I Set My Friends on Fire

Comments (0) By Lee Zimmerman Thursday, Nov 13 2008

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You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter

(Epitaph)

Hmmm. It seems this local duo has renamed itself appropriately. If you've never heard of I Set My Friends on Fire before, it's the same two Miami homeboys — Matt Mihana and Nabil Moo — who used to play around town as We Are the Cavalry. The music on their latest project still has plenty of teen appeal and encompasses everything from hardcore, grunge, and thrash to hip-hop, humor, and occasional melodic clarity. It's a style that serves them well. Having gained fame on MySpace with a bombastic version of Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat," the pair went on to gain fame on Limewire, where they've accumulated more than a million plays and counting. It wasn't long after that that they attracted notice from Epitaph Records, a label known for its alternative chic. The resulting debut, You Can't Spell Slaughter Without Laughter, takes full advantage of the irony insinuated by its banner, with songs bearing titles like "Reese's Pieces, I Don't Know Who John Cleese Is?," "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men," and "Beauty Is in the Eyes of the Beerholder," Matt and Nabil clearly have tongues planted firmly in cheeks, but those tongues take second place to the music itself: a convulsive upheaval that finds songs spastically switching gears and then merging one into another. With insistent rhythms driving the proceedings at a furious pace, it's all one hell of a major mindfuck.