The Liberty Underground

There’s a ridiculous amount of pop-something in rock music. We’ve got pop-punk, pop-rock, garage rock and pop-folk-fusion-or-whatever-they-come-up-with-next. Not that I have anything against pop-everything, but that is 100% not The Liberty Underground. The Liberty Underground is pure rock and roll, so grab their album Three Feet From Gold to get your all rock fix.

The best way I can describe The Liberty Underground is like a heavier Pearl Jam with different vocals. Eddie Vedder has a very distinct voice, but his throaty growls get tiresome. Liberty Underground singer Jon Chorba has a crisp, clear mid-range voice that’s never muddled or froggy. Even in songs like “Moth,” Chroba throws in a little screamo into the mix while keeping the instrumental sections in their original heavy, distorted, rock and roll sound.

Sticking true to those rock roots, there are also some fluid, high range guitar solos. The notes flow step by step between Chorba’s singing that really bring out that classic rock feeling through The Liberty Underground. - Geneva

It's a bit hard to believe that The Liberty Underground is actually one guy named Jon Chorba and not four badass dudes with hair down to their shoulders and sporting facial hair. Back in in 2010 Jon Chorba decided he was going to record, mix and release his own material, which would become Three Feet From Gold. In October 2013 the album was released and it contains hard rock that fans of bands of Alice In Chains, Metallica and Soundgarden will appreciate.

The album is rooted in hard rock - anywhere from the late 80’s to the early 90’s. You get a surplus of palm muted distorted guitars, along with guitar solos, powerful-sounding drum kit as well as bass work that provides a foundation to the music. Chorba sounds like a cross between James Hatfield and an American patriot who now spends his days driving a truck and drinking too much whiskey.

The album starts with “The Letdown,” which sounds like a respawned configuration of an early Metallica song. Chorba doesn't waste much time getting all up in your grill as you can practically feel the spit of his aggressive tone on your forehead. He plasters a couple of guitar solos on as well that feel like they were manifested in the 80’s.

So what do you think of when hear the name “Fully Eradicate?” I would say a song by Megadeth or one of a plethora of 80’s hard rock bands that tried to imitate them. Anyway the song sounds exactly as you would expect. The guitar slices like a knife across your cerebral cortex and invokes imagery of the post-apocalyptic world you might expect to see as the album cover for a metal band in the 80’s.

Chorba isn't all up in your grill all the time. He also has a sensitive side as we see on “Move On.” The guy even sounds different when he sings. The album closes with the longest track on the album called “The Year Of Deniability.” It goes through a number of changes displaying some of Chorba’s most detailed work. The guitar solo isn't to be missed on this one.

Chorba is not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination but you have to give him credit for what he has accomplished. The album contains a number of decent songs that fans of hard rock will not want to miss. Be sure to be on the lookout for the band in your local area as Chorba put together a crew to bring this act on the road. - the equal ground

Jon Chorba’s anger is tangible; he’s given it a voice, and he’s called that voice The Liberty Underground. The Scranton native, now living in Texas, has arrived at his debut album by way of snarling cynicism, tunnel-visioned tenacity, and a haunted sense of introspection – it all comes together in a gale force of status quo-irking aggression on “Three Feet from Gold.”

The album, written and recorded by Chorba himself (save for drum tracks done by friend Zhach Kelsch), is now ready to be fully realized by a full live band – which incidentally played its first-ever live gig riding on the receiving end of an emotional crescendo in Sturges – and will no doubt resonate with unbridled empathy from the disenfranchised among us. From the savagely dark riffing that opens a Pandora’s box of misplaced trust in “The Letdown” (“All that I’ve known – watching it go”), to the smoothed out and sweetly sinister Tool-cadenced echoes in the conscientiously objective “Pro Anti-War,” Chorba’s provocation is sharp – his ire intently focused.

As a songwriter, Chorba is also able to keenly plant a supple seed of optimism and subdued realization amid his pain, as he does in “Good Again.” Streaming through a dream-like vocal quieting and cleanly arpeggiated guitar comes the offering of, “Hooray, hooray, the worst is over now / it may not be the same, but it’ll be good again.” Also cautiously buoyant looking through a seemingly outward grungy, mechanized bleakness is “The Year of Deniability,” where Chorba extols the onward march of, “Got through it once, I could do it again / smelling like a rose, nobody knows, nobody understands what the big guy’s planned.”

Just when you think he’s come to terms, though, Chorba lashes out with a critical tongue via the Deftones-meets-Chevelle modern mud of “Moths” (“How easily it is to hypnotize the anemic mind”), and it’s clear he’s not going to be nudged into complacency quietly – his Libertarian philosophy pumping the very pulse of his music.

Enlightened heaviness with a scrappy sense of socially conscious undertone, Chorba’s The Liberty Underground offers listeners a quality headbang without the empty calories.

The Liberty Underground ‘Three Feet from Gold’ Rating: W W W W W - Mark Uricheck Weekender Correspondent