Band 7 - Melted Face Constitutional

A totally unassuming block of E. 36th St. in Midtown harbors far more cool than ought to be allowed — on one end of the street is Ante Up Recording Studio, at the other is the Front Room Gallery and the Gotta Groove record pressing plant. Smack in the middle is a warehouse building which used to house the unfuckwithably cool Zombie Proof, an old-school 16-track (OK, sometimes more like 15-track) analog recording studio that went ankles-up last October, dually a victim of the recession and the increasingly widespread ability of independent bands to record their own albums on home computers. Across the hall from the old Zombie Proof room is the rehearsal/recording studio helmed by Dave Cintron, recently and justifiably voted Cleveland’s best guitar player in Scene’s annual reader’s poll. That studio serves as the home of Cintron’s long-running band Terminal Lovers (whose new album is fucking sweet, by the way), and, for the time being, his Lottery League band Melted Face Constitutional.

The band's spine is drummist John Panza, late of ‘90s heroes like the Touch And Go-ish Simoom and slowcore mathematicians Hilo, who segued into the oughts with his fellow Simoom refugees in Humphry Clinker, and who now drums for trippy experimentalists Chief Bromide. It’s hard to imagine a longer and more illustrious resume, but guitarist Cintron has it — a fixture for 20 years, since his days in Kent’s shambolic psych-drunkists the Burning Lesbians, through his tenures as the leader of serial brain-melters Dimbulb and the bluesier Downside Special, to the improvisational supergroup Speaker/Cranker, all this punctuated by stints as second guitarist in old-guy bands Quazimodo and Cobra Verde. Kong Sauce bassist Jason Robinson, Sofa King Killer bassist Paul Bartholet (playing a heavily effected electric standup bass, winning him many, many cool points) and Frass Accolades’ Nick Traenkner on keys and vocals round out a DAMN strong lineup. As one might well expect with two bass players and Dave fucking Cintron, the sound is dense and lysergic, but you’ll hear that just fine for yourself when you listen to the sample posted below. —Kretsch