Action-adventure rock heroes ArnoCorps headline the Ivy Room
Legendary East Bay action-adventure heroes ArnoCorps headline the Ivy Room in Albany Saturday evening.
One of the Bay Area's most unique and potent punk/metal bands, the action-rock heroes of ArnoCorps have been electrifying audiences for the better part of two decades. Founded back in 2000, the San Francisco sextet of musical combat veterans aims to take back the Austrian mythology and lore appropriated for American consumption by actor and former Governator of California, "Austrosploitation" figurehead Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dealing out such spectacular rock anthems as "Terminator," "Predator," and "Total Recall," the dynamic outfit led by charismatic vocalist Graf Holzfeuer (pronounced holz-FOY-er) has built a rabid local base of fans while cultivating an international following with regular UK and European tours. In addition to 2015's reissue of the group's debut Greatest Band of All Time (made available on vinyl for the first time through Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label), ArnoCorps also teamed with AT to release the "Two More" 7-inch single which featured the pump-inducing tributes to the Austrian bodybuilding fable that Schwarzenegger would plagiarize for his '70s film Pumping Iron.
In 2016, Holzfeuer and company announced the band's next recording project, The Unbelievable EP. Answering the longtime demand of their fans to take back some of the more humor-filled tales of the Austrian mythos exploited by Schwarzenegger during the 1990s like Kindergarten Cop, Twins and Jingle All the Way, a Kickstarter crowd-funding effort for the album was met with a resounding response as disciples contributed over $20,000 to the cause. The EP came out on Alternative Tentacles a year ago to solid reviews, but it is the outrageous spectacle of the band's dazzling live show complete with bass-case crowd surfing (ridden simultaneously by both bass players) and onstage demonstrations of physical strength and muscular symmetry by members and fans alike that has made ArnoCorps a longtime Bay Area concert favorite.
The band released a new 7-inch single through Alternative Tentacles in 2019, but shocked longtime fans later that year when it was announced that the dynamic rock crew would be going on a hiatus to allow Holzfeuer a chance to pursue other interests. Happily, the hiatus was fairly short-lived and happened to take place during the pandemic, which would have curtailed any planned onstage heroism regardless. ArnoCorps regrouped to appear at the 2021 edition of the Wasteland Weekend, an unhinged, Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic celebration in the Southern California desert.
The group has played a number of Bay Area shows since then, including a pair of its Halloween-themed shows in the band's "Arnocorpse" guise at the Bottom of the Hill and last year's Alternative Tentacles "Krampus Night" punk rock holiday party. For this return to the Ivy Room co-presented by Lommori Productions Saturday night, the band will be joined by Oakland-via-Pittsburgh, PA psychobilly/horror punk band the Memphis Murder Men and preposterously costumed surf-metal band Shark in the Water.
ArnoCorps with the Memphis Murder Men and Shark in the Water
Saturday, May 25, 7:30 p.m. $15-$20
Ivy Room
