Behind Enemy Lines

    Recently I have become thoroughly convinced that Behind Enemy Lines is one of the best bands that I have ever encountered.  So much so that I think it puts them in the same category as John Coltrane’s original quartet with Elvin Jones and DEVO.  This may seem like a stretch but a solid band is a solid band regardless of the music they are playing.

    I never got to see them play when they were first active, back in the early 2000s.  Earlier this century, when I saw the failed relationship writing on the wall, I would use Behind Enemy Lines as an excuse to get out of the house.  Under the guise of “I’m going to see a screamy/shouty punk band that you wouldn’t enjoy” I would catch a movie, go to a restaurant that I wanted to go to, see friends that I hadn’t heard from in a while or just sit somewhere quietly and not be wrong for an hour or two.  As much as I wanted to see the band play I also needed a few minutes to myself.

    I always bought the records the instant that I saw them on the shelf at Brave New World and immediately began drilling them into my head.  Not only are the three records that Behind Enemy Lines released three of the best records to ever come out of Pittsburgh, they’re three of the best records period.

    The first time that I saw Behind Enemy Lines play was at Skullfest in 2019.  This was the same year of the Caustic Christ reunion show that was cut short by a power outage which was caused by a microburst and the two song Aus-Rotten reunion that happened at the end of Behind Enemy Lines’ set.  Bill Chamberlain was in town from Philadelphia to play for Caustic Christ and he ended up sitting in for a few songs.  Bill is the guilty party responsible for the bulk of the music on the three Behind Enemy Lines albums so it was great to be able to see him play some of those songs.  For so many reasons, that was one of the most memorable shows I had ever had the privilege to witness.

    It is a rare thing to see a band hit a stage with such force and precision and I try to be in the room every time they play now.  One of the most recent times that I saw Behind Enemy Lines was when they closed out the second night of Descendants Of Crom.  I ended up shooting twenty-three sets over the course of the three day festival and I was dead tired from being in the middle of it.  That was until Behind Enemy Lines took the stage.  And by taking the stage I mean the band went off like a bomb.  Suddenly I was wide awake and in the thick of it.  After I ran around and took pictures, I sat down on the stage left subwoofer and let the music hit me.

    Matt Garabedian is a locomotive on drums and was perfectly locked in with Metal Mary, the most efficient and clutch bass player in Pittsburgh.  He has a very head down and hunched over the snare approach to playing and still has room to tend to backing vocals while he’s going at it.  I dare you to find a better rhythm section for an active punk band.

    Matt Tuite’s guitar tone is crushing.  He plays with a speed and ferocity that I have not seen in a guitar player in a long time.  When I talked to him the day after the show he said he wasn’t happy with the way he played.  That’s not what I saw and heard at all.  If he thought that was a bad night, I don’t want to know the damage he’d cause after what he thought was a good show.  I think I’d need facial reconstruction surgery afterward to recover from the face melting.

    After all these years of imparting a message at full velocity, Dave Trenga can still let it rip.  Seeing how he plants his front foot as he approaches the mic stand makes it look like nothing could knock him over.

    Much like in his work with Aus-Rotten and Human Investment, Dave has been screaming about anti-racism and various forms of liberation since the 90s and here we are today still having to make the same arguments.  There is a definite sense that very few people are doing the reading that goes along with the music otherwise we might have actually seen some progress over the years.

    That is one of my great frustrations.  A solid band that uses their music as the teaspoon of sugar that helps the medicine of the message go down but the majority of the listeners only take in the music without the message.  Dave wrote those words for a reason.  Those records came with booklets of information for a reason.  And it has all fallen on deaf ears, especially in Pittsburgh, which doesn’t really surprise me one bit given the anti-intellectual stance that this town has.

    There are some rumblings of new activity within the band.  Thoughts of getting to places that they haven’t played and the possibility of new material are all in the air.  2024 might be an interesting period for the band and I can’t wait to see what happens.