MANIAC - Dead Dance Club (LP)

On MANIAC’s second full-length the twelve new tracks snap and bop by like any high quality-cum-octane vintage LA and Pacific Northwest punk but without any sense of nostalgia or fetish for a particular scene. The album spans the delights of the melodically layered and trade-off vocals of “Post Post World” and “Neutral Libido,” the snarl-chants of “Children of the Dirt” and “Living in Stereo,” and the controlled frenzy of openers “City Lights” and “Subject to Change” which start the album. Dead Dance Club is set for release June 1, 2018 on Dirt Cult / Hovercraft. The band first came together in 2012 when Andrew Zappin and ex-Seattleite Zache Davis (The Girls, Cute Lepers) would hit the dark night spots of El Lay together, bonding over classic power pop and a passion for creating songs about ‘weird times going pro’ (as Hunter Thompson once wrote). Adding Justin Maurer (Clorox Girls, LA Drugz) on second guitar and James Carman (Images, LA Drugz) on drums, solidifying the line-up.

The band has four songwriters, Zache Davis (bass and lead vocals), Justin Maurer (vocals and guitars), Andrew Zappin (guitar), and James Carman (drums and backing vocals). Dead Dance Club was recorded at Station House Studios in Echo Park by Mark Rains; the band produced the album with Maurer taking a strong hand. James Carman’s fever-pitch drumming infuses MANIAC’s music with crisp, rhythmic urgency and sophisticated flourishes. His angelic vocal harmonies are one of the stylistic backbones of Dead Dance Club. 

MANIAC were finalists in LA Weekly's Best Live Band in LA awards category. There is something quintessentially LA about them, even if their punk rock would have fit perfectly with any decaying, hedonistic City of the West trying to abuse its body to believe in its soul.

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