I really like this band. Maybe it’s because they remind me of listening to early post-hardcore acts like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral and Texas Is The Reason in their prime. Which was quite a bit what it was like to witness Cymbals Eat Guitars perform.

While it was a short set and the crowd (at first) was thin, the level of intensity projected from Staten Island’s own Cymbals Eat Guitars was something to behold. The ‘not your average’ indie rock quartet features your fair share of sophisticated atmospheric instrumentals and out-of-control mathmatic time signatures with passionate and mad-as-fuck vocals. This is all thanks to 20-year-old guitarist/singer Joseph D’Agostino.

The guy displays an onstage intensity that makes the experience even more intimate. It seems as though he bares all not only through his intensive vocals but his high energy; jumping and playing his guitar like he’s been holding in this music for years and finally gets to share it with complete strangers. The band itself almost seem at the will of Joseph’s performance and try their damndest to catch up at times.

This doesn’t at all affect the experience whatsoever, just something I noticed. The songs on the band’s self-released first album, Why There Are Mountains, which will be re-released September 29th, served as the majority of Friday’s set. The album translates well live and impressed the crowd (consisting mostly of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart fans) that a band at such a young age could display this level of skill.

Someone even yelled, “How friggin’ old are you?” The set closed with the vocal-hurricane Wind Phoenix and left the crowd and myself hopeful that this band will further prove that on-stage organized chaos is possible.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – Wind Phoenix from Why There Are Mountains (2009)

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