Collegian Music Critic Aiden Hoogstra gives the inside scoop on this year’s artists.
A highlight of the year for all students, the Battle of the Bands is a longstanding TU tradition that needs no introduction. Any student reading this knows all the ritual celebrations and legendary stories, from the annual kidnapping of the firstborn to the drawing and quartering incident of ‘94, all leading up to the battle for the Golden Human Spleen. And so, without further ado, here are the newcomers for this year’s TU Battle of the Bands!
1. My Real Dad Would Let Me Have A Cigarette!: This straight edge punk band brings one thing above all: rage. Rage that is mostly directed at the bassist and lead singer Justin Pulaski’s stepfather Kevin, who can be seen at every concert in support of the former’s music career. In an interview with the frontman, Justin describes his music as “a kind of monument to the injustice in the world so catchy that people are simply forced to do something about it,” and his stepfather as “gay.” In an interview with Kevin, the 47 year-old nonprofit worker said, “I know I probably look like a sucker coming out here just to getting made fun of by the band, spat on by that guitarist, and usually hospitalized by crowd members, but I love Cassandra [Pulaski’s mother] and her family with my whole heart, and I’m willing to do anything it takes to make the talented young man up there feel that love.”
2. Yunger Gravy: Inspired by the over-the-top white boy rap sounds of Yung Gravy, Yunger Gravy’s self-proclaimed mission is “blow up so hard Yung Gravy’s name autocorrects to ours when you google him.” Though talented, the odds are against them; the band recently lost founding member Jackson Brown (stage name Turdcutter) over creative differences. Furthermore, the group fills a niche many claim is already occupied by their more established competitor Jellyboys, this year’s top seed for the Golden Human Spleen.
3. Too much Sauce: BJ Esco: While this group of seven 130lb males might not look like much, as drummer Kenji Singh puts it, “our combined swag makes us the equivalent of one actual rapper lmao” The band’s performance at the upcoming competition will be centered around their debut album We Didn’t Steal this Flow. As a disclaimer, none of the members we interviewed had any opinions or, even awareness, of the fact that this was already a song, and they were directly in violation of multiple musical copyright laws. The band hasn’t bothered to open any of their letters that mention anything about a “wack lawsuit” and refuses to accept any paperwork in person. Drummer Kenji Singh would not comment on the stack of served paperwork, but he was using a The Onion coffe mug as a paperweight.
4. Dave Matthews Band: Not that Dave Matthews Band.
5. Tha Beetles: The question: what would a ska version of The Beatles’ complete discography sound like? The answer: like shit. Tha Beetles are predicted to receive last place in this competition, with one critic describing their signature sound as “an affront not just to The Beatles, but even to ska. It’s worse than ska. Like, so much worse.”
6. Newborn Gravy: Jackson Brown, AKA Turdcutter’s new project’s goal is to “blow up so hard Yunger Gravy’s name autocorrects to ours when you google them.” This group takes everything Yunger Gravy took about Yung Gravy and made more extreme and makes it more extreme.
7. JFK and the Booze Cruisers: These straightedge punk rockers cite Living Color, System of a Down, and Dead Kennedys as inspirations to their sound, blending punchy riffs and heavy distortion with powerful messages. In recent songs like “Legal Drinking Age (Should Be Zero),” their production has also improved significantly, a fact lead guitarist and backup singer Jennifer Coke attributes to the group’s recent discovery of red bull and vodka. Despite this, their success in the competition is uncertain, as the band was recently rocked to its core by an unexpected DUI scandal.
8. Wait, if You’re Serving, and I’m Eating, Who’s Piloting the Hindenburg?: This group can be summed up in one word: confusing. Composed of lead singer Will Gaylord (stage name Freddi Twerkury) and his two supportive friends Joseph Hogan and Hank Smith, Gaylord describes his signature sound as a blend of Chapel Roan (some kind of christian music group?) and hardcore gorenoise. The result is a catchy, but very hard to understand blend of peppy lyrics and disaster sound effects. Their performance plans are a surprise, but Hogan confirms that 20 pounds of pink glitter, hit single “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams (But Our Love Can),” and something called a “live horse blender” will be involved.
9. Fetal Gravy: This hardcore band is the satisfaction of prolific artist Jackson “Turdcutter” Brown’s impulse towards heavy metal. Partnered with Grant McKenzie on guitar and Carter Bulthuis on bass, Brown says this group has only one goal: “to blow up so hard Newborn Gravy’s name autocorrects to ours when you google them.”
10. Gravy Begins At Conception! After political disagreements reached a boiling point, former guitarist of Fetal Gravy and staunchly pro-life Grant McKenzie went out on his own to begin this solo project, which has the goal to, as he put it, “blow up so hard Fetal Gravy’s name autocorrects to mine when you google them.”
11. Watching a Sex Scene with Dad: These postmodernist techno artists’ employ a contrast of comforting melodies with dissonant, even uncomfortable interludes. The fade from harmony to skin crawling dissonance, especially in their recent single “Goldfinger, 1hr27min” off of the album Son, These Things are Perfectly Natural, conjures a feeling uncannily like to that of a reverse-staring-contest with both the screen and your father during a weirdly long and seemingly not plot-central scene of a James Bond film. By the end of the performance, you’re guaranteed to have debated whether fast forwarding would be more or less awkward, before remembering that your father isn’t even in the building. Unless you brought your dad. Don’t bring your dad.
And let’s not forget our returning bands! This year, TU will see the following competitors (listed by rank in last years Battle) come back for another run at the Golden Human Spleen:
• Jellyboys*
• The Mannequins*
• FOX Mews
• Shit Dick Johnson and the Bussy Boys
• Girth Control*
• Help! My Gym Teacher is a Democrat!
• The Concept of Racing in a Sandwich bag
• Cuckolded by Mono (again)
• Snow Bunny Mind Control
• Wait, Why are Grandpa’s Medals in German?
• They Are Definitely Giants
• Your Changing Body and You
• Tradwives 4 Biden
• Shen Yun II: Revenge
• I Pissed My Pants Watching Cars 2 at the Brookfield YMCA Daycare and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
• 1 Billion Milligram Zyn
• Dr. Pepper is a Man
• Raw Milk Turned Me Pansexual
• https://freebandnamegenerator.net/eQsf2/refresh/home
• Wock and Ball Torture
• Mogged to Death in West Philly
