Metro Crowd – Planning
Rome is an amazing city, rich with history, art, amazing food, cool public water fountains, you name it. Thriving music scene? Not so much. Bands tend to form and play in college towns like Bologna and Treviso and Rome just isn’t the biggest concert town in general. This is not to say that there is no scene in Rome, you’ve just gotta work harder to find it. You wouldn’t think quartet Metro Crowd would be too hard to find, given the abrasive racket they make. Named after the subway C line that runs through Roma Est and the Pigneto neighborhood, Metro Crowd’s brutalist sound pulls from heavy post-punk and industrial like Cabaret Voltaire, Einstürzende Neubauten, Foetus and Godflesh. While dissonant, Metro Crowd are not formless, and tracks like “Infrared Sauna,” “Student,” and “A Dreamless Sleep” are jammers, evoking blistering sets in decaying DIY venues with no air conditioning in late July. They’re all on their new album, Planning, which is out today via Maple Death.