After releasing their first new song since their 2014 album “Holy Vacants” earlier this year, Morristown, New Jersey experimental rock band Trophy Scars celebrated their 15th anniversary with a concert at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City on Saturday, Nov. 4 with Will Wood and the Tapeworms and Latewaves.
Vocalist Jerry Jones was taking some time off from Trophy Scars to focus on his other project, Super Snake, who played the XIXX: 20 Years and Counting show at The Other Side in Wilkes-Barre late last year. NEPA Scene also covered Super Snake back in June just before the new Trophy Scars song premiered on BrooklynVegan, proving that the band was alive and well, with psychedelic, progressive, and blues elements shining through on “Panic Machine.”
“The feel was really inspired by Ennio Morricone and his spaghetti western pieces. [Guitarist] John [Ferrara] wrote the music to reflect something both beautiful and subtly violent. I wrote the lyrics about getting something naive being torn away from you… something that you thought you needed but wasn’t truly there to begin with. This is a tribute to that kind of Western, I suppose,” Jones described to BrooklynVegan.
This continues the deep, personal storytelling showcased on the critically acclaimed “Holy Vacants,” which began as a screenplay treatment and became “a bizarre cocktail of mythology, ancient religion, and conspiracy theory surrounding the Nephilitic gene,” according to the band’s website.
“I didn’t want to write something so direct and specific that I had to follow the story the whole way through,” the singer explained.
“When it boils down to it, the themes are applicable to romantic love songs. The album was really an exorcism of a relationship with a girl I had proposed to, and it was about being so in love with somebody that they literally destroy you. The only way I know how to go through that kind of therapy is to present it as art. I had to write the album as a way of exorcising this person from my mind and soul. I wanted a Bonnie and Clyde-type story, because I’ve always loved that. There’s something beautiful about the idea of rebelling together against something and losing yourself in the rebellion to the extent that it destroys your life. It’s the doomed romanticism thing.”
Fellow Jersey rockers Latewaves, who played at the Electric City Music Conference in Scranton in September, opened the 15FFTNYRS show, followed by avant-garde pop rock act Will Wood and the Tapeworms, who may make a special appearance at the NEPA Scene Rising Talent open mic and talent contest at The V-Spot (906 Providence Rd., Scranton) on Tuesday, Dec. 5.
See NEPA Scene’s photos of Super Snake in New Jersey here and Wilkes-Barre here.
