Armageddon Man

Music today is like drinking a latte and complaining about how your silk slack-line yoga aerial class isn't as challenging as you hoped it would be.  The casual navel-gazing, the damp fresh-haircut feelings, it's enough to make anyone think modern life is a ho-hum night in front of a selfie stick.  Turn on the radio - and then turn it right back off because it all sucks.

The last time anyone checked, there are plenty of things in the world to get liquored up and have a pissed off party about - now more than ever. There should be a Motorhead on every corner.  A Judas Priest in every pot.  A Huey Lewis and The News cameo on the next Slayer album.  Armageddon Mancarries these particular flags, in shreds, stuffed inside a kick drum in the garage next to a cardboard cutout of Bruce Campbell.  

Armageddon Man formed in Ft. Lauderdale in 2015 when frontman Tim Moffatt (formerly of Fort Lauderdale's AC Cobra) came together with bass player Pete Carmichael (Groovenics, The Sloppy High Fives), guitar player Larry Grasso (The Sloppy High Fives), and drummer Felipe Pinto (The Muppets, Color Me Badd) in order to form an alco-holy union.  Armageddon Man is a working band that clocks in most songs so hard and so fast, you'd think they got paid by the song and not the hour.  In the time it takes most bands to set up, Armageddon Man has already played twenty songs, and has twenty more to go.  It’s like loving a carnie, leaving them for a viking, and never looking back.  There is no mercy in this dojo, but maybe everyone can go get a pizza later?  

Tim, the singer/game show host your jailbird mother warned you about, can often be found on top of the bar, roostering and spilling swagger and beer in equal amounts as he falls to the ground hollering, while the band stays rooted to the stage, building a tower of sound so dense and hard and thick and foamy, you could shave your mother's beard with it.  Two references about moms in one paragraph?  Armageddon Man <3s moms.  And America!

Pete and Felipe hold down the bottom end with chest-punchy boom boom boomies, while Larry chugga-chugga blasts your face off and says please and thank you later - because for all the sonic destruction, the thundering, earth-shattering kabooms, the threats of going to bed with no dessert - Armageddon Man are nice men.  Not nice like a 1950's milkman, nice like that one friend who hangs out at your house and doesn't steal one of your guitar pedals because he knows you have so many that you won't miss one.  Fuck that guy.  You use that Grunge pedal ALL THE TIME.  ArmageddonMan won't steal your stuff, and may even bring over Jell-O shots and Fritos.  Your neighbors, though, they're definitely calling the police.

Ooh - here’s the part where someone would say that they’re like catching lightning in a bottle!  Catching lightning in a bottle is of no interest to Armageddon Man.  Not unless they could take the bottle, drop a whiskey-soaked rag in the top and light it, and then throw it through the plate glass window of a party store.  Get some! - Maggie Dove

AC COBRA

https://www.facebook.com/Accobrastolemysoul/ 

When you think of local music, you can't help but imagine a group of session musicians banging out watered-down Matchbox 20 covers to a crowd of indifferent onlookers and one drunk guy who can't stop howling and raising his Budweiser in a perennial toast. But a rebirth of sorts in South Florida's music scene in the past year has washed over the C-list pap with a potent combination of tight musicianship and pure rock 'n' roll swagger. It's only fitting that a band like AC Cobra would be one of the glaring few on a short list that has raised eyebrows in recent months. Even though it has no recorded material to its credit, the band has garnered a rabid, devoted fan base in a short span of time built solely on its quick, no-frills live shows.
Think Stooges and AC/DC in a head-on collision, bandaged in T-Rex glam and punk vitriol, and perhaps you've nailed AC Cobra's tunes on the proverbial head. The quartet keeps an ever-expanding set list, even though the shows still last barely a half hour, and it's the presentation that promises continued success. These guys have matured from doing Ramones covers to creating uncompromising balls-to-the-wall rock you rarely witness in our humid neck of the woods. Tim, Rus, Tyson, and Chris (vocals, guitar, bass, and drums, respectively -- no surnames necessary) thrive on inciting rowdiness for the sake of a good time, which usually includes most of the band ending up rolling on the floor with its equally raucous audience. "The more people move, the better," lead screamer Tim explains. "I can't stand it when people just stand there and look at their shoes. Rock 'n' roll is a contact sport." They've already shared bills with such national notables as L.A.'s The Bronx and various local heroes including the Heatseekers, Trapped by Mormons, and the Creepy T's. Beware of flying singers and wet floors when AC Cobra plays the Poor House (110 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale) with Another Day Ruined. Show starts at 11 p.m. Call 954-522-5145. -- Kiran Aditham

