Mustang Cobra: Ambassadors of Metal

Where were you when you first heard metal?

 

For me, it was the living room of a babysitter’s house in 1989, watching Metallica’s first video, “One,” on MTV. It gave me nightmares. At the age of eight, I was not yet ready to appreciate what I’d seen and heard. It was too intense, too raw, and too graphic for my unformed, sheltered perceptions. My parents were pacifistic hippies and I had never in my life been exposed to something so unabashedly aggressive (and consequently, they never hired that babysitter again).

Almost twenty years later, sitting on one of the speakers that line the front of the stage at the Living Room, I drink in a forty-five minute set by Mustang Cobra, and I appreciate it fully.

Mustang Cobra plays metal. Not nu-metal, not hybrid metal. Old metal. The kind of vigorous, organized musical chaos that only plays on the airwaves of college radio in the wee hours or 107.3’s “Harder, Faster” metal show from 11PM to midnight on weekdays. Some of the band’s influences are well-known (Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden) and some are—for a novice like me at least—more esoteric (Motorhead, Blitzkrieg). After taking the world by storm in the eighties and being absorbed into corporate music in the nineties, the old metal has once again been banished to the margins, where it is revered only by those who truly love that sound and everything it embodies: raw energy, superb musicianship, and unapologetic spectacle.

But here in Providence, Mustang Cobra aims to change all of that. Made up of veterans of the Providence music scene, including former members of Shed, Sasquatch and the Sickabillys, The Cringe, and The Honeymoon’s Over, this outfit fully intends to triumph. After only a year of playing out, their nominations in this year’s Motif Music Poll for “Best Breakthrough Band” and “Best Live Act” indicate that their quest is going quite well. And it is a quest, make no mistake about that. This band’s vision, like its music, is larger than life.

Guitarist Aaron Leidecker, who founded the band with fellow guitarist Dino Paolantonio a year ago, always had a very clear plan: “We wanted to start a metal band that wasn’t doing the same old shit. We didn’t want ‘jud jud,’ we didn’t want violent, screaming vocals. We wanted to keep it more traditional.” Drummer Natalie Courville agrees: “We definitely try to bring a lot of the old-school metal flavor back to what we’re doing. You know, new metal has its place, but it’s lost so much of what the old-school metal used to be….It’s the showmanship, the love for what you’re doing on-stage, it’s the synchronized head-banging, and the obvious love for what you’re doing, which I think has really been lost, so we’re trying to bring that back.”

Their sound certainly brings everything the true metal connoisseur could desire to the table. Aaron and Dino are perfectly in synch as they rip through their harmonized solos, bassist Paul “Zeus” Sousa brings a level of musical chops and sophistication that is rarely heard on the four-string in these parts, and Natalie’s unrelenting, driving beats, frenetic fills, and theatrical cymbal crashes could motivate an advancing army. The songs are intricate, most of them boasting the aforementioned harmonized solos as well as lightning-quick time changes. Paul hasn’t slept in three days and he’s still spot-on as he and Natalie hold down the rhythm. During many of the songs, Aaron steps onto the speakers lining the stage to shred a solo of his own; on a couple of tunes, he executes them with his guitar held behind his head (his bandmates brag that he can play Van Halen’s “Eruption”).

Then there’s Christian White, the front man, singer, and newest addition to the line-up. Although he’s only been performing with Mustang Cobra for a couple of months, his vocals and on-stage persona are a perfect complement. He slinks around the stage like an angry Gollum and jumps into the crowd to stare down and serenade individual audience members. His voice, a strong tenor, commands both harmony and force as he belts out lyrics about dragons and war into his microphone, which is attached to a stand jerry-rigged from a Halloween-prop battle-axe. When asked about his on-stage antics, Christian replies, “I feel that, if you’re going to do metal, you have to bring some wizardry to the table. And, when I reach the top of the mountain, I have nothing better than do than to throw lightning bolts….Metal to me is musical theater all plugged in. It’s show tunes, just loud.”

