Monday, January 22, 2024

Wisconsin Anger Team - Archie


Wisconsin Anger Team is a band that's quite mysterious to me. The band has no social media presence as far as I can tell, and I have no knowledge of who's in the band or exactly what part of Wisconsin the group hails from. But I can tell you that the band has released four excellent albums in less than four years. A rave review from Nick on Add To Wantlist drew my attention to the band's new album Archie, and I was instantly hooked onto the full Wisconsin Anger Team catalog. Stylistically, this band is generally in poppy punk territory, yet its sound is a little rawer and noisier than what usually passes for "pop-punk" these days. I'm sensing influences of '80s melodic punk and old East Bay punk, yet at the same time there's something distinctly Midwestern about Wisconsin Anger Team (go figure, right?). If you dig tuneful, well-crafted punk songs with a DIY edge, Archie should be very much to your liking. From what I can gather, these 12 songs essentially comprise a biography of Archibald Butt — a military advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft who famously died in the sinking of the Titanic. As far as ideas for concept albums go, this is about as original as it gets. This is almost like a punk rock Hamilton, and the story is every bit as interesting. Yet what I truly appreciate is that all these songs are excellent in their own right even if you remove them from the larger narrative. Archie (along with the rest of the WAT catalog) is a free download from Bandcamp. It's a terrific album from a band more people ought to be talking about!

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