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Milwaukee Music Roundup: Black Challenger, Avenues, Direct Hit!, Dogs In Ecstasy

Courtesy of Black Challenger, Avenues, Direct Hit!, Dogs in Ecstasy
The latest Milwaukee Music Roundup features songs from Black Challenger, Avenues, Direct Hit! and Dogs in Ecstasy.

Halloween is often a time when local bands celebrate the season with costumed shows, blowout parties, and eerie music. While the realities of 2020 negate the first two, Milwaukee bands are still finding ways to put out music in spite of the pandemic. 

And as always, Matt Wild has been listening. Wild is one of the co-founders of Milwaukee Record and each month he shares a sample of what he's been listening to for the Milwaukee Music Roundup. 

Here's the latest Milwaukee Music Roundup:

Black Challenger
"Recollection"

This dark-wave song comes from one half of the duo, Immortal Girlfriend, and is from his new album "Vigilance." Wild says, "[The album] sounds like a bunch of theme songs from a bunch of long lost John Carpenter movies ... or, I suppose you could say like, the next season of Stranger Things."

Avenues
"Devious"

Although this season is most notably a time to celebrate spooky and haunted songs, it's also election season, which is made clear in this song from pop punk band Avenues.

"I'll just read a couple of the lyrics here: 'Filled with corruption and a system in destruction in a country that's in dire disarray — a moral mistrust has separated all of us. One nation, that is under scrutiny.' It goes on and on like that," says Wild.

Direct Hit!
"Have You Seen It?"

"This is apparently the first song in a cycle of songs that's going to tie into a graphic novel that some of the folks from Direct Hit! are putting together," says Wild. The yet-to-be-released graphic novel follows the story of a "powerful but sheltered teenager and her robotic caretaker/partner as they leave home to find their origins in earth's distant future." Each of the first 12 chapters will have an accompanying song, which will be released starting in 2021. 

Dogs in Ecstasy
"I Died Shazaming"

Wild describes this band as, "Basically, if an American Online [AOL] website from the '90s filled with a bunch of Comic Sans text and a bunch of obnoxious animated gifs — if that were a band, that would be Dogs in Ecstasy."

The song "I Died Shazaming" laments the singer's fate, having died in a car crash due to Shazaming, which they surmise wouldn't have been a problem if they'd simply had SiriusXM radio.

Joy is a WUWM host and producer for Lake Effect.