God Save The Gun
If 2025, as Charli xcx famously prophesied, gave rise to Turnstile Summer, then Militarie Gun Autumn is surely upon us. Like their Baltimore spiritual brethren, Ian Shelton’s LA-based project-turned-band has been burrowing a path from the circle pit to the festival stage, complementing their innate, jugular-bulging intensity with mass-appeal hooks and an eagerness to crowd-surf beyond the parameters of hardcore. And with their second proper album, *God Save the Gun*, Militarie Gun makes their most concerted swing for the bleachers yet. “We wanted to make a big record; we wanted to make a classic,” Shelton tells Apple Music. “We actually took that moment to step back and be like, ‘How do we actually take this as far as we can?’ I think our producer, Riley MacIntyre, was so emotion-forward, and I would say that we’re a very emotion-forward band.” For Shelton, that meant coming to terms with being a former straight-edge kid who, just as Militarie Gun was taking off, had his first-ever sip of alcohol at age 30 and gradually developed a heavy drinking habit. “I’ve been slipping up,” he admits on the album’s gate-crashing salvo “B A D I D E A,” but the song’s irrepressible energy and cathartic chant-along chorus suggest he isn’t wallowing in misery so much as giving himself a kick in the butt to get his life back on track. “I think a huge part of *God Save the Gun* is that you don’t have to burn your life down to make it better,” Shelton says. “We think that you have to hit this rock bottom, but if you know you’re in a tailspin, you could just go ahead and choose to take yourself out of it.” As such, there’s a sense of uplift to even the album’s most incendiary moments: “Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down” barrels in on a bruising backbeat caked in distortion, but Shelton’s despairing self-diagnosis—“I feel trapped!”—is delivered on a bed of choral Beach Boys harmonies. And coming out of the blown-out grungy finale of the suicide-themed elegy “I Won’t Murder Your Friend,” the voice of Modest Mouse lead singer Isaac Brock appears on the dreamy interstitial “Isaac’s Song” as if Shelton were being consoled by a guardian angel. But *God Save the Gun* also sees Shelton displaying the confidence to let his melodies shine without feeling the need to rough them up: “Laugh at Me” exudes the jangly sparkle of a ’90s Gin Blossoms nugget, while the acoustic ballad “Daydream” aspires to be nothing less than a “Wonderwall” for the generation aging out of hardcore. “We’ve played in hardcore bands,” Shelton says. “But we are a rock band, and we don’t approach anything from being like, ‘What do people in hardcore think?’ Everything that we do is for self-soothing.”
With longer, slower songs about addiction and recovery, the hardcore band embraces its pop ambitions with mixed results.
The production of the maximalist, overdriven God Save The Gun is handled perfectly while Militarie Gun's hooks remain enormous.
Go-for-broke rock songs and total vulnerability make Militarie Gun's second LP, 'God Save The Gun', their most compelling yet.
Drawing on indie influences and high-profile collaborators for their sophomore album, Militarie Gun pushes its post-hardcore sound into something both raw and exciting.
Militarie Gun’s second round isn’t so much confessional as it is confrontational – with bigger, chunkier hooks than ever…
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The post-pandemic hardcore boom has given rise to myriad unique adjacent musical fusions, along with a few less successful ones. Militarie Gun are
If you loved Militarie Gun's previous work, you will be singing along after a few listens this time, too. It's an excellent, aggressive indie record with genuine heart.
God Save The Gun by Militarie Gun album review by Victor Gonzalez for Northern Transmissions. The album drops 10/17 via Loma Vista Recordings