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“Rock music is more of a night-time sport. This feels like some fucking kiddie matinee.” So proclaimed Nate “Nash Kato” Kaeding, and when Urge Overkill was done playing and you could walk outside, there was still more than enough day light to safely navigate a car without the use of even parking lights. This somewhat unfortunate booking time (UO took the stage at about 7:20PM) was due to a standing dance party that would follow, but inside the club was dark, the beer was cold, the crowd sweaty and the band was tight. Cover your watch and you’d never know it that by the time Urge started their encore, it was before most opening bands would be tuning up and starting into their set.
It’s been quite some time since UO sputtered out, their 2005 release Exit The Dragon limping to the finish line in a fairly ignominious fashion. Sixteen years ago is a long time, and the monogrammed velour jackets and swingin’ medallions were stashed away into some forgotten storage shed. Those accoutrements have remained stowed, but the band’s core of Kato and Ed “King” Roeser have returned to record new material and their ca-chunk style of songwriting remains intact. Opening a set with the best song of the new record, when touring on that record, is always a good bet and the thud/thunk of “Effigy” hit that perfect spot that they’d meticulously maintained back in the day, with its big chorus carrying the song across the finish line with gas to spare.
While the rest of the record isn’t quite up to that same standard, songs like the amphetamine-charged “Mason/Dixon” or the introspective “Quiet Person” demonstrated decent range, the ever-slim Kato, ever-stylish in shades, long-legged jeans and a vest and played some big riffs on the heavy gauged strings of his striking Ibanez Iceman guitar. Not too surprisingly, the band ignored their early stuff, with only the hard-charging “Vacation In Tokyo” and the infectious “Now That’s The Barclords” (just what exactly is a barclord?) about the only material from the Touch and Go era, aside from a stealthy insertion of “Stull” in the middle of “The Break.”
One thing that became apparent over the course of the evening is just how good a guitar player Roeser is. Visually he’s no match for the panache of Kato, with his paunchier, more basic look (both sartorially and in respect to hairstyle) and basic workmanlike Gibson SG guitar, but his string bending techniques and rock solid riffage while singing the majority of the songs was pretty impressive. For me the biggest part of the band’s allure is the hooks, and when they really work like on “Sister Havana” or “Positive Bleeding”; I just wish they didn’t turn their backs on equally good material like “Faroutski” or “Ticket To LA” or “Goodbye To Guyville.”
