Volumen 1 :: Shane Hickey
Volumen 2 :: Doug Smith
Volumen^2 :: Bryan Hickey
bKCAWCK :: Chris Bacon
Volumen Beta :: Bob Marshall


 
Bob Marshall Volumen Beta
Bob Marshall

Watch Bob, and watch him close. See if you can catch him slippin�. You never will, because this plunging draft horse of the VOLUMEN skins never does. Every beat, fill, ride...every damn flam-flam or paradiddle he plays fits as tight and snug as in those walls at Macchu Picchu where you can�t even slip a piece of paper between these stones as big as a Volkswagen Beetle. It�s a craft he�s honed in nearly half a dozen other Missoula bands, including Prosciutto, Saved for This Dark Dawn and the much-missed Spanker. The tireless BobJob is still foaming to rock long after his bandmates have packed it in for the evening, and, like Doug, he�s also an excellent cook. Keep him away from the chilies, though�last time Bob came to my house, he whipped up some 2:30 AM quesadillas that cleared the place out like a canister of CS gas.


 
 
Here's some articles and other random press for your viewing pleasure.

Eureka Times-Standard 03/23/2006
URL: View Actual Article
Title: Pump up the Volumen
Author: Joel Hartse

The Volumen

The Volumen, led by frontmen Shane Hickey and Doug Smith, hail from Missoula, Montana, a town of about 60,000 people that isn't so different from our own neck of the woods -- let's just say it's a place where people have to make their own fun, and that fun is sometimes kind of weird. You know how people talk about Eureka feeling like a David Lynch movie? David Lynch is from Missoula.

On �Science Faction� the band's new album, the Volumen play their 00's take on New Wave, starting off energetically with upbeat, sci-fi influenced, Cheap Trick-style pop songs like �Orson Welles Was Right� (dig the Built to Spill

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guitars), but by the end of the record, they've somehow morphed into an instrumental prog-rock band on the epic �Dune� and �Dune Revisited� -- and they do both equally well. Chris Bacon's bouncy keyboard lines make the Volumen's sugary pop that much more buoyant.

Playing with the Volumen are locals Professional Superheroes. They've got shtick coming out their ears. (Please brace yourself: We are not even close to being finished with the word �shtick.�)There's the Superhero conceit of the band's name, and the band members' pseudonyms, and their costumes. But then there's also the �indie rock cover band� angle, which implies they've got good taste and cred. They cover jokey songs like �Something for the Monkey� by the headlining Volumen and the theme from �Mystery Science Theater 3000� (not, sadly, the original one about �a guy name Joel�), but also songs by the serious, heart-on-sleeve Neutral Milk Hotel.

I'm predisposed against shtick, yet I'm fully aware of the ontological problem this poses for the pop critic, because there is no such thing as a fully shtickless rock band -- shticklessness itself, in fact, is a shtick (for example, the �no-wave� art-rock bands out of New York). And my own preferred genre, indie rock along the Death Cab/Shins axis, arguably has to work just as hard to cultivate its �Hey, We're Regular Guys Playing Music� image. So I'm giving the Professional Superheroes a cautious stamp of approval for their catholic (small-c, meaning universal) taste and enthusiasm. The show is at Synapsis (47 Third St. in Eureka) on Sunday.

The jury's still out on whether I'm going to stop using the royal �we.� Until then, email us: [email protected]. Now Playing: �The Church with No Name� by the Volumen.

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