Editor’s Take: Militarie Gun Has a Legion of Fans. I Am Now One of Them

By: Shawna O’Hara, Editor – Photos by James Scully

A massive swell of applause filled Metro before Militarie Gun had played a single note.

Frontman Ian Shelton walked onstage, surveyed the packed room, and offered one hearty, but simple, greeting: “Hello!”

It didn’t take much longer for the Los Angeles five-piece to make its case. By the opening stretch of the set, Shelton was bounding across the stage, fists were pumping throughout the floor, and the balcony was nearly as animated as the crowd below. Somewhere in my notes from those first few songs, I abandoned any attempt at critical distance and typed four words: I am an instant fan.

I knew their sound, their vibe, their background. Anything one could research, sure; I had a grip on that. But it’s how music holds up live that has always hooked me or lost me. You can be polished; you can have a huge sound. What happens when you step onstage, and how you leave it, has the greatest impact on who you really are as an artist or an act. Militarie Gun undoubtedly passes this unofficial test.

No one at a Militarie Gun show appears to be having a better time than Ian Shelton. The frontman is pure energy, bounding across considerably more of the stage than his bandmates and somehow transferring that momentum into the crowd. Shelton’s raised fist becomes hundreds. He calls for the audience to jump, and the floor begins moving like a wave. He thrusts the microphone toward them, and they already know what to shout back. Even from the balcony, it was impossible not to feel the current running through the room.

Before the night’s first opener, the stunning Oasis-meets-Blur-meets-entirely-their-own-thing Dazy converted the Militarie Gun crowd into fans of their own, I was ceremoniously handed a small package by a man decked out in Militarie Gun gear. Inside, he told me, were a few goodies: earplugs, Militarie Gun stickers, and a friendship bracelet spelling out B A D I D E A in colorful beads.

He was friendly, relentlessly upbeat, and seemed to make a new friend out of nearly everyone he approached. I asked if he was part of the band’s street team, only to get a vague answer that amounted to this: he loved, loved, Militarie Gun.

Both the earplugs and the bracelet would eventually come in handy because Militarie Gun’s fans are loud.

The energy inside Metro seemed to move vertically. The floor bounced; the balcony answered. Shelton only had to raise a fist, call for a jump, or point the microphone outward for the room to respond as one. Behind him, Militarie Gun played with the blunt force of old-school punk without sacrificing the melodies underneath; at times, hooks emerged that felt almost Kinks-like before distortion swallowed them again.

Five songs in, Shelton asked if it would be alright to bring out a friend. Dazy’s James Goodson returned to the stage for “Pressure Cooker,” taking the opening vocal as the crowd erupted at the song’s announcement. It was the first of several moments that made the evening feel less like a touring package passing through Chicago and more like a gathering of people who genuinely seemed to like one another.

But Shelton’s command of the room wasn’t limited to making it move.

Before “I Won’t Murder Your Friend,” the mood shifted. Shelton addressed anyone struggling with thoughts of leaving the world early, reminding them that they weren’t alone and urging them to make the phone call, to a friend, a family member, someone, rather than disappear without one. It was a strikingly tender moment from a frontman who had spent much of the night whipping Metro into motion.

With the set heavily built around participation, this message felt fitting. Militarie Gun had spent the night asking people to reach toward one another. For a few minutes, Shelton reminded them why that matters.

Militarie Gun’s affection for the room was hardly one-sided. At one point, Shelton called Chicago the band’s “second home,” recalling their earliest shows at Subterranean and rattling off the venues they had played on their way to Metro. “We’ve always felt the love,” he told the crowd, before admitting that Metro was the one they had wanted all along.

That history might help explain the unusual ease between band and audience. Militarie Gun takes its music seriously. Fun, however, matters just as much. The band is playful without sacrificing focus, and Shelton seems genuinely delighted by the crowd’s delight in him. The more Metro gives, the more he gives back.

That became particularly clear during one wonderfully confusing moment late in the set. The band abruptly abandoned a song before Shelton explained: they had 23 songs to get through, he joked, so there simply wasn’t time to finish that one. Then came “Throw Me Away,” as though leaving a song half-finished were the most reasonable scheduling decision in the world.

By the time Militarie Gun reached the penultimate song, Shelton had Metro so thoroughly in his grasp that the room seemed to know what he wanted before he asked. A chant broke out across both floors, four syllables shouted back with such force that I dutifully recorded it in my notes despite having absolutely no idea what anyone was saying (I shall never share these hilarious notes with anyone).

The answer was waiting for me when I got home. Emptying my pockets, I found the little package I had been handed earlier that night and looked again at the friendship bracelet inside: B A D I D E A. The mystery chant was the title of the band’s second-to-last song, shouted in unison by a room full of people who needed no explanation. Suddenly, neither did I.

Militarie Gun closed the night with “Kick,” but Shelton didn’t simply disappear backstage when it was over. He stayed behind to hand a setlist to the crowd and shake hands with the people still gathered at the barricade, a fitting final gesture from a frontman who had spent the night collapsing the distance between the stage and everyone standing in front of it.

I arrived at Metro understanding Militarie Gun on paper. I left understanding why the guy handing friendship bracelets to strangers couldn’t quite explain his relationship to the band beyond the fact that he loved them.

I get it now, too.