Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
Luke O’Neil had a pretty good review in Pitchfork last month of the new American Nightmare album, the Boston band’s first in 15 years. “A hardcore record is almost always a dress rehearsal,” O’Neil writes, “a set of stage directions that prepare the listener for the physical movements they’re expected to undertake when the songs actually come to life at the live show.”
We here at Vanyaland often like to do things in reverse, so as you read Barry Thompson’s review of the American Nightmare live show that was delivered to Allston’s Brighton Music Hall on February 18, feel free to flip the script and take in some of the band’s recorded efforts via their new video for “Gloom Forever.”
The video was directed by Travis Shinn and Jeremy Danger, and it reflects American Nightmare’s new LP as a whole: Raw, furious, and upright. “In making this record we had one goal: To make a hardcore punk album that was true to American Nightmare, who we were then and who we are now,” says vocalist Wes Eisold, likely known more on these digital pages for his work in Cold Cave during American Nightmare’s hiatus. “No filler, just existential poetic venom. This is ground zero, a new life for the band.”
That holds true no matter how you first approach it.
