I don’t sit down and listen to a whole reggae album. I just don’t. It’s not that I don’t have an appreciation for the genre, but every reggae album I’ve listened to didn’t have enough variety to keep me interested for a full forty-five minutes. I was happy to be proven wrong by Lionize’s recent Pentimento Music Company debut, “Superczar And The Vulture.”
Superczar & the Vulture has been added to the Fearless Radio catalog and into regular rotation at the station. Friends and fans can request music Monday through Saturday on our TweeQuest show. The show airs from 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. CST. To request music fans can tweet @fearlessradio (twitter.com/fearlessradio) or call 312.489.8455 and hit ext. 1 to get to the studio DJ.
LIONIZE Interview with bassist Henry Upton and guitarist Nate Bergman By Doug Newville
The four (and sometimes) five piece reggae-rock LIONIZE from Maryland have made a major statement for themselves in the national music scene with a tireless work ethic that delivered over 250 gigs last year, as well as two full releases in 2011: Destruction Manual in February and Superczar & The Vulture in December. They are also one of the few bands that provided me with a “Holy crap these guys are freakin’ good!” moment at last year’s Warped Tour. Here is what bassist Henry Upton and guitarist Nate Bergman had to say about LIONIZE:
Bands who combine Clutch-style boogie rock with reggae dub aren’t exactly a thriving subgenre in the alternative music world. In fact, we’re not even sure there’s been a genre pegged for the kind of multifaceted rock that Lionize crank out on Superczar And The Vulture, but we’re about to peg it with one. Boogie-dub. Bow-worthy, bass-drenched boogie-dub with off-kilter lyrics that would make Neil Fallon double-check his notes for potential copyright infringement while the members and ex-members of bands like Bad Brains and the Clash—and even classic rockers like Canned Heat and Savoy Brown—shake their heads and wish they’d thought of that. Read More >
Fresh off the release of their critically acclaimed new record, Superczar and The Vulture, on Pentimento Music Company last month and a long stint on the road supporting such acts as Lucero, Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, Clutch, and Corrosion of Conformity, genre-bending reggae/rock band Lionize… Read Full Story >
By A.D. Amorosi
For The Philadelphia Inquirer
There’s not a lot that 74-year-old Lee “Scratch” Perry – dub innovator, producer, madman – hasn’t done during his long, wild career.
The Upsetter famously invented reggae’s darker, experimental dub sound that influenced hip-hop and electronic artists forever after, produced raw, risky versions of Bob Marley’s earliest works along with those of Jamaica’s finest toasters (to say nothing of The Clash), and has long insisted that he burned down his legendary Black Ark studio out of anger. Heck, even gun-toting Phil Spectornever burned down a studio.
Yet when he sold out World Cafe Live on Thursday night, the rainbow-haired Perry did something this longtime listener had never heard: He brought focus, insistent funky-punky instrumentation, and contagious melody to new songs (from his smashing recent release Revelation) and old.
Often, Perry shows are brilliant but meandering dub-atmospheric affairs with quicksilver bolts of energy from his bands and the merry master himself. But with his sizzling opening act, Lionize, as his backing band and with boldly melodic new tunes to guide him, the entire show was electric with Perry as its bristling, animated centerpiece.
Standing beside a table holding a lemon and his electro-effect box (lots of cow moos from that) and dressed in his usual mirror-encrusted baseball cap, Perry toasted and roasted his subjects in a roughly squeaking but solid sing-speaking voice.
Perry & Company made the sharply sonorous tracks from Revelation insistent and surging, even when they were slower – like “Run for Cover” and its dub version follow-up. “Government run, parasites run,” rapped Perry through dense rhythms and a liquidlike organ tone.
Along with tossing out eccentric non sequiturs – “your test is your mess,” “I am the black lion of Zion” – and encouraging all to exercise vigorously, Perry provoked his band to make the manic most out of the Perry catalog. “Roast Fish and Cornbread” got turned into a syrupy psychedelic-jazz jam, M.I.A. would’ve killed for the reggae-riffic electro that “Inspector Gadget” became, and a Perry-produced Marley fave, “Sun Is Shining” was made into a thrillingly slithering spy-themed ska that would shake and stir James Bond.
Simply magnificent.
