Album Notes

Hailing from Milwaukee, WI, Chief is a band still somewhat in its infancy, but is already making an impact in local and regional music circles, the internet music community and beyond.

A power trio in the classic sense, their music draws upon a wide range of influences, mainly because of the diversity of the members of the band. Chris Tishler (guitarist/vocalist/songwriter) has been playing in various bands (the alternative rock Wheelie, the heavy rock/power pop Mothers Room and regional punkpop legend Johnny And The Losers) for over twenty years and the songs he has penned for his bands have ranged from fast hardcore punk to solo acoustic balladry in the Buckley/Chilton/Mascis veins. Dave Benton (bass) is also a band veteran, having played in bands such as Happenstance, George Castro’s Missile Crisis and the Crybabies. His playing is technical but at the same time raw and powerful, and his experiences outside of music as a sci-fi/horror writer bleed into his personality which adds to an old-school punk ethic underlying the music of Chief. Matt Liban (drums) is a much sought-after drummer and percussionist whose track record reads like that of a retired music veteran, not of one who is still in his mid thirties. Liban has been playing professionally in various bands since his early teens, from the blues gigs with his father, blues legend Jim Liban, and Jon Paris to his own bands the regional pop legends Loyal Order Of Water Buffalo, Willy Porter and Hudson, as well as having done extensive studio and commercial work.

The meeting of these three rockers was somewhat inevitable. Tishler has known Liban for many years, their earlier bands having gigged together on numerous occasions. Liban has known Benton even longer, having gone to high school together and gigged together in Happenstance as well as other blues and pick up gigs as a rhythm section. Benton and Tishler were also somewhat acquaintaces from ‘back in the day’ when the Milwaukee punk scene was in the autumn of its years. The three of them have now gotten together to just make damn powerful music and rock their asses off, much in the spirit of ones who laid the groundwork like Grand Funk and Mountain, and those who are carrying the torch like Danko Jones and the Golden Gods. Their live shows are already becoming the stuff of legend, eschewing the ‘jump around like monkeys’ approach (– ala –what most of the kiddie bands do these days) in favor of coming out like an uncaged beast and laying it all down with sheer power.

Their self-titled debut disc, out in October of 2007, is not your average ‘first album’. With the opening cowbell-fueled rocker ‘ManClimber’, the pop-punk of ‘God’s Eye’, the ballad ‘Friends & Bros.’, the dark and heavy ‘Sunday’, the all-out, straight-ahead rocker ‘I Hunt For Action’, as well as some acoustic surprises and incidental ‘sounds from beyond’, Chief proves that it is possible to touch on many different flavors of music while still retaining a balls-out heavy and cohesive sound, one that is very uniquely Chief.