Brutal Knights: Dumb & Hot

BRUTAL KNIGHTS: DUMB AND HOT

“We are very simple and dumb and hot,” says frontman Nick Flanagan of the punk appeal of his so-ridiculous-they’re-brilliant band, Toronto’s Brutal Knights. “We dare all to compete with us. Find a more sensual band. You can’t because it’s impossible and implausible! If you see us, we’ll French all of you anytime. We all have boyfriends and girlfriends though, so don’t tell anybody!”

Brutal Knights are definitely sensual. Sure, Flanagan may look like a ghetto-Eric Bogosian, with a fondness for losing his shirt and flashing his muscle-free body in the faces of his audience, but anyone with zero self-awareness is mesmerizing to those aware of them. The rest of the band may get somewhat eclipsed by Flanagan’s shenanigans, but their cool is his perfect foil. Rounded out by the brothers Sharron on guitar and drums, (Jon and Matt, respectively), and punk rock’s foxiest girls ever, Daniella Costanza on bass, and Katie Whittaker on guitar, the Brutal Knights are a sensory assault. There is a lot to look at and a lot of fucking volume. They released their debut full-length last February, *The Pleasure Is All Thine*, on Deranged Records, and have been touring like they’re homeless ever since. Though the band is not old, all the members are veteran players and paid their dues a long time ago. The Knights are actually Flanagan’s return to rock ‘n’ roll after having spent the last couple of years doing stand-up comedy and becoming somewhat of an underground Toronto icon.

“When I was twenty or so I started doing the stand-up thing during a lull between bands. It was pretty fun and easy to do, (as it was a one-man job), so I kept at it. Meanwhile, I ran into Jon Sharron and he mentioned him and his brother were playing together, (their band Hacksaw had just dissolved), and I asserted my interest in singing for them. We got the crew together and made some dumb songs. I think it complements the comedy well. They are both platforms for fun idiocy. At our shows you might get wet. You might get your back rubbed. You won’t learn things.”

Songs like “Self Gay Handjob”, “Filthy U”, and “Don’t Judge Me”, (featuring some of Flanagan’s most brilliant poetics: “Don’t judge my style/Don’t judge my ass-hair/If you try to judge me/You deserve electric chair”), certainly lean towards the fun and idiocy. But just because the jokes are hilarious does not make the Knights a joke-band. The accomplished musicianship owned by this band betrays their inherent ridiculousness, and while this may not make you take them seriously per se, it will definitely glue your eyes and ears on them. The way you wouldn’t be able to look away from a child telling the sickest shit-eating joke you’d ever heard.

“Everybody can understand a four year old,” says Flanagan, “and nobody is scared of a four year old. It’s unfrightening plain-speak that appeals to the working man and the upper crust equally because we’ve all communicated like dumbos at some point in our life-careers.”

Flanagan may have the writing style of a meth-addled child with too much anger and intelligence, but he saves his vitriol for the stage, and makes sure that his muse deserves what he’s dishing out. “Worst City”, a pretty ditty about London, Ontario and its female population features the best lyric in perhaps the history of music: “Girls in London have more problems than math.”

“London girls earned the crown by coming to Toronto and grossing up the place with exceedingly bad behavior, shoddy drunkenness, and a loudness that puts Rip Taylor at his most coked-up, to shame. The place can be summed up in three words: Bitey Oral Sex.”

Alas, a band like the Brutal Knights cannot be so easily summed up. Gotta see it and hear it. You’ll dig it. You might even get Frenched.

(originally published sometime in 2005. Gasoline Magazine. Toronto.)