Arlington, 3.7.2025

A kind of rock and roll circle of life was achieved last night at Growl, where the debut of Werewolf Victim Revival (like Creedence Clearwater but with more blood?) was also the last-ever show by C.I.

Instrumental math rockers C.I. are folding the tent because guitarist Peter Hawkinson's decamping for Indiana. His bandmates -- guitarist Ben Schulz, bassist Bob Nash, and drummer Andrew Tipps -- still play together in their up-till-now instrumental death metal outfit Caddis (with guitarist-composer Nathan Morris), who just added Sean Vargas (Blood of the Sun) on vocals and are finishing an album. On this all-ages occasion, they had children (Ben's girlfriend's) distributing glow stick bracelets to the fans, and the musicians spoke onstage more than I've ever heard any of them. 

Their powerful music proves that complexity and heaviness can compliment each other. The string players intertwined singing lines, punctuated with crunching chords, and Tipps kept up a fast and furious pace behind the traps. Two of the songs were ones that had never been performed live before -- a slow, moody one and a fast one -- proving that these guys never ran out of ideas, they just ran out of time. Safe travels to Peter, and looking forward to hearing Caddis bring it to the stage when the record is done.

Werewolf Victim Revival (hereafter to be referred to as WVR) included a couple of familiar faces. I once played a single gig with drummer Brent Miller (Spitfire) in a band called Kamandi at what was then 6th Street Live, way back in 2006. That night was memorable for the hail of broken drumsticks (Brent was facing and sharing a kick drum with Clay Stinnett on that occasion) and the animalistic noises audience members near the stage were making. And guitarist Pat Flynn -- playing an acrylic EGC baritone -- used to play bass in Tame Tame & Quiet, a band that I was quite impressed with when Stoogeaphilia played shows with them a decade or so ago. Tempus fugit.

Their new outfit is a pummeling power trio fronted by bassist-vocalist Joel Murray, who performs with great animation and has a bass sound like an army of Chris Squires on human growth hormone. You could feel his every pick attack in your solar plexus, in a good way. A reminder that as much as you might enjoy records and videos, there is no substitute for being in the room where your clothes can be moved by air from speaker cones and drum heads. I look forward to seeing these guys again. 

In between, two-piece Death Sweats played some simple, direct jams, with the guitarist using some kind of Local H bass-in-the-box wizardry to fill out the sound. On the way out, I ran into ex-Tame Tame & Quiet frontman Aaron Bartz, Fort Worth indie rock eminence Randy Brown, and Lisa Umbarger, who was always my favorite member of the Toadies. Nice to see folks about the age I was when I stopped playing gigs still out digging the rock on a temperate night in March.