Man At Arms :: A Waste Of Time And Space :: Joyful Noise Recordings

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Man at Arms
A Waste of Time and Space

Catalog Number: jnr27
Release Date: 11/11/08

CD + MP3: $10

MP3: $7

Track List:

Title Track (A Waste Of Time And Space)
The Trial
Rent To Own
Designer Impostors
Everything Is Getting Better/Worse
Urine: The Picture
The Meeting
What's On?
Swamp Things
What Happens?
The Best Song Ever
Telescope
Stranded In The Future

Man at Arms makes music that has been called "The most masculine thing I've ever heard," "articulate" and "like Primus" (which they sympathize with, but are reluctant to understand). A gracious critic once wrote of them: "Fuck you America, this is what you should be listening to."

The band's first full-length album A Waste of Time and Space (coming after of the Being and Commerce EP recorded for Friction Records, and a rather remarkable split with Abner Trio) manages to simultaneously capture the essence of the band's raucous live sound with more polish than any of its previous efforts. Expanding in all directions, the band continues in its musical explorations of repetition, concision, dynamic shifts and stagnancy. Where the spindly riffs and propellant drumming of tracks like "Title Track," "The Trial" and "Everything is Getting Better/Worse" are reminiscent of the band's patented sound, Man at Arms stretches out to include near-danceable break beats on "Borrowed Tongues" and "Don't Say" and shrinks down to focus on a few monotonous phrases on "Swamp Things," "Urine: The Picture" and "What's On?"

While far from being a concept album, the songs' lyrical themes span the spectrum from the universe's beginnings ("Swamp Things") to its impending endlessness ("Telescope") and time travel ("Stranded in the Future"), with a heavy visit to post-modern frivolity and its psychic defense mechanisms.

Heavy-handed as this all may sound, you can rest assured that it also is, but also is not. What we mean to say is that beyond all of the cosmo/music-ology this album contains, it is still fucking punk rock. And therefore a lot of fun to listen to.

"Man at Arms is a crazy-cool two-man band that will have you turning your head to see if there are any more band members. It's insane how these two guys can simply blow you out your mind with their short but punchy EP, A Waste Of Time And Space. The music has huge repetition in both sound and lyrics but is very catchy. Overall this band may be pushing their visionary creativity a little bit too far, but they're a catchy band that is definitely worth the listening to."
Space City Rock

"..spitting out tightly wound, agitated noise rock filled with manic intensity. Repetition features prominently throughout the record... the band also flirts with atonality and unorthodox time signatures. Underpinning the fiercely experimental spirit, however, is a keen sense of musicality which means that even the most eccentric songs are still governed by a certain logic. Punk rock for music geeks."
Wonkavision Magazine

"Man at Arms = Daughters + The Conformists + Fugazi + Modest Mouse. The first full-length album from Man at Arms is refreshing... if refreshing means having your brain scrambled by some original-sounding genuine punk math-rock pop business. I love these guys... This band is so amazing I am going to name my fistborn child after them. I hope Man at Arms Robertson grows up to as badass as this band is."
Jon Robertson, Slug Magazine

"Spry and powerful, Michigan/Ohio's Man at Arms are a storming duo whose frenzied imaginations lead them to attack guitars and drums with an ungodly tension touched by self-aware freedom and manic irreverence. Eric and Ted represent a generation of subversive, embittered musicians too smart and musically proficient to express themselves any way but originally. Great inventors of post-punk and hard rock live within the sound of Man at Arms but their musical DNA is still skewed... Though they could claim Hella as contemporaries, Man at Arms possess a leaner, direct aesthetic that bleeds beautifully through A Waste of Time and Space."
Exclaim!

"When tightly wound art punk like this is pulled off right, there is nothing better to me, and these guys fucking nail it... There's a lot of music I love, but bands that are both challenging, genuinely enjoyable, and somehow oddly different are a rare breed, but these guys do it for me. Plus you gotta admire a band that has the balls to name one of their songs 'The Best Song Ever'... I really love this CD."
Razorcake

"Modest Mouse could have gone this route, if it wasn't for the whole wanting to be rich thing. Sometimes keeping it complex is the simplest answer, at least if you're Man At Arms. Warm and fuzzy melodies are for pussies: this duo pole vaults over musical convention with sterile repetition, complex drumming, and lyrics that would make Stephen Hawking's battery run dry."
Prick Magazine / Evil Needles

"Mathy indie rock that reeks of cool, implementing loud/soft dynamics, complex rhythms, and angular guitar theatrics. In short, basically every trick in the modern indie/noise-rock canon. The result is an intriguing and unpredictable record... Fans of Cap'n Jazz, Faraquet, Jawbox, and otherwise intense and irregular indie rock bands: look no further."
Indieville

"Splintered, staccato guitars collide with bludgeoning yet precise tom rolls and syncopated snare taps... melodies with dissonant chords and thunderous percussion is both an arresting and a pummeling experience."
KDHX

"If you can imagine the Minutemen playing math rock, you might get an idea of the mania here. This is music for mutants, pure and simple. Humans need not apply... So I'll just say that Man at Arms plays highly-technical, highly-crafted songs that sometimes sport an actual melody. The vocals trip over the music as often as not, but they're kinda effective that way. The result is a disjointed mish-mash that sounds positively wonderful."
Aiding & Abetting

"What is rock 'n roll meant to be? Fun and dumb or smart and literate. Original and innovative or tried and true? Whichever way you see it, Man At Arms' noisy, smart take on rock resides somewhere in the middle. On one hand I respect bands who do the whole art rock thing and you know, actually remain within the context of rock music."
Sound As Language

"...an album that combines post-punk and noise rock in quantity with a generous amount of post-hardcore. Distortions and compressions flood the thirteen tracks united to a section percussive of all respect, true gravitational center of a disk of not easy listening."
Kronic (Finland)

"...they sound like they'd be a blast live; they're the kind of band that you see which reminds you that rock 'n' roll tends to be pretty simplistic and that there really is more out there to listen to. Quite a lot of times they sound like they're collectively falling down stairs, but they never lose control of their instruments, which is comforting."
Recoil

"...angular indie-prog rhythms, monotone vocals, short songs (only two songs barely creep over 4 minutes)... It just seems like the aural equivalent of a book of equations that haven't really been solved yet."
Foxy Digitalis