West Mitchell Street in Milwaukee historically remains a favorite of music lovers, as many would flock to see acts like the Dismemberment Plan, Descendents, and Guided by Voices in the ’90s and early aughts at the now-dormant Modjeska Theater, which closed its doors in 2010.
MKE Ultra, a smaller-scale, cozily inviting venue, is seizing the moment to respond to the lack of a D.I.Y. music space in a vibrant Milwaukee neighborhood.
The intimate venue with a 49-person-capacity performance space, located at 1535 W. Mitchell St., hosted three distinctively unique bands on Nov. 22. Each blurred the boundaries of genre with their singular sounds.
LoBi LoBianco
LoBi LoBianco, based in Milwaukee, kicked off the show with wildly unpredictable guitar rock. They kept the assorted all-ages crowd, consisting of veteran scenesters and anxious-to-mosh teenagers, on their toes throughout the whole set.
The vocalist/guitarist, who goes by the moniker “LoBi,” wailed into the microphone with a scream reminiscent of the squall of lead vocalist of American emo band Hot Mulligan, Nathan “Tades” Sanville.
Their current lineup for live performances also consists of Garrett Holm on guitar and drums, in addition to Willow Bull on bass guitar, according to their Bandcamp page.
The band self-describes their sound in their Instagram bio as “emotional guitar music,” and that wide umbrella of a genre classification is a perfect description for the kind of performance they offer.
Erratic guitar twinkles, interrupted by jagged rhythm fluctuations, transitioned the foursome in every song. Set numbers like the unreleased “Nasty Weather” and “Heart Shaped Balloon” feature echoing guitar tones that resemble surf-rock, or the smooth and mellifluous chimes of a band like Turnover on their 2017 record “Good Nature.”
LoBi LoBianco released a second full-length album, “Parlor Games,” on Jan. 4 of this year. They are finishing 2025 by making their debut at the storied concert venue and bar Cactus Club on Dec. 7.
Anteeter
Chicago-based Anteeter is the musical outlet of Mike Kelley, a 23-year-old artist who describes their sound as a “cacophony of blaring synths and raunchy vocals” on his website.
Kelley and his backing band, which consisted of a keyboardist, drummer, and guitarist, thickly pummeled through their time during the second slot of the bill. The front man applied uniquely bizarre effects on his vocals at various points throughout the set.
The sight of his steady tambourine rattling recalled a tradition of the 1960s originally kept alive by Joel Gion, infamously from the psychedelic rock band Brian Jonestown Massacre.
Their noise assault on songs like “Caught In 4K” and “Wax Eloquent” is an original product from a resulting mixture of genres; this project clearly wears a few of its influences on its sleeve.
The pummeling of their electronic groove easily takes inspiration from Nine Inch Nails due to the combination of dense synths and gloomily provocative lyrics that reference being plunged into a “purgatory.” Anteeter also polished off their set with a cover of a song by the New York post-punk revival band TV on the Radio.
“This venue is so fucking cool,” said Kelley during an intermission.
Frantic Repair
Milwaukee’s Frantic Repair rounded off the bill by delivering on a D.I.Y. show promise: giving the crowd something to mosh to.
This city is home to a few distinctive scenes, typically the kind that rises out of the aroma of a disgustingly sweaty college-house basement. However, it has now taken an inclination towards a fifth-wave emo, math rock and shoegaze-y amalgamation of sound.
In a day and age in which thousands of musical documents of scenes essential to where we ended up now are at our fingertips, the sounds of up-and-coming bands often meld and mesh previous musical motifs of scenes unconnected.
The melodic intricacies of a band like Braid, who belonged to the second wave of emo, and the angular jaggedness found in the sound of a band like Gang of Four, associated with the original 1970s era of post-punk, can detect their sonic settings in songs like “Forever,” and “Suffocate,” both tracks off of the EP Frantic Repair released on Nov. 7, “Grey Hour.”
As soon as the closer’s final siren-like guitar note rang out, there were shouts from the cramped crowd for an encore or just a song or two more. This sort of applause is a bit unheard of at a smaller-scale show like this.
Time was up. The all-ages mass either stayed inside the cozy venue for a minute longer to shoot the breeze or followed friends, filing back out onto a sidewalk rich with indie music history on Mitchell Street.
