The Reptilian - Error House - Champaign,IL - 1/11/09

The Reptilian - I Cant Drink This Its Warm.mp3


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Well, I was planning on doing an inaugural review later this week but once a band like this falls into your lap, you don’t really have a choice but to tell everyone about them. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you The Reptilian, a four-piece group from my favorite fake-sounding town, Kalamazoo, Michigan. They’ve created a great mixture of Modest Mouse’s vocal work and Minus the Bear’s instrumentals, and with better dance moves. Go check them out and watch singer/guitarist Jon Sacha’s fancy foot work and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.

For those that don’t know there happens to be a little venue that my roommate runs in my basement called Error House where we have local and touring bands come and play. Looking at the booked bands for the night I was expecting a pretty good hardcore show, but when The Reptilian was setting up I noticed an uber twangy Danelectro and more delay pedals than you could shake a stick at. I decided that they were probably a little different than the rest of the bill and boy was I right. They requested that the lights be shut off and that blue and green flood lights be turned on. This is when I noticed their main difference from most bands: While playing they faced each other instead of the crowd. When asked in a short interview why this was done, drummer Dan Riehl said, “It’s just something that we do when we practice so we just play like that at shows.” This may be the reason an easy connection is established between the band and the audience when they play. You get the feeling that they are playing for themselves, no matter how many people are in the room.

On top of that you will also notice that the guitarists rebelled against the section about power chords when they had guitar lessons. being as both of them use a spacey tapping version of playing(as does the bass player from time to time). It gives them a unique sound that is hard to come by. Lastly, their voice work range from gang vocals about tall tales to John Sacha's "really excited to tell you something and getting pissed off that your not listening to him, but in a good way” style of singing about being in a crowd or being face down on the pavement. I would strong recommend standing in the front for this show and not moving.


With songs entitled “I'll Ram My Ovopositor down Your Throat and Lay my Eggs in Your Chest...But I'm Not an Alien” and the gem “I Can't Drink This, it’s Warm!” you can’t really go wrong. They have a tour starting in the later part of February and I highly recommend traveling to the nearest place they are playing…twice.

Posted by Darwin Keup edited by Leah Tallon