The Key Studio Sessions: The Menzingers

Bred in Scranton, based in Philadelphia, but truly born on the road, The Menzingers are a punk rock force of nature with chops you can only achieve by getting out there and performing whenever the opportunity greets you. The band had just returned from a three-week jaunt around the country when it recorded its Key Studio Session earlier this month; it was amped-up and razor-precise, kicking out most of the jams you hear below in a single take. The same tightness can be heard when you listen to On The Impossible Past, The Menzingers’ excellent new collection of gritty American anthems released yesterday on Epitaph Records. But don’t think that, when they play, you’re hearing some autopilot recreation of their studio work. More like the album is a documentation of the energetic abandon of getting these four guys in a room, behind their instruments. Submitted as evidence: towards the end of “Mexican Guitars,” Joe Godino was pounding his drumkit so fiercely that the bottom of his snare blew out—totally badass. Tune in to XPN2 tomorrow night at 7 p.m. for the Key Studio Sessions Hour, when we’ll listen back to our session and interview with The Menzingers, on the eve of their departure for another tour, this time in Australia. Their next Philly appearance is April 21 at the Road to Ruin Festival at 23rd Street Armory with Pissed Jeans and Marvelous Darlings.