The nice thing about being in a hardcore band named Modern Life Is War is that you’re guaranteed relevancy pretty much in perpetuity. It just so happens the current moment is an exceedingly good one for the Marshalltown, Iowa quintet to reconvene after a five-year hiatus: the influence of their LPs (particularly 2005’s high watermark Witness) has manifested in very successful bands like Defeater and Touche Amore, while their new label Deathwish, Inc. has given music of this stripe more crossover exposure than it might have received in years previous. But their name is something of a feint: Modern Life Is War isn’t an explicitly political punk band, nor are they interested in disseminating big statements. Fever Hunting is a record of intense, personal reckoning, but one that doesn’t waste your time with concerns that are anything less than universal.
There’s not a lot of room for bullshit when you’re trying to cram five years worth of life experience into 27 minutes, and Fever Hunting doesn’t even have time for the kind of frills that define genre. If you come in looking for a strict hardcore record, “Old Fears, New Frontiers” is a hell of an entry point, a one-minute repetition of the title that lets you know the source material for every song going forward. There are plenty of bracing group chants to come, though MLIW aren’t as blunt elsewhere-- “Chasing My Tail” becomes Fever Hunting’s most galvanizing moment only after three minutes of beatless feedack and erratic guitar abuse, while the the title track releases its tendon-straining tension by coming to a full stop of shrieking feedback. The songs on Fever Hunting always ends up sounding anthemic, and while it might be a stretch to call it “melodic hardcore,” Jeff Eaton‘s jagged yells are shaped into knowable contours.
And if you expect puritanical punk, well, MLIW certainly stand by the values. But Fever Hunting is not “raw,” nor is meant as replacement for shows like these. This is one of the cleanest and best-recorded punk records of the year; as with most productions from Converge’s Kurt Ballou, the hard work was done before entering the studio and his job is to make sure that the listener hears all of it. All that effort is worth it just for the snare drum in “Health, Wealth & Peace”, as the precision and force you hear in each crack is something like watching Miguel Cabrera take batting practice. The sonic clarity gives the subtle variations of Fever Hunting a chance to expose themselves and this is particularly true of the relative moments of levity-- the part where a power chord breakdown in “Health, Wealth & Peace” exposes itself as a 12-bar blues riff, the spirited coed vocals in “Cracked Sidewalk Surfer”, “Nightcrawler” taking a detour into loping, California skate-rock.
While accessible, Fever Hunting is also deadly fucking serious. The “ballad” here is called “Brothers in Arms Forever”, and Eaton yearns for nothing short of true unconditional love, barking “when I saw you after you got sick, I got choked up!!!!” the same way he sings lines like “I suspected you’ve been infected/ by the diseased discharge of the media cunt.” MLIW are a band obsessed with fidelity in both sound and in philosophy and it’s nothing you haven’t heard on a punk rock record before, a tautological code where you have to stay true to the truth and that modern life is actually ancient warfare. When Eaton shouts down “petty politics and bullshit party lines,” it’s not in reference to Washington, D.C. or some other faroff conglomerate, but the divisiveness prevalent at the water cooler and rock club, hand-to-hand combat for limited resources that turn people into emotional savages.
Fortunately, MLIW are righteous without crossing into self-righteousness; “Media Cunt” and “Blind Are Breeding” are proof enough that Eaton can take a blowtorch to strawmen and make it sound like a truly necessary act. But like a miniature version of Wrens’ The Meadowlands, Fever Hunting allows you to cheat a bit and use the contextual clues to see a blue collar, workingman’s dread to these songs-- a band like Modern Life Is War takes a lot physical and emotional commitment, especially for guys in their early 30s. The title track and “Dark Water”, the two most overt “being in Modern Life Is War” moments, in particular give resonance to the primitive iconography of the album packaging, as Eaton survives off little else but principle and idealism. It’s a band influential enough to matter, but not big enough to live off of, so what keeps them going?
From the sound of things, it’s not just a means of venting but a way of hashing out ways to simplify one’s daily existence. For the most part, it just means to keep your side of the street clean and lead by example. There are a number of meanings to the word “Currency”, and on Fever Hunting’s centerpiece, the most crucial one is how it relates to being in the present moment. There are plenty of times when Eaton explores the unavoidable stresses of finance, but their absence is more notable when he barks “Your time is precious and it’s slipping away/ your friends are precious and they’re slipping away.” The important thing is that MLIW are never preachy; the last thing Eaton wants is to have punk music be used as an another means of separating people into classes. Befitting a record that begins with “Old Fears, New Frontiers” and ends with “Find A Way”, Fever Hunting is guided by a pragmatic hope, put into action through gratitude and reaching your hand out. In “Currency”, Eaton admits “Growing up was confusing...I might not have made it all alone/ so I thank you if you spoke to me/ or you listened.” “I thank you” is underlined in the lyrics sheet.
