Local Focus: Amish Electric Chair

For my money, Amish Electric Chair is the best-named band in Athens. Some thing about the slightly oxymoronic tongue-in-cheek-ness makes me want to chuckle every time I see it. They're bringing their socially-aware punk rock furry to the Smiling Skull tonight--something tells me things are going to get pretty sweaty.

They're beginning to transcend the levels of success found by the average Athens-based bands; tonight's show at The Skull effectively kicks off their East Coast Tour that finds them in Washington D.C., New York City, and other cities throughout the month of March. They've also recently been featured in The Post, and released an EP called Straight. No Chaser on Geykido Comet Records.

The EP distills the band's potent sound into 5 songs, each an an agitated blast of classicist punk rock--it's nothing you haven't heard before, but it's certainly good at what it does. The lyrics at times get tripped by being so forcefully "socially aware," but it's also something of punk rock tradition to wave politics in listeners' faces, so it's not something that takes too much away from their attacking sound. "Social Revolution" opens the disk with lead singer Neil Tuuri's trademark shouting vocals and a stomping attack provided by the rest of the band. Elsewhere, Tuuri tempers his singing style on "State of the Union, which a bit less tightly-wound as its surrounding material and feels like it could have been heard on an alternative rock radio station sometime in the mid-90's.

You can listen to Straight. No Chaser. over on Indie Pit.