Thursday, December 4, 2008

Bear Vs Shark

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Bear Vs Shark existed from 2001-2005, based out of Highland, Michigan. Their extremely unique brand of post-hardcore pulled influences from Fugazi and MC5 to Black Sabbath.

Granted, BVS wrote hooky, good music. But what really set them apart from any of their peers was Marc Paffi. When one first hears Paffi's signature howl, Mitch Jayne's description of an early Bob Dylan may come to mind; he sounds like a "a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire." His lyrics also set him apart from the stuff of that new millennium boom of bands - a boom that, fueled by websites like Myspace and Purevolume, often reflected the naivety of the kids who were now discovering punk rock through it's newest medium - social networking. Paffi's words in "MPS" actually make him seem wary of this technologically advanced world surrounding him. Sounding drained and waxing misanthropy he yelps:

I find it hard to believe that the medicine is helping me
At the end of the day the computer screens give blue and silent offerings
At the end of the day view that all the trains are churches


The story is that after hearing their demo an Equal Visions rep flew out to sign them right away. Lucky for us.

I'm missing "June 7th", a track off the vinyl re-issue of Right Now... If anyone has it, I'd appreciate it.

Members of the group are now in some new groups, which don't tour and are fairly inactive. You can check them out below.

Champions of History

Cannons

Here's the music video for "Catamaran", off the album Terrorhawk.



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1653 (2001)

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Right Now, You're in the Best of Hands. And If Something Isn't Quite Right, Your Doctor Will Know in a Hurry (2003)

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Terrorhawk (2005)

4 comments:

belessd said...

Probably my favorite band. What I would give to see them live.

Gary Allen said...

awesome band.
i'm in the catamaran video, a portion of it was shot when they toured with Curl Up and Die.

great blog, by the way.

scosand said...

i love the format!

zack said...

i saw this band 8 times, by far my favorite band, i was at two of the shows they shot film for in the catamaran video.

i have those re-recorded ep songs that they put on the vinyl... if you need them still let me know.