[ATTENDED: August 15, 2026] The Armed
I grabbed a ticket to this show for my wife and I as soon as it was announced. I’ve seen them twice and the last time was so much fun, I was sure my wife would get a kick out of it. I had never heard of The Armed (whose name is often simplified to ⋈) before the show and when I listened briefly, they sounded like a hardcore band, which was confusing as an opener for Yard Act, who are not hardcore.
We arrived early and got a decent spot. The lights went down, The Armed came out and the stage exploded. The entire place was just an explosion of noise and chaos and I was delighted to see the huge smile on my wife’s face.
I had no idea who The Armed were, nor that they had a massive fan base. The story of the Armed is almost as interesting as their music, although, really, no, the music is far more interesting. But still:
Although no official members of the group are known for absolute certain, the collective has been represented in the media by advertising creative and director Tony Wolski – formerly known as Adam Vallely. The Armed allegedly has a central core of members, while simultaneously featuring a rotating line-up of collaborators. The people behind The Armed have gone to considerable lengths to misdirect, deceive, and otherwise toy with their audience when it comes to who is actually a member of the band. To achieve this, the band has largely avoided printing names of its members, had actors pretend to be members of the band and toured in secret, often performing at open mic nights under fake names.
There was a woman singing/screaming in a very high pitched voice not unlike Melt-Banana. There were two other singers in the band, a guy who screamed as well and a guy who sang in a really nice voice. I’m not sure how many people were on stage (seven maybe?) They absolutely filled the stage and never stopped moving. The guitarist in front of us was a whirlwind of action and near the end of teh set he climbed on a huge speaker cabinet and jumped off.
The male singer frequently put the mic into the crowd for the guys up front (die hard fans) to scream along. The female singer jumped into the crowd and sang from the floor.
I loved the way Fortune’s Daughter was a wall of noise and then had a neat low-key catchy chorus sung by the third vocalist– and the end had all of the singers (and screamers going at it together).
Grace Obscure was a noisy chaotic song with a big “woah oh” and lots of screaming from the female singer. And An Iteration started with furious hardcore drumming and then segued into a really catchy rumbling bassline and dual vocals. It was followed by FKA World from their previous album, which was (relatively) mellow–the use of explosive hardcore drumming with slow vocals is really interesting.
Local Millionaires starts softly and then turns into a screamfest. All Futures continues the explosive sound The set ended with Big Shell a song that concludes with a series of one-two crashes from the whole band as feedback distortion and screams glide over everything.
It was exhausting and exhilarating and amazing. I’m bummed I didn’t know about them before and I sure hope they mysteriously pop up again.
- Night City Aliens ©
- Fortune’s Daughter ♥
- Grace Obscure ♣
- AN ITERATION ∅
- FKA World ⊗
- Local Millionaire ♣
- ALL FUTURES ∅
- BIG SHELL ∅
♣ THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED (2025)
⊗ Perfect Saviors (2023)
∅ ULTRAPOP (2021)
© Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack (2020) [submitted under the name Homeschool Dropouts]
♥ Only Love (2018)
Here’s an amusing stories about this band from Wikipedia
The Armed released Only Love, with Ben Koller providing drums. Koller has said the request was short notice, and that the recording would take place right in the middle of tracking drums for a new Converge album, which seemed “[like it would be] pretty stressful.” However, Koller heard that Rob Trujillo would be playing bass on the album, which was “the selling point” to him. In fact, Trujillo was never involved in any capacity with the album. Koller was also told by fellow Converge bandmate and Only Love‘s producer Kurt Ballou that the demos he was sent for this album were Converge songs, spurring him to learn them. Koller went on to say “…essentially, I was conned into playing on this album. I was so taken aback by these weird tactics that I just went with it.”
I Just Read About That... 