Steve Shagwell
Genre: pop-punk.
Location: Dodge City, KS-USA.
Welp. Kids will be kids. And sometimes, grown-ass men will be kids too. And in this case, those kids are suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome.
Meet The Merkins. Yes-you heard me right, The Merkins. Now obviously, they’ve given me a lot to work with just in their name, but I’m going to skip right over that and dive right into the long list of things they gave me to work with instead.
Let’s start with the fact that these guys look like they belong on a riding lawnmower, not in a band. Hell, a strong case could even be made that they belong under a lawnmower. I mean, they’d finally be doing something useful by fertilizing the grass, and since this paragraph is about their looks, let me add that it would be a significant cosmetic upgrade for them. Seriously, these guys are so crusty and ugly looking, they might as well be roadkill.
But focusing on looks is shallow, we’re here to talk about music. And these guys shouldn’t have gotten me started, but oh boy, did they ever.
Where do I start? The vocals sound like they’re being sung by a BDSM bottom and grate my nerves like a ninja blender full of drywall screws, being operated by a whiny toddler. This is the most ridiculous-sounding shit since the 2024 Presidential race was announced, and believe me-it’s every bit as hopeless.
The guys are in the video wearing wigs and weird clothes, and riding scooters, and presumably telling a story about hairy overweight chumps…and the guys in wigs who eat their ass. However, the real story here is that this band eats ass…and so does this song. Hell, this song could be working in a 5-star restaurant, it tosses salad so well.
These riffs are so generic, I’m guessing they were bought at dollar tree before they were folded like your mom backstage at a Motley Crue concert and inserted into this song with all the grace of an amped-up rottweiler inserting himself through a pet door.
I know this sounds like it could be an exciting, fun band but honestly this band’s music is about as creatively exciting as listening to Blink 182 letting the air out of a whoopee cushion instead of placing it strategically for a laugh and then watching reruns of Nickelodeon kids show reruns. The joke inherent in their name would be spectacularly awesome if it wasn’t overshadowed by the joke inherent in literally everything about their songwriting. It’s weak and ineffectual, and basically, it’s to pop-punk what non-alcoholic beer is to pop-punk. I would go so far as to call it commercial fluff but using the word ‘commercial’ implies that people would actually wanna listen to this shit.
I guess if I were to sum this song up in one sentence it would be: Life sucks and here’s the proof.
The Merkins have shows coming in Kansas! They will be performing at Kansas’s first ever YOUR BAND SUCKS live experience at the legendary Kirby’s Beer Store in Wichita on April 13th. They will be sharing the stage with Love Like War, The Merkins, Burn The Gates, and Sin & Scar-and of course, Steve Shagwell, the evening’s “emcee”, who will be roasting the bands live on stage for a complete trainwreck of live music and insult comedy. They will also be playing at the Stoney Wars Music Festival, an awareness/benefit concert-because Boomers run the state of Kansas, so even thought it’s 2024, we still need to raise awareness that weed won’t actually turn you into a depraved serial killer with an impulse for larceny. It is being held at The Press in Manhattan at…wait for it…4:20 p.m.
Facebook: @TheMerkins620
YouTube: @themerkinsgc
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