Comprised of former Number One Cup members Seth Cohen (also formerly of Eliot) and Michael Lenzi, the members of Fire Show move past the angular guitar pop of their collective past in favor of more artistically adventurous reconstructions of familiar indie rock sounds. Founded on the brash guitars and jerky rhythms of bands like Wire and Gang of Four, electronic elements and drum loops are mixed in with the more staid elements. Releasing their self-titled debut in 2000, The Fire Show was an interesting mix of orchestral flourishes, electronic distortion, and odd tape loops that earned the band a reputation for challenging and bracing art punk. The following Above the Volcano of Flowers served as an odds-and-ends collection and ventured even farther out into the artistic wilderness, with Cohen and Lenzi renaming themselves M. Resplendent and Olias Nil and combining elements of free jazz and heavy metal to create a truly massive cacophony of sounds. Saint the Fire Show followed in 2002 and by all accounts was their high-water mark, the songs bristling with a raw intensity while incomprehensibly merging elements of post-punk, Korean folk music, progressive rock, funereal balladry, and electronica. By the end of that same year, it seemed likely that the internal forces that drove the band were leading to its dissolution.
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