Band of the Week

Band Members: Jessica Eris, chaos, guitar, backing vocals and programming our drum machine. Cat Fury, incitement to riot, vocals and 6-string bass.
Band Born: January 2008
Type Of Music: Folk metal? Southern gothic? Funk industrial? Call it good old southern chick rock with an edge.
Originals or Covers: We have about three hours of songs written only by us girls in the band, but if a cover is weird enough to strike our fancy, and we can think of a way the song has never been done, we do it.
Sounds Like: Rasputina marries Flyleaf but has an affair with My Chemical Romance and the CruxShadows and they have twins that look like the White Stripes and The Used.
Songwriter’s Muse: Gem Clear, O beautiful 190-proof inspiration in pint bottles. Road trips, adventure, being stuck in a cabin in the woods freezing our booties off.
Influences: System of a Down, Concrete Blonde, Tori Amos, Iron Maiden, Janis Joplin. Also, Egyptian pop and Russian death metal.
Accomplishments: Both Eris and Fury have been in Fayetteville punk/performance art band The Rude. We’ve played a music expo at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas, We’ve recorded an album live at Vino’s in Little Rock. In the alternative band All Else Fails, Eris and I opened for LA goth band Spanking Machine. We’ve hosted the first two-day punk music festival in the backwoods of Arkansas, with 22 bands from as far away as Houston and New York. We’re played on the local X (104.9) and on the A.M.X. as well. In this band alone, we’ve recorded two albums “Mind Like Ground Zero” and the self-titled “What Army” and are about to release our third album “Babydoll Suicide” in March as preparation for our upcoming summer 2009 tour.
What Type of Crowd Do You Draw?: We see most of the Fayetteville punk and metal bands at our shows, as well as many of the NWA Rollergirls and a lot of local artists and slam poets. Every time I look out at our crowd, it’s wall-to-wall artists and performers, writers and musicians, so I’d say that we appeal to creative people who want to see and hear something likeable and danceable that is out of the ordinary.
Where and when do you practice? Fortunately, we live on 10 acres of land in the exact dead center of nowhere in Madison County, so at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m., whenever the whim strikes or a song idea is born, we pick up the guitars and get busy.
Albums: The new “Babydoll Suicide” album coming out in March is a big exciting step for us, because we really hit our writing stride and have 13 new songs that express the sound we’re going for. We’re creating 13 baby-doll characters and 13 ways that they offed themselves, and then we relate each character to one of the songs, so it’s our first theme album.
Total Tattoos and Piercings: 11 tattoos and about six piercings, and we can’t show you any of them unless you buy a CD first.
BackStage Ritual: Eris drinks one or two beers and paces and Fury likes to wander around and talk to the crowd, find out what songs they might like to hear, see if any of them will buy her a vodka and coke.
Funniest/Strangest thing that happened during a performance: There’s not enough time to tell even the top five. I’d say, Jessica falling off the stage during PunkFest, breaking her ankle and then quickly slamming a few beers as emergency painkillers then playing the show anyway. Or, there was one house party on Lafayette Street in Fayetteville at a punk show, where I told the crowd to get nekkid, then I looked up and realized that five or six of them had! We had to top that, so WE got naked too. Then I threw out some bottle rockets and sparklers as party favors to the crowd and we found out why nudity and explosives = bad.
Goals: Top of the world. We want to have people think What Army when they think of rock music. There’s not really a female rock band that’s been as famous as, say, Iron Maiden or Ozzy, and we want to be the ones to break that barrier. Megalomania is fun.
New Projects: Just for fun, we’ve been jamming with Luke Schmoody of the Shwingers, and Marcus Pruitt of Rotgut Swine. We’re thinking of getting together perhaps with some of the local signed bands and doing a “Destroy Dickson” tour, a tour that plays one week straight on Dickson, with T-Shirts and everything, just to promote local music.
Dream act to open for: GWAR. Or goth-folk songwriter and comedian Voltaire.
Last CD Purchased: Buckcherry’s new album for Fury, and AC/DC’s Black Ice for Eris.
Most played song on iPod: We are so broke, we don’t have an iPod, but the most played song varies week to week depending on what musicians we are studying and learning from. This week it’s been the lead to Back in Black for Eris, and Fury has been obsessing on Mad World as done by Tears for Fears. I like to go back to the classics for lessons on good solid songwriting.
Website: www.Myspace.com/WhatArmyBand
Upcoming Shows:
Feb. 7: The Perk on Wedington Drive., Fayetteville, 6-8 p.m.
Mar.13: BabyDoll Suicide Tour kicks off with album release party (location TBA)
Apr. 4: The Perk on Wedington Drive, Fayetteville, 6-8 p.m.