“I want to make pop rock music for people who are fucked up,” Militarie Gun frontman Ian Shelton said in a recent interview for the band’s new album, ‘God Save The Gun’. Shelton comes from hardcore punk, a world where fucked-up-ness is transmitted through vein-popping screamed vocals and antagonistic riffs. But with Militarie Gun, he’s always been more interested in spinning catharsis and confrontation into the biggest songs he possibly can. He spits and snarls, for sure, but then comes out with a chorus that could fill an arena.
‘God Save The Gun’ feels like the grandest realisation yet of that ambition. ‘B A D I D E A’ is the platonic ideal of a Militarie Gun song, with its exhilarating, barrelling energy and yell-along chorus. It also introduces the fact that this album has synth on it, a crossing of the hardcore Rubicon which works beautifully across the album to open up possibilities beyond guitar-based aggression.
As the band sprint between awesome mid-tempo singalongs like ‘Kick’ and ‘Thought You Were Waving’, punk stormers like ‘Throw Me Away’ and ‘Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down’, and surprisingly light acoustic guitar-driven cuts like ‘Laugh At Me’ and ‘Wake Up and Smile’, it feels like the kind of go-for-broke rock album that once upon a time a label would have thrown a blank check at.
Part of why it feels like such a beast is Shelton’s total frankness and vulnerability across these songs, which, while welcome and galvanising, also feels exhausting in the way watching someone run a marathon does. Shelton was writing during a time in his life where, having grown up in a home affected by addiction, he started to develop a drinking problem of his own. Self-destruction, self-loathing and self-reflection make up the lyrics.
“I’ve been slipping up / My eyes are baggy and my face is puffed up,” he barks on ‘B A D I D E A’; “I wouldn’t wish me on anyone,” he admits on ‘Throw Me Away’. On tracks like ‘God Owes Me Money’ and ‘Kick’, he nakedly examines his traumatic upbringing; on each of these, he brings that close to home by slotting in a rap interlude by his younger brother, who started a rap career under the moniker Vatican Voss shortly after finishing a six-year prison sentence.
Shelton’s most candid of all on ‘I Won’t Murder Your Friend’, on which he ponders his lifelong suicidal ideation, before asking himself: “How are you gonna say sorry / To the person who discovers your body? / After all, you just murdered their friend.” It’s got a massive, heart-on-sleeve chorus, on which Shelton concludes: “I don’t want to see the look on your face / So I’ll guess I’ll stay.” It’s a hell of a song – incredibly poignant, but not saccharine; wry and idiosyncratic, without sacrificing sincerity. It’s a testament to the kind of heights Militarie Gun reach by turning their punk instincts into big-tent rock.
