Lopez has a custom T-style “Creswell” guitar with P-90s that was built by his tech, Corey Creswell, who relic’d it with a torch. Lopez plays it on “Dead Eye,” two-and-a-half steps down, using locking tuners to keep the G in tune. Lopez’s guitars are strung up with Dean Markley Blue Steels (.011-.052), and he uses Dunlop Nylon .88 picks.
Amps
Lopez used to play through two guitar rigs and one bass rig for live shows before employing a guitarist and bassist on tour. He says they still use these same rigs, but just split them up between three people. Lopez plays through an Orange MKII Rockerverb 100W head driving an Orange 4x12 closed-back cab with vintage 30s. Middle Class Rut’s second guitarist, Evan Ferro, plays through Lopez’s Ampeg SVT classic.
Effects
This pedalboard is Lopez’s version of scaling down. He has a Lehle D.Loop switcher to activate several effects, including his Rocktron Intellifex, which he uses for a massive chorus delay like the one used in the lead on “New Low.”
Middle Class Rut
Pick Up Your Head
Bright Antenna
"Aunt Betty" by Middle Class Rut
For those bored with the cutesy
indie schtick or ambient-prog redux
du jour and on the lookout for a
band making original, in-your-face
tunes with transposing energy,
Middle Class Rut might satiate.
Nonsensically and metaphorically
speaking, if bands were people and
someone with the rock character
and musicianship of Deftones or
Rage Against the Machine made
an honest woman out of Jane’s
Addiction and her groove, the
hypothetical sounds they’d make
together are on this album.
MC Rut borrows a little here and there, yet they aren’t afraid to go off on brave, experimental tangents filled with guitarist/vocalist Zack Lopez’s ghostly background arpeggios, screaming delay jolts, and Morello-esque alien transmissions via his highly depended-on Whammy pedal—all shot down to earth by drummer/vocalist Sean Stockham’s veritable rhythm machine gun. It makes one wonder: How are two dudes doing all of this? They’ve captured a whopping live energy, and yet every percussive clank is heard, and the haunting, guttural bass lines are as melodic and memorable as the intensity in the layered, reverb-bursting outro teetering on the edge of feedback in “Sing While You Slave.”
These guys show multifaceted skill as they pivot from balls-to-walls jams to seriously inspired softer harmonies, sometimes in the same song. For example, on “Police Man,” Lopez begins a guitar solo slow and sweet, with a Whammy-processed harmony, and then devolves into deliciously frenetic, octave-doubled mayhem. The carefully arranged stories vary in execution, tempo, and emotion, no matter if form follows function or vice versa. Perhaps the most captivating thing is how they never lose that thrashing, raw abandon that lasting bands have and is hard to quantify. Simply, this is a band with a signature vibe and sophisticated, killer tone.
What they’re doing is even more exciting now than it was on 2010’s No Name No Color. MC Rut’s got gusto and this sophomore effort solidifies them as one of the most exciting true-to-form alternative rock bands in recent memory—the kind that’ll hopefully make hipsters everywhere unbutton their ironic cardigans, remove hands from pockets, and get moving.
Must-hear tracks: “Weather Vein,” “Sing While You Slave”
No Name No Color
Bright Antenna
MCRut’s debut is one of
the few recent releases
whose raucous abandon
has a serious chance of
jolting you out of your
chair. But it’s not just
about Sean Stockham’s bombastic drums
and Zack Lopez’s tattered vocal chords
and bristling tones. Lopez (who favors Les
Paul Juniors, Oranges, and Marshalls) and
Stockham (who also sings via a headset
mic) do pack these 12 tracks with attitude
and bombast, but it would all be for naught
without the dynamic arrangements and the
soaring vocal melodies and harmonies—which sound like a cross between Jane’s
Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, and
the Beastie Boys. “Are You on Your Way”
serves up ethereal, delay-soaked leads,
taut, subtly dissonant rhythms, and a wistful,
ghostly outro, while “Cornbred” has
swampy, lo-fi acoustic work, and “New Low”
is driven by a tense ticking-time-bomb palm
mute, corpulent chords in the chorus, and a
quirkily beautiful Whammy solo. Throughout
each track, the deft guitar layering somehow
sounds airy while busting your chops like a
brass knuckle.