Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires The musicians in LEE BAINS III & The GLORY FIRES sing with Southern accents, because they speak with Southern accents. They sing about places called Birmingham and Opelika, because they were born and raised in and around places called Birmingham and Opelika. They don't wear Depression-era clothing, and they don't sing about picking cotton, or honky-tonks, or tractors. This is not country music. Really, it's city music. It's Southern, but it's not the kind sold on TV. As much Wilson Pickett as Fugazi, as much the Stooges as the Allman Brothers, Birmingham, Alabama's Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires have brought rock'n'roll to bear on their own experience and their own place. On 'THERE IS A BOMB IN GILEAD' they deconstruct the music of the Deep South, strip it down and reassemble it, to make a righteous ruckus that sits at the vanguard of the vernacular. It's fueled by a passion that somehow draws a crooked line between punk's personal politics and down-home Protestant theology. In 2008, not long after Lee Bains hightailed it back home to Birmingham, Alabama, clutching his guitar and an English degree from NYU, he fell in with the Dexateens, a Tuscaloosa institution whose raggedy union of cock-eyed rebel pride and forward-thinking fury proved to be the perfect apprenticeship for a confused Southern boy, trying to figure out how the rock'n'roll of Lynyrd Skynyrd could sit alongside the haggard beauty of Big Star. After Bains had played with the band for a couple or three years, a couple or three hundred shows, the Dexateens saw the writing on the wall and Bains found himself off the road, back in Birmingham, without a band. He also happened to find himself with a passel of powerful, earnest (and pretty damn catchy) songs. Casting his nets in central Alabama's rock'n'roll clubs, Bains began to assemble the Glory Fires. Drummer Blake Williamson had lent his mean yet laid-back groove to any number of Birmingham firestarters over the years (Black Willis, Taylor Hollingsworth, Dan Sartain), while bass player Justin Colburn had used the chops he took from his childhood gospel music to buoy the fiery rock'n'roll of bands like Model Citizen and Arkadelphia. Affectionately dubbed "Young'un," Matt Wurtele had proven himself a veritable guitar badass in Tuscaloosa's bars and house shows. So, chugging along with a fierce Muscle Shoals vibe, the Glory Fires brought a sense of urgency to Bains's drawling, howling voice. After tracking some demos under the powerful guidance of Texas punk pioneer Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Poison 13, Now Time Delegation) and a few months of shows, the Glory Fires traveled to Water Valley, Mississippi to record the tracks for their debut LP 'There Is A Bomb In Gilead' at Dial Back Sound with engineer Lynn Bridges (Quadrajets, Jack Oblivian, Thomas Function). The songs were mixed in Detroit, at Ghetto Recorders by Jim Diamond (The Dirtbombs, The New Bomb Turks, Outrageous Cherry). It is there — in that Mississippi grease and Detroit grit — that 'There Is A Bomb In Gilead' sits. On this album you will find songs about misfit Southern kids struggling to reconcile themselves to their culture and their history, finding their place in a sometimes stiflingly conservative environment, seeking God through all that Sunday School guilt, trying to do right by their families and neighbors. These are songs about those who still believe in their home states and hometowns — who still believe that what makes them peculiar is what makes them beautiful. Songs about reconciling an old culture with its new context — about dumping out the old bathwater, sure, but holding that baby ever closer. Modern Primitives Travis Phillips - Vox and Guitar, Darien Steege - Bass, Phillip Gripper - Drums Temperance League If a Temperance League show doesn't end with the singer swinging from a rafter, table-walking through the bar, or drenched in sweat and geysers of cheap beer, you could well be at some other band's show. Led by 39-year-old Charlotte native Bruce Hazel, Temperance League has been overturning the old-guys-can't-rock notion since solidifying as a quintet two years ago. They're doing so at a pace that should shame many younger acts, kicking out blitzkrieg jams on a relentless basis. The band's initial singles—released through their own Like, Wow label—are culled from 2010 sessions done with Mitch Easter at his Fidelitorium. The songs channel the band's forebears, including fiery elements of the MC5, Ramones, Springsteen and even the Byrds, all in a vintage-sounding blend of swagger and catharsis. But what sounds raw and feral belies the craftsmanship that's gone into these tracks. The two-guitar attack of Shawn Lynch and Chad Wilson tears through muscular rhythms delivered by drummer David Kim. Hazel, meanwhile, shouts out common-man aphorisms and left-leaning agit-prop like the possessed offspring of Strummer and The Boss. Decades spent slugging it out in the service industry provides him with plenty of narrative vigor and vitriol. As energized as the singles sound, it's live that the Temperance League really plugs into its strengths. The live chops are formidable, having been honed in some of the Queen City's best bands of recent years, including Lou Ford, Benji Hughes, Les Dirt Clods, the Fence Lions and Buschovski, among others. It's a veteran lineup, in other words, playing music we traditionally associate with younger generations. But while youthful rockers find punk energy and inspiration in the hunger to make their mark, this band is powered by something maybe even more urgent—the ticking clock. —John Schacht $5.00 - $7.00