Hey, there. Why so glum? What's that? You say music's not fun anymore; it lacks the chutzpah and rebellion that made rock 'n' roll so trashy? And you wish someone would, just once, take you forcibly by the shirt collar and shake you, screaming "YEEOORRGGGGHH" into one ear while punching you in the other? Interesting. And you also wonder what would have happened if Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister were two badass outlaw cops being chased by cute, frantic, teenaged girls with shotguns while riding in one of those foppish motorcycles with a sidecar and driving off a cliff, then landing in a nuclear power plant, where their brains tragically melded into one? Weird! Because that's kind of what listening to AC Cobra's self-titled EP is like. The CD has only five songs, but in the span of about ten minutes, this Fort Lauderdale four-piece delivers a one-two punch of sludge and vitriolic fuzzed-out rock with a crotch kick of late '70s metal. And guess what else? For a CD as straight-up dirty and raw as this one, it's also damn catchy! Songs like "Gonzo," "Hiss," and "Jezebel" are guaranteed to get stuck in your head as easily as, say, "Invisible Touch" by Genesis or "Rio" by Duran Duran. Yeah. Just try to get those songs out of your head now. -- Audra Schroeder

BEST OF BROWARD-PALM BEACH® /// ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT /// 2006

BEST BAND TO BREAK UP - Ac Cobra

So the Galapagos of the music world (i.e., the bottom three counties of Florida, gentle readers) produces a band that combines ridiculously heavy guitar riffage by way of Maiden, AC/DC, and Black Flag with the number-one soul/metal drummer in the area and tops it off with gang-warfare-style live shows. Good God, yes! Tim Moffatt, Tyson Griffin, Chris Maggio, and Russ Saunders go on a few tours and, after a few years of nearly constant gigging and even more constant drinking, promptly implode, never having produced a proper release. Oh Lord, no. Welcome to the South Florida music scene, Charles Darwin. We eat our young.

The return of AC Cobra

January 31, 2009|Posted by Sean Piccoli at 2:57 PM

I got to Churchill?s too late on Friday night to see the first show by SoFla speedbangers AC Cobra in four years, but they are playing again tonight at the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale. And spot reviews of Friday sounded promising.

?They were great,? Miami?s skull-capped king of noise, Rat Bastard, said over the roar of the next band up, Brooklyn's Joe Coffee. Another witness to AC Cobra described ample moshing and tossing of (mostly) non-lethal objects. It sounded like the quartet?s bare-chassis punk-rock-metal received an avid welcome-back

How long AC Cobra will stick around after tonight, guitarist Russ Saunders said he doesn?t know. There?s talk of a small tour to points north. Nothing is decided yet for himself, drummer Chris Maggio, bassist Tyson Griffin and singer Tim Moffatt ? whose move to Atlanta four years ago to start another band idled AC Cobra.

Maggio joined the Relapse Records band Coliseum. Griffin pursued other musical projects. Saunders also made efforts at new-band formation. ?I?ve tried numerous times,? he said, ?and just not found the compatibility with other people.?

At some point he just put playing out of his mind, apart from being needled by people demanding AC Cobra status reports.

Deprived fans got their wish around the holidays, when Moffatt came back down to visit his dad and caught up with his old mates one night over drinks at the Poorhouse. They settled on early 2009 for a live reunion.

Even after four years unplayed, AC Cobra?s fast, brutal, punctuated songs ? ?Make a point and call it quits,? as Saunders puts it ? were quick to come back in rehearsal. ?It was like muscle reaction when we started.? he says.

Likewise, on stage at Churchill?s on Friday, Saunders says he found himself ?comfortable in the skin of the whole thing. It just kind of felt like we were playing another jam.?

Doors open 9 p.m. tonight. Opening acts are scheduled. The Poorhouse is at 110 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale, 954-522-5145.