Faber

Faber is a punk rock band from somewhere in between Carteret and South Amboy, NJ. These guys are not your average ‘punk’ band though; in their music is some intense amalgamation of punk, ska, metal and a touch of ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.’
The band consists of Alex Heyer on the bass and backing vocals, Mike Fritz on the drums, Joe Porta playing rhythm guitar and singing lead vocals and Tim Rager on lead guitar. Travis Novack is also a part of the band, and is currently rockin’ it from the Middle East with the Marines.
On Saturday, November 7th, Faber played an intimate, invite only, basement show in South Amboy, NJ. The set consisted of seven of the band’s finest songs. To start, the band rocked out J+H(Jekyll and Hyde). This is a really fantastic song, and a perfect way to start a set. It started off with Joe and Tim both hammering on and pulling off notes on the high and low E strings on their guitars. Mike slowly increased the tempo with quicker and quicker drums hits and then Alex slid it on up the neck and brought us into the song. The lyrics of the song are also quite entertaining, as inverse as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Next up the band rocked one of their most intense love ballads of all time: ‘Lagoda’s.’ A little background: Lagoda’s is the most fantastic bar in all of New Jersey, possibly the entire universe. It is located in South Amboy, home (kind of) of Faber. The song features a call to arms to all who appreciate Lagoda’s: “GO! GO! GO! GO! / Let’s all go to Lagoda’s!”
After ‘Lagoda’s’ the band started up with the masterful ska/hard punk fusion song, ‘Living Tragedy.’ The song started up with some ska style up-strumming on the guitar, a solid drum beat and a fancy bass line to get everyone moving, then switched into distortion to get everyone’s heads banging. By the end of the song nobody is quite sure how to dance to it, but they know they enjoyed it.
‘Dismemberment’ poked its head out after ‘Living Tragedy.’ The intro of this song displayed an obvious metal/hard punk influence, but flowed into a more ska/hard punk feel afterward. The lyrics in the song have a fantastically evil feel and growling vocals to put them to the test: “Break out the scalpels, / Break out the chains, / Break out the intricate cutting of blades!” If the name of the song didn’t give away the idea here, the lyrics sure will.
The next song Faber broke out is a cover that should be on the list of ‘Most Awesome Songs a Band Could Ever Cover,’ is a crowd favorite, and it’s where the band gets that little touch of ‘Always Sunny;’ Ladies and Gentelmen, Faber then performed the epic tale that is: ‘Dayman.’ Faber has taken this song and created a slow starting version that speeds up verse after verse and eventually explodes into awesome at the end. Although a short song, and one with simple lyrics, it really brings out the best in the crowd with a lot of ‘Ohhh OHHHH’ing.
The second to last song the band played is called ‘No Void To Fill.’ This is a solid, ska/punk rock song anybody could enjoy; with Mike and Alex, a real solid rhythm section, providing a sweet, skankable, groove, Joe belting out the lyrics with Alex on backup and, and Tim coming through on the breakdown with a sweet lead riff, who could not like it? The final song in Faber’s set was a fantastic number called Carteret City Limits/South Amboy Rock City, or C-Town for short. Essentially the song is about why Carteret sucks as opposed to South Amboy, which rocks.
Faber played a fantastic show on Saturday, Friday also, but that’s another story altogether. These guys really push it to the limit, and put a lot of love into their craft. For more info on them, and to hear some songs including ‘No Void to Fill’ and ‘Dayman’ you can visit their MySpace at www.myspace.com/faber. Also, supporting Faber is supporting the Marines, since one of their band members is over in the Middle East, so check these guys out!