Upping the game: Militarie Gun finds its stride on new album, makes stop at Launchpad on Sept. 12

Ian Shelton is gearing up for the first date on tour in Los Angeles.

After this interview, he’s off to get his wardrobe set up for the entire run.

“We’re trying to make it look good on stage,” he says. “I feel like we have to up our game on this tour because we are opening for Scowl.”

Shelton is the vocalist for Militarie Gun. The band released its current album, “Life Under the Gun” in June.

The tour makes a stop at Launchpad in Downtown Albuquerque on Tuesday, Sept. 12.

The tour with Scowl launched on Sept. 8, in Los Angeles and will see the two bands perform 32 dates together with support from MSPAINT and Big Laugh before concluding at Berkeley's iconic 924 Gilman Street on Oct. 21.

Following the tour, Militarie Gun will set sail on the S.S. Neverender from Miami, Florida for a four day cruise with Coheed and Cambria, Sunny Day Real Estate, Motion City Soundtrack and more ahead of Levitation Fest in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 28.

“It’s like 11 weeks of shows,” he says. “I try to not think about the time away from home. We committed to this tour a long time ago. At the midpoint of the tour, I’ll have to mentally adjust to keep pushing forward.”

Shelton formed Militarie Gun in the thick of the pandemic when he was forced to put his other project on the shelf.

Shelton wrote and recorded the band’s first EP, “My Life is Over,” by himself in September 2020.

He recruited guitarists Nick Cogan and Will Acuna, drummer Vince Nguyen and bassist Max Epstein.

The band then worked on a pair of EPs released in 2021.

It was out of that process that “Life Under the Gun” was born.

Shelton says the process for the album was a long one and full of demos.

“All of these songs were demos when we signed our record deal,” he says. “We could have used a lot of those, but we decided to write some new material. It was all one kind of creative vomit period. We created as many songs as we could. We built up the amount of songs and then culled it down.”

Shelton is ready for another writing session.

“I want to be writing,” he says. ‘I wish that part of me could be doing that right now instead of getting ready for a tour.”

In a short time with the band, Shelton has seen a lot of growth for himself within music.

The new album helped push him to write guitar parts for the first time.

“I was too self conscious to attempt it,” he says. “When the pandemic happened, all I had was time and solitude. I tried many things and failed. There was no one around and I began to enjoy the process. I wasn’t afraid of trying new things.”