Roll the Tanks

Roll The Tanks Danny Carney – Vocals/Guitar Aaron Stuart – Guitar/Vocals Mike Wakeman – Bass/Vocals Joe Sirois – Drums ROLL THE TANKS is here to restore the sense of reckless abandon that invigorates the best of rock n’ roll’s past, present and future. The band’s fierce determination, undying loyalty to the cause (and each other) and finely focused working class ethics can be heard bleeding from the speakers on their first album for Epitaph, Broke Til Midnight. The record is so named for the quartet’s penchant for Thursday night revelry (with The Clash, The Pixies and The Heartbreakers on the jukebox) when the bar tab can’t be paid until the clock strikes 12 and the paychecks clear. An unpretentious, classic rock inspired “band’s band,” Roll The Tanks are primed and ready to carry the torch for energetic, solid rock music. They know the value of a dollar from grinding their days away working as carpenters and electricians to pay the bills so they can dedicate their evenings (and as much time as they can put into the stage and the road) to honing their already formidable songwriting chops. Music is their passion. And as their name implies, they are prepared to flatten all obstacles. Broke Til Midnight boasts the bombastic, enthusiastic discovery of early punk, the swagger of ‘70s guitar-driven pop and the straightforward attack of rock’s biggest icons. The Los Angeles band’s music is both nostalgic and forward thinking, capturing the essence of “then” with the electric energy of “now.” Broke Till Midnight is a shot across the bow of the underground, the critical press and the mainstream, alike, injecting a much-needed back-to-basics rock mentality into the world at large. As vocalist/guitarist Danny Carney told long-running Los Angeles tastemaker radio station KROQ FM: “We want to be the reason Dave Grohl can take a nap.” Childhood pals Danny Carney and Mike Wakeham first merged their shared love of classic bands before they had even hit their teens. “Mikey and I grew up next to each other,” Carney explains. “We’ve been best friends since we were in diapers.” The earliest incarnation of the band was more abstract and indie rock. The name “Tanks” was a nod to the Tanks album by T. Rex. It was another musical hero who inspired the name “Roll The Tanks,” whose lineup is completed by Carney and Wakeham’s brothers-in-arms Aaron Stuart (guitars/vocals) and Joe Sirois (drums). “The phrase is something [The Clash’s] Joe Strummer said before playing the song ‘Clampdown,’ in ‘The Future is Unwritten’ documentary,” Carney explains. Taking a page from the late Strummer and his trailblazing rabble-rousers, the timeless sounds of indie-pop masters The Pixies (whose influence reverberated through Nirvana and similarly minded luminaries built more from real life grit than commercial polish) and enduring songsmiths Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Roll The Tanks put their own stamp on a mighty coalition of influences. It’s a uniquely transcendent combination that hits fans of The Hold Steady, Cold War Kids or Against Me! right where they live, all while offering something uniquely distinct. The big, epic arena rock of the true life pink-slip tale, “Waiting on a Storm”; the Beatles-esque ballad “Computer Money,” about online keyboard cowards; and the experimental “Hornet” (a song that’s been kicking around since the band formed) represent the wide spectrum of sounds tackled by Roll The Tanks, self-styled rock n’ roll superheroes fighting bitterness with tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery. A smattering of Classic Rock, an undercurrent of New Wave, the kinetic combustibility of The Kinks and the pomp and circumstance of T. Rex are also reference points for what Roll The Tanks has been working toward since their first proper album, Suffer City. Plenty of bands say they don’t sound like anybody else, but the building blocks that went into Roll The Tanks coalesced in such an exciting fashion that critics have had actual trouble pinning a genre to them. But the one thing they’ve agreed on is this: Roll The Tanks is freaking fantastic. Live, on record, wherever. It’s why they were invited to play on “Last Call with Carson Daly,” all on the strength of their 2009 debut and 2011’s sought after Good Night Jimmy Lee. The steadfast purity and authenticity of Roll The Tanks’ sound and vision arrives at the perfect time in the culture, just as a new kind of “disco” has taken hold. Epitaph releases from Rancid and Bad Religion are touchstones for the guys, as well as newer signings like Alkaline Trio, Social Distortion and even Weezer. “The punk rock community has been kind to us, even ‘though we don’t fit in. We have a way of winning over crowds that should be throwing tomatoes at us,” Carney says. “They allow us to hang, even ‘though we have Bee Gees hair instead of mohawks.” A world without Roll The Tanks would be a world with fewer guitars. It would be a world where the album format would continue to head the way of the dodo. The band wants to repeatedly get in the studio and record albums like they have all of the resources to spend in the world, “as if it’s 1970 and we’re in Fleetwood Mac.” “We have hundreds of songs that have been kicking around for years,” Carney reveals. “I’m superstitious about getting old and not being able to write shit that’s as good as it used to be. I mean, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen are pulling it off. But for the most part, once most people lose their steam, they start to become a caricature of themselves. So I like that we have all of this stuff in the bank.” Roll The Tanks will accept nothing less than to be recognized as a band keeping real rock n’ roll alive. Everyone might be telling them that rock albums are dead, but they aren’t gonna throw in with a big phone company to sell some cross platform singles. “We’re going to make records because that’s what we want to do – make records,” says Carney. “No clunkers, no fillers. Records where you almost die making them.” Broke Til Midnight out May 27th! Danny Carney, Mike Wakeham, Joe Sirois, Aaron Stuart www.rollthetanks.com