Creeping in crevices up and down Milwaukee’s curvy strip of the Third Coast, for The Niama kicking-audiences’ arses comes second to just kicking-arse. The duo that makes up The Niama reek of deep Milwaukee roots that span both sides of the Hoan, and rock like skinned-elbows and the stories that go with them.
This dude Steve Gallam wears a new-school Milwaukee County Parks shirt, none of that blue pocket-T with the mini oak leaf logo. It’s black so it absorbs maximum stains and odors. Bandmate Mike Hodzinski looks pretty raw, head shaved strategically to maximize radness, but has bust-his-wrist-on-a-suckas-face-and-still-play-the-show guts to back it up (take that all you jive wanna-be long hyphenated word users).
Brandishing heavy percussion and aggressive guitar progressions, The Naima surfaces periodically like the Caddyshack gopher to amplify deviant and raucous live music.
With a blind fold on, you might think there are 2 guitars, 1 bass, and a drummer, but with no blind fold on you see that it’s just 1 guitar and a drummer playing leg and neck flexing metal instrumentals. It’s hard, it’s rhythmic and masterfully composed, pretty much two ornery musicians that put together a couple EPs (and an SP) worth of super sick songs by one-upping and stumping each other with their ideas.
Like true sell outs, The Naima headlined a very non-hyped show at Circle-A-Cafe’s Alive at 8 session over the weekend, that also featured Gnarrenschiff, a tough screw and rugged folk-blend of tambour and bodhran, spewing a beautiful and cacophonous layered mixture of notes.
As for next shows, you should be so lucky! (By the way, they are the last known band to effectively use myspace, what…? Myspace is cool again like flannels)
Local Trolley 
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