A wide stance is key to surviving
a Monotonix show. Keep your feet shoulder-width apart and your arms
ready to brace the incessant shock waves of bodies crashing into you.
Never lose focus of the strange looking man with a bad perm and pervy
mustache. He is not a cast-off from a Starsky and Hutch fan club. He
is the singer—a moving target who neglects social graces, like keeping
his sweat to himself. The most important rule is to put as much distance
as possible between you and the danger zone.
The problem is the danger zone
comes to you.
The Israeli trio sets up on
the bar floor, giving them full access for intra-audience thrashing.
The rig looks worse for wear. The drum kit seems one cymbal crash away
from shattering. The guitar looks as if one piece of duct tape was removed
the whole thing would break into splinters. The singer appears diabolically
insane, and the whole lot looks like they found their clothes in the
back alley dumpster. Nevertheless, the perpetually touring band is aching
to leave its love bruises on the Twin Cities. And bruise they will with
Monotonix’ one-two punch of low-brow histrionics.
At a Monotonix show, the slippery
threads of controlled chaos constantly threaten to blow loose. The guts
of rock and roll kitsch foam up at the first pounding of the kick drum.
In the first 30 seconds of Monotonix’s set at the Uptown Bar, singer
Ami Shalev breaks the first rule of getting a good review: stealing
the music journalist’s beer and pouring it on the heads of adjacent
audience members.
For a half hour they play with disaster and consistently ram into, and on top of, the crowd.
With his grossed out and glistening ape-man chest fully exposed, Shalev
plants himself on top of the bar and hikes his sweat pants up to his
nipples, screaming some nonsense into the microphone no one can decipher.
His usual act is to stuff gasoline soaked hankies down his trousers
and flame up like a human pyrotechnic. Due to repercussions of the unfortunate
2003 Rhode Island club fire, Shalev has been asked to stub out any fiery
intentions for Minneapolis. Tonight he gets his death-taunting kicks
by sticking his head into the path of ceiling fan blades. He leaps away
unscathed, proving his shamanistic powers of invincibility.
Sounding like a mash up of
Black Sabbath, Dio, and a slew of third-rate punk bands, the music is
an after thought. Chord progressions are hazy at best. And forget about
heartfelt lyrics. They’re just meaningless guttural intonations.
The three could have had equally mesmerizing careers as magicians or
fire-spewing carnival freaks. To them, it’s all about the performance.
They ride on shock value. That’s the genius of their scheme. It takes
wise men to get paid to make fools of themselves.
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