Christian’s sense of showmanship, which the band says he brought on-stage from the very first time they performed together, is definitely shared by the other members. At the Living Room, the stage is littered with chains and skulls, colored lights have been strategically placed in front of the drums and guitars, and a fog machine hisses behind the drum kit. Strobes pulse during the solos. The band has its own lighting technician. Paul refers to the effects as “smoke and mirrors” and compares them to the techniques used by the Wizard of Oz to inspire awe among his subjects. Aaron envisioned this kind of spectacle from the band’s inception: “That was the whole point, to have a show that no one else was doing, with lights, and make it basically like an arena-type show inside a club.” Watching him, Dino, and Paul play in a tight diagonal line, their legs spread in a wide, old-school stance as they bend over their instruments and the strobe lights flicker, one can only say, “Mission Accomplished.”

Another reason that Mustang Cobra is so engaging to watch is that they play on top of each other: Natalie’s drum kit is set up on the floor in front of the drum riser (“I hate drum risers,” she tells me. “They separate you”). Paul, Dino, and Aaron play in the line. Christian weaves among them, sometimes throwing his arm around Aaron while he sings, sometimes hitting Natalie’s cymbals with a spare drumstick. At one point, Paul accidentally kicks over a couple of the drums, and a crew member rushes onstage to repair the damage while the bandmates look at each other and laugh. The decision to play in a tight cluster was serendipitous, as Natalie explains: “We played this basement show, and we were on top of each other, and we fed off of each other so much more than we usually do, so we decided to make it a habit from here on out.” They made the right decision. The connection between them is palpable on-stage, and speaks to the band’s dedication to their craft—they practice several times a week—and to the collective process with which they write their songs.

The tunes vary: “God is angry” is a Cassandra-like rant against consumerist-driven apathy, “Deliverin’ the Goods” brings a heavy, almost groovy, dirty-blues feel, and “Hyboria,” an ode to Conan the Barbarian, is an unrelenting, hyperactive catharsis. When asked to describe the band’s sound, Dino answers that they strive toward being “the house band for Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft.”

There’s an epic feel to the live show as well as the music. In between songs, Christian preaches to the crowd, explaining the meaning of metal in a histrionic, quasi-British accent while using his battle-axe mic stand to knight audience members and baptizing them with his water bottle. Such gravitas is necessary, he says, because it’s “impossible to sing about some of these subjects, like wizards and dragons, without owning up to it.” Dino concurs: “That’s the point; if you believe what you’re singing, it brings it to another level.”

This is a major reason why Mustang Cobra’s live set is so riveting: the entire band obviously believes very much in what they’re doing. They hold nothing back. For them, it’s that kind of candor, dedication to musicianship, and unabashed emotional intensity that embodies the true spirit of metal. Metal is their passion, their lifelong love, and their gift to the Providence music scene. As Natalie explains, “Musician-wise, [metal’s about] showmanship….You can get on-stage, you can play your instruments, you can do a good job, but it’s all about the show. You can’t fake it.”

All of the members agree that a true love of metal demands life-long dedication. Dino describes it as “a cult. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. It’s like a mob, like a music mob. I like all kinds of music, any kind of music that’s done well, but I’ve never met anybody who was once a metal fan who ever said to me, ‘I was into Maiden in ’85, but they don’t do it for me anymore.’” Natalie agrees: “It’s not something you just go through a phase of. If you love metal, you love metal for life. You never grow out of it, you never get sick of it. You’re always gonna be a Maiden fan, you’re always gonna be a Slayer fan.”

Aaron elaborates: “Metal is the most extreme type of music….It’s emotional without being lame; it’s triumphant.” He recalls, “When I was six, I was handed a copy of Shout at the Devil, and I knew I was into metal. I’ve gotten into different things over the years, because you’re turned on to different things, but it’s always been right back to metal for me. I’ve been in different bands that weren’t metal, but I’ve never gotten the same kind of charge, or the same satisfaction that I have in this band, because…it’s the kind of metal that, when metal was at its highest point, it’s that kind of metal. It’s triumphant, victorious, and it doesn’t back down.”

After recovering from temporary tinnitus, I can’t help but agree.

 

Mustang Cobra plays Jerky’s Live Music Hall in Providence on May 23^rd. For more information, go to www.myspace.com/mustangcobraband.