![]() ![]() Forming from the bones of an otherwise forgotten band called Slicer Dicer, their membership quickly ran to dozens, with members assigned tasks from music and artwork to videos and web presence. When the Armed emerged in 2009 with their debut These Are Lights, they were what Wolski terms “functionally anonymous”. He has decided to drop the act now, he says, because “it started becoming shtick”. ![]() Wolski is a 37-year-old advertising creative for McDonald’s, Jeep, Chevrolet and Ford who also has music video directing credits for artists including Tegan and Sara and Protomartyr. They just present as though they don’tīefore those connections can be made, though, Wolski needs to cut through the web of conspiracy theories and pranks that orbit the band. That’s crazy.” So many punk and hardcore people do commercial work. This interview is one of the most intimate things I’ll do all day. “We have too many ways to connect with people and now we just don’t connect at all. “Too much information has made us dumb,” he says. To the band, delivering this message from behind another splurge of theatrical misdirection would have been like pouring fuel on the fire. The LP is a sharp look at critical thinking and internet-led brain rot, where Wolski attempts to step back from the overload of information thrown at us day to day in favour of developing more meaningful interpersonal relationships. For the first time, too, the group have offered what appears to be an authentic personnel list alongside the music, studded with eye-catching guest spots including Julien Baker, who features on lead single Sport of Form, and Iggy Pop, who stars as God in the accompanying video. A luminous, pop-facing collection, it trades much of the Armed’s abrasiveness in favour of sleek presentation (helped by a sparkling mix from superproducer Alan Moulder, who has worked with U2 and Nine Inch Nails). The group’s new record, Perfect Saviors, has the potential to introduce their unruly creative spirit to a far wider audience. “The real story is more confusing than any lie,” he contends. “Sorry to disappoint,” he says with a laugh, and it seems that his desire to offer the truth behind the most confusing, exciting punk band on Earth is at least somewhat genuine. In the past, he and his bandmates have delighted in toying with journalists, frequently utilising fake names and even sending actors to interviews in their places, making his boyish smile a tad unnerving. It’s been suggested that everyone from Kurt Ballou, guitarist with the influential hardcore band Converge, to party-rocker Andrew WK to pro-skater Tony Hawk has been steering the ship.īut today, they’re coming clean, something vocalist Tony Wolski seems remarkably chipper about. The anonymous Detroit hardcore collective have spent the past 14 years hiding behind a carefully curated air of mystery and an anarchic sense of irony that has, in tandem with records that fuse grinding chaos with moments of euphoric melody, made them one of the most consistently thrilling propositions in heavy music. The Armed are a head-spinning proposition. ![]()
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