Wild Frontier Fest explodes

With over twice as many bands on the bill as last year, Vagabond Collective hosted their second annual Wild Frontier Fest on Sept. 10-11 at Emo's. The two-day festival featured indoor and outdoor shows and live screen printing where masses of concert goers turned up.

Day one of the festival featured edgy melodic punk rock band Ume (pronounced ‘oo-may'). Ume's front woman Lauren Larson's head banging and guitar thrashing puts a lot of male heavy rockers to shame and it was astonishing that she never lost control of her guitar. Her vocals are very evocative of Karen O and Victoria Legrand. Larson, along with husband and bassist Eric Larson and drummer Rachel Fuhrer spent most of 2011 touring music festivals across the country and released their new album Phantoms on Aug. 30. "We are a working band," Larson said. "We are not a blog darling."

Day two was filled with extreme, high-energy bands like Zorch and Peelander Z. Zorch, an experimental electro math rock duo, emanated hardcore synthesizer and drum rhythms that had the crowd pulsing to the beat.

Disbanded band Cruiserweight reunited to perform a punk rock revival that had parts of the audience bouncing. Lead singer Stella Maxwell joked about the band being too old to perform, but their high energy and her happy toy-punk vocals infused joyful dancing fans throughout the venue.

The festival reached its climax slightly early when ridiculously over-the-top Japanese action comic punk band Peelander Z took the stage. Backup vocalist and bassist Kotaro Tsukada started the show off by playing the bass while hanging upside down from the ceiling, which evoked a powerful roar from the crowd that caused drew the crowd from the festival's second stage.

The primary-colored trio riled up the crowd with a hot mess of noise, costumes, and games for the audience to play along with.

"We are not Japanese," shouted lead vocalist and guitarist Kengo Hioki. "We are not American! We are human! We...are...Peelander..." "Z!" the crowd cheered in unison.

Almost half of the crowd left the venue by the time headliner Waaves hit the stage The Los Angeles based lo-fi indie rock band's sound was reminiscent of a male version of Best Coast, but with more weed and less whine, more energy and faintly more punk- style vocals.

Throughout the whole weekend, Wild Frontier Fest had the crowd going from the start as they showcased the best of indie and high-energy punk rock bands over the weekend.