REVIEW: Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor

Posted by KevinMLD under *mixed, Music | Join The Discussion |

I’ve been meaning to write about this record for over a month, but I guess I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. There’s no doubt that when the songs are good, they’re great. From what I can gather, the band is made up of a bunch of nerds from North Jersey and is named after Shakespeare’s play. The record is full of Civil War themes including clips of recited speeches from the era crossed with seemingly anachronistic references to modern ideas like cars. I often describe the record as Civil War punk, but punk doesn’t really accurately describe the diversity of their sound. The lyrics tend to be appropriately angst-filled but that angst is often hidden behind fun sing-a-long chants like “The enemy is everywhere!” and “You will always be a loser!” The whole package is nothing if not interesting.