And it’s a handsome face to put forth - high cheekbones, razor-sharp jawline, and a mustached smile that frequently emits a loud, infectious laugh. My driver is Tony Wolski, who has become the unofficial face of the band over the last few years, insofar as a collective of dozens of musical contributors can have a singular face. The driver hands me a protein brownie and a Redcon1 energy drink. A powder blue Bronco pulls up and I climb aboard. Someone from the Armed is on their way to pick me up and I need to look my swolest. It’s summer in Detroit and I’m doing push-ups at the airport. It’s a creeping curiosity that quickly becomes your entire reality. Once a person has had their interest piqued, it’s only a matter of time before they become a permanent member of the cult, too. This is the effect the Armed has on people. She is receiving her conversion and is about to join us on this spiritual journey. But all that is on the verge of changing at this moment. She was, as she admitted to me beforehand, not even very familiar with their music before being added to the bill. Her band’s style of bubblegum indie pop is not exactly a natural precursor for a crushingly heavy headliner. It was an unusual choice for the Armed to invite her to play this evening. I spot Sarah Tudzin, whose band Illuminati Hotties opened the show, standing off to the side and watching in awe at the spectacle in front of her. Everyone in attendance is experiencing the same intense level of soul purification together - except for one face that stands out to me. The spectrum of catharsis is covered, like I’m watching Earth Crisis, U2, Radiohead, Taylor Swift, and an Evangelical megachurch sermon all at once. There are people crowdsurfing and fingerpointing as they scream along - par for the course for a hardcore show - but there are also people who look like they’re having emotional out-of-body experiences, moved to tears by the enormity of it all. In all the years I’ve been attending live shows, I’ve never seen audience reactions quite like this one, at least not at the same time. She shrieks into her microphone and cannonballs fearlessly into the front row of awaiting Armed devotees twice her size. She has her hair up in two buns and is wearing a custom two-piece jumpsuit with pointed shoulder pads, making her look like the final boss in some futuristic martial arts video game. She is blonde and petite, probably not much more than five feet tall, and is unquestionably the most intimidating of all of them. He bends deeply at the waist as his arm extends out to lock fingers with a hand reaching up for salvation. Another singer - a 6’ 6” Viking - stretches his limbs in slow, peaceful tai chi poses, a paragon of grace amidst the chaos around him. The main singer, wearing a rhinestone mask over his face, grabs the guy next to me by the scalp and pulls him to the microphone to shout the song’s refrain: All futures, destruction. The burly, mostly sleeveless men that comprise the Armed stomp around the stage like professional wrestlers and comic book superheroes. Just a sonic and visual show of force that feels like a bomb is continuously going off in the venue. Physical fitness was a key part of the visual aesthetics behind the Armed's fourth album, ULTRAPOP, for reasons that were never fully explained. Every time a strobe shines on flesh, it reveals a flash of glistening, shredded muscle. One of them is a professional bodybuilder. Half of them were not in the band when I last saw them four years ago in New York. It’s hard to tell through the overpowering lighting setup they have, which envelops all of them in a blinding, heavenly fog, but there are, by my count, at least nine of them. The members of the Armed finally walk on stage while an ominous rumble plays over the speakers. The Armed is the closest thing I have to religion. That all sounds like the makings of a cult to me. Many disciples have it tattooed on their limbs. I wear a logo, a boxed-in X, on every item of clothing I own. I have altered my diet and added 10 pounds of muscle to my body because a man I’ve never met and who may not actually exist named Dan Greene told me to. We give each other a nod of quiet solidarity whenever we pass each other in the real world. I could waste time feigning denial about it but let’s face facts: I use a secret codeword to communicate with a roomful of strangers. “It just means to… refract.” And he’s not wrong. “Refract?” he repeats skeptically, as though I have just asked him the world’s most obvious question. On the way out later, I ask a man wearing an Armed shirt what the word means to him. This has become the official mantra for the band, an all-purpose affirmation we say to each other as members of the Armed faithful, although no one seems exactly sure what it means.
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