The Horrors of Toledo at the Glass House
By: Red Vaughn
The Horrors of Toledo at the Glass House, Thursday, March 20
With its name inspired from Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the Horrors of Toledo—that’s El Greco’s Spanish Toledo, not the depressing Lake Erie burg—have already distinguished themselves by opening for Stephen Perkins’ heady art-rock band Banyan and having rocked-out at Mike Watt’s 50th birthday party in the LBC. Ex-Mosquito bassist Sashelle Hedrick and firebrand Ryley Northrop fittingly met at a punk rock show just a few short months ago and, both being indisguisably young, social consciousness turned to boiling blood. Though they’re just as sober as a Monday night Minor Threat and more serial-gonzo than the strictest manifesto, these are good pensive punks who’d be delighted—nay, honored—at some kind (any kind) of uprising. How else explain songs like “PuppeTeer,” where the whole question of freethinking individualism and autonomy are pretty casually doubted for one particular Pinocchio-type. Such is the bulk of HOT’s set list, a charged-up omphalos to the seedy underbelly of life, that whiz-kid-taking-a-whiz type of thing. If you check out the show at the Glass House, ask them why they sing about A) the “Devil’s Eyes,” a particularly gothy number and B) “Empty Eyes,” a particularly ungothy Pixies-esque song about nightmares in your eyes. Eyes. Eyes. The windows of the soul, and these would like to clean your windows. (Red Vaughn)
The Horrors of Toledo, Deadly Syndrome, Phoenix and the Turtle at the Glass House, 200 W. 2nd Street, Pomona, (909) 865-3802; www.myspace.com/horrorsoftoledo. $12 day of show ($10 advance), doors at 7pm
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