Alarmist - Evil Works Get Rich Or Try Dying Evil Works

Alarmist gestated in April 2003, in the Portland basement of the house that the band would later come to live together in and write their debut release, "Evil works get rich or try dying evil works" (Frenetic). Each member came with music histories, though two members were never in bands before. Guitarist Eric Crespo had bands even as a teenager, and was manning his solo project Ghost to Falco, a whirl of guitar, keyboards, synthesizers and samplers. Drummer Nick Bindeman, a multitalented player with dexterity in every rock instrument, was weaned by music-loving parents with an affection for Nurse With Wound. Though singers James Squeaky and Eva Pox weren't in bands ever before, both had musical pasts˜Pox trained as a cellist in grade school and Squeaky has been a music journalist and publisher of the Portland music zine Sincere Brutality. Each member cultivated or maintained a musical project outside of Alarmist; Crespo's Ghost to Falco marked 2004 with an album and a national tour; Pox and Bindeman started the now-defunct Malibu Falcon together, Pox now sings in the free-music ensemble Cex Fucx and Bindeman is the guitarist for Portland's Hustler White; Squeaky spazzes in the tender but controversial Sex With Girls. The group sculpted a sound that started as an earnest but silly tribute to punk and evolved into a project that was an expression of the mates' friendship and their not-jaded aesthetic. Discordant but beautiful, whee-fun but murder-serious, Alarmist cut its teeth playing with bands like D. Yellow Swans, Chinese Stars, Some Girls, Glass Candy, Growing, Wives, Year Future, Mae Shi, Sodamn Inssein, Wrangler Brutes, Metalux and Fat Worm of Error in Portland and up and down the West Coast. A friend coined the phrase "beauty and the beast" to describe Alarmist and the band meets that description, with music that contorts, bends and twists between carnal and ticklish, epic and goofy. The band's first album, on the San Francisco label Frenetic, was recorded at Smegma Studios by Mike Lastra of the Portland band Smegma, which has been spooning free weird sounds to apostles for over 30 years. "Evil works get rich or try dying evil works" is a writhing merry go round of poetry through hoarse throats, an oddessey into the occult, magic, feminine violence and the innocence, mystery and danger of animals. Clenched but wild, loose but precise, Alarmist's live show is not to be missed, a jubilee of musicians not posturing but laughing destructively and weeping hopefully, stirring the cauldron like storytellers. Alarmist is adults reclaiming the punk tradition from the shame of nostalgia and pioneering into a jungle of unscripted insanity, magic and surrealism. Alarmist is talented musicians who just won't play the notes right.

Members

• Eric Crespo
• Nick Bindeman
• James Squeaky
• Eva Saelens

• freneticrecords.com
• vimeo.com