Living Things: bloodcurdling noises and ballistic guitars—these rockers are political creatures

Interview, Dec, 2003 by Dimitri Ehrlich

It's been a long, long time since rock music felt even remotely dangerous. But along come Living Things--three brothers from St. Louis who mash out an anarchic collision of power chords and screaming vocals that feel like a bottle breaking near your head. With the simplicity of the Ramones and the fury of Nirvana, Living Things would be just a blast of adenoidal angst were it not for their politics. On their debut, Black Skies in Broad Daylight (DreamWorks), the band broaches topics like corruption, censorship, drugs, war, oil, and the pervasive use of mood-stabilizing drugs by their peers.

But for Lillian, Eve, and youngest brother Bosh Berlin--the elder two are named after their grandmothers--the notion that music can be dangerous is more than just an aesthetic metaphor. Last July, after a gig at the Gypsy Tearoom in Dallas, during which singer Lillian vented about the war in Iraq, he was assaulted at gunpoint in an alley. "Three guys threw me on the ground, broke my ribs, and I heard a bullet race right past my ear," he recalls. "Either they were trying to scare me or they had really bad aim."

Still, Living Things continue to soldier on, engaging in a mission that's as much about provocation as about entertainment. "The last thing we'd ever want is to tell people what to do," explains Lillian. "We don't want to tell people who come to our shows how to think or act--we want them to form their own individual beliefs."

Dimitri Ehrlich is a contributing music editor for Interview.