear him sing on a track or two.
‘Malibu’ slows thing down, a staccato drum beat, horn samples shouting in the background. It echoes Massive Attack’s slower, moody songs. Mac’s vocals are different on this track too, gentle and sultry, like Lisa Gerrard or PC Kahuna but less whiny and honey soaked. ‘Disco’ works the Jamiroqaui field of play and vocally is very 1978. This one’s for the clubs if people are hip to it.
A blend of musical styles, some buried deep in the way it is mixed together. Although not heavy on guitar, the rhythm of rock is under there, blending hip hop and soul. Together Again is a wonderful combination of soul, love, attitude and harmony. All these tracks are memorable and timeless. After listening, the refrain of Baby you got it from ‘You Got It’ will linger. And you’ll like it.

- Brian Tucker

CD review - Fu Manchu

We Must Obey

It has been far too long between albums for this band. The California stoner band returns with an angry fuzzed-out guitar tour de force. The drums pound harder and heavier than before, while still mixing classic rock and early eighties punk. It’s less “laid back” than previous discs California Crossing or the passive hard rock drive of King of the Road. We Must Obey is a sonic bomb of sludge metal. Sounding like a punkier version of Black Sabbath, vocalist Scott Hill sears each song sounding like Dave Grohl and Sammy Hagar over-adrenalized.
‘Hung Out to Dry’ has colossal riffs moving in and out like ‘Summertime Blues’ but with more blast, Been hung out to dry/One more time. ‘Shake It Loose’ reverberates like rusted metal banged on a rail and breaks down in a funked up chorus. The guitar is heavy in the left speaker on ‘Land of Giants,’ a slow burning knock to machinery.
‘Moving in Stereo’ is the one track that breaks traditional style, sounding like James Hetfield vocally while covering The Cars 1978 classic. And ‘Sensei vs. Sensei’ opens with slide guitar reminiscent of an old kung fu film. It bounds to life, punching and preaching, Sensei vs Sensei/Tell me who won?
We Must Obey is a musical retort to people being told what to do, an unpretentious blast of anthems and rally cries. It’s a far more aggressive record, pissed off and sheds light on the band’s punk influences.
Musically, it’s an onslaught, primed to burst beams at old clubs. The band strings it out to great effect, heavy like Rollins Band and the softer side of Ozzy. Listening to We Must Obey rekindles the feeling of power a live band is like in a small club or hearing a band play in a rehearsal room. It is in your lap, standing over your shoulder like a brute. It’s California hard rock at its best, energetic, heavy and a dangerous.

- Brian Tucker