one leg by foot, two legs by rail

As entirely befitting an enterprise conducted largely on the eighteenth of April into the wee hours of the 19th, this pair of shows involved a circuitous path around various environs of Boston, elements that can be clubbed into a rough allusion to Longfellow, and fortunately since this is the modern day, two bouts of awesome blasting metal rather than any encounters with foreign occupying military forces.


Nåthruzym with Blood of the Gods, Nachzehrer, and Bone Ritual
Midway Cafe, Boston, 4/18/2010
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After bunging my car into the usual car-bunging-into-place, I crossed over a block and picked up the Red Line, then promptly missed the first train due to the dumb and impenetrable ticket machines screwing around again. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, because if I had gotten on that train and then picked up an earlier connection on the Orange Line, I would have been walking over to the club when the rain-mixed-with-hail came through. As it was, I was five minutes later than anticipated and had the smarts to stay under the roof by the subway stop until the worst passed, then go over after.

I still got rained on, but this is a casual hazard of going outside in New England any time it's not snowing, so no big deal. Getting in relatively early after doors, I had the chance to get a couple beers and get settled before the bands started playing.

Bone Ritual [6/7]
Despite the sun outside as the rain cleared up, this was a hellish set fully up to the standards that Bone Ritual's set in the past. They brought out some new material as well as the stuff from their now nearly-unavailable demo (the band's been out of the CD version for a while, and now they're getting low on tapes); this will eventually translate into some new material, and hopefully sooner rather than later. It's difficult for any time seeing Bone Ritual after the first to match up to that experience (well, maybe just for those of us who were there for their live debut and didn't really know what to expect), but this was a high-quality show that should at least match expectations for this seriously good band.

Since the club wasn't full absolutely to the brim, I had the ability to take some pictures, which are below. This got more difficult as more people came in, and then I was both late and bushed to the O'Brien's gig, so no photos from there.



Little known fact: Cody plays bass in his bare feet, at least in Bone Ritual.

Nachzehrer [5.5/7]
Nachzehrer was also up for this, with another set of driving, thrashing black metal. The place was starting to fill up a little more as the afternoon turned into the evening, and despite missing Bone Ritual, they still got some damned good music. Either because of where I was standing or just because of the way the balance was, the bass was a little higher up than when I've seen this band previously, which seemed to turn the sound more towards black metal. This is cool stuff, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the band eventually sorts their sound out on record, when they're at the mercy neither of engineers nor venue acoustics.



Mark thudding away on bass for NZ. This picture is not of Wren with a plastic 7.62 NATO stuck up his nose half out of basic respect, and half because I could not get my phone out fast enough. This, though, also happened during this set and is marginally more newsworthy than "Bass Player Good At Playing Bass".

Blood of the Gods [5/7]
I hadn't seen this band before, but they held up their own end, laying out a good set of doomish black metal. It wasn't really the most differentiated out there, but it was a solid performance and fit in well with the rest of the bill, which while staying fairly united under the banner of black metal did allow for a lot of diversity in sound. This is how we do in the Northeast; the unfortunate part of this set, though, was that the band didn't appear to have anything recorded. Something to look for next time.



Blood of the Gods, mid-set.

Nåthruzym [6/7]
Having come down all the way from Vermont, these guys would be the first to be discouraged by any shortfall in their performence. Fortunately, this wasn't an issue at all, as Nåthruzym presented a top-grade set of epic-tinged black metal to this mountain fastness of...well...a bar located next door to a Mexican pizza shop. Black metal has a tendency to set itself stiff challenges like that, but it makes identifying the good bands easier, as they, like Nåthruzym did on the night, are able to manifest an appropriate atmosphere through the music, bringing the audience, whatever the venue, into the cold dark heart of the ideas.



Mutis in traditional Vermont epic-black-metal regalia. Yes, that is an apparently whole bird wing being used as shoulder armor.

I was able to get a CD from these guys; the sound suggests a little more Immortal than what I heard live, but this is probably down to the band not having to balance cabs against the PA, etc, and make sure everything got out. Hopefully, they'll be back again; despite the distance traveled, they got a good reaction, and as much good black metal as we already have in this part of New England, there's always room for more.


Show concluded, it was time to get some dinner and beat feet towards the transit system. Fortunately, it didn't take forever to get a cheeseburger-and-fries-with-the-works (which, as should have been expected, included a liberal amount of salsa and some sliced jalapenos) from the aforementioned Mexican pizza place, nor to get it down on the march up to the train station. Even with that, though, the train change and having to go so relatively far out on the Green Line, then get hiking again, meant that by the time I got up to O'Brien's, the first band had already started. Missed it, so to say, by that much.


Boarcorpse with Scaphism, Untombed, and Forced Asphyxiation
O'Brien's, Allston, 4/18/2010
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Forced Asphyxiation [5/7]
I got right in and took a few steps in past the door to immediately start listening to the band. Playing mostly basic but very solid death metal, they made a good restart to the night after the travel portion, and I was kind of bummed that they didn't have anything recorded available. This is a newer band, and it'll be interesting to see how they develop going forward; they had a good solid sound here, and definitely enough talent in the band to do something interesting with it.

In here, I got what would end up being the only beer of this show for me. Getting gilled at four in the afternoon at the previous gig may not have been the wisest decision in retrospect, but it sure as hell made sense at the time.

Untombed [6.5/7]
Wow. I'd seen these guys a couple of times before, and really, every band that hangs around for a while has the potential to unleash some absolute greatness, because otherwise they'd give up and do something else if they never caught lightning in a bottle in rehearsal and laid out some really killer jams. Juan, of course, is one of the truly classic death metal voices in New England, and the band's backed him up strongly before, but on this occasion everyone was really right at the top of their game. They got a good long set, and made every minute of it pay off, to a degree significantly better than what I'd seen from them before. Because, of course, bands and musicians can always improve, I'm not comfortable with going out and calling this a high outlier; maybe Untombed isn't going to be reliably this good, but they're going to play some good death metal whenever you see them, and additionally there's the chance for a performance this truly killer.

Untombed now has a five-song demo out, which I picked up in here, and which has proven to be full of nice crunchy death metal that strikes a good balance between old-school and slammier styles. Good stuff.

Scaphism [5.5/7]
When they started up, Scaphism had to deal with a bit of crowd depletion, but successfully yelled enough people back into the venue in relatively short order and had a decent crowd for a good, solid set of grind-tinged death metal songs mostly about rape, corpses, and raping corpses. However, this is also a band that will rhyme "snack" and "Sarlacc" when they need to, which really points up the essence of the band: the ability to take brutality out past the reducto ad absurdam, acknowledge the absurdity, and play it straight regardless. It's a tight needle to thread, but Scaphism does it very well, and I'm looking forward to when they have something recorded.

In here I went outside to take a brief rest on the sidewalk, because it was fucking hot inside. Unfortunately, this also procced concern from the organizers, who told me to get up before the Allston PD rolled up and started giving them shit about people lying around worse for wear outside. Apology!

Boarcorpse [6/7]
It was getting to the end of a long day, at least for me, but Boarcorpse, as they usually do, reached up and blotted nearly all of that out with a strong set of positive, brainwrecking groove-death metal. Jim had some issues with his pedals that were quickly fixed by a loaner from the Scaphism kit, but the mucking about with drum hardware didn't really break up the flow of the performance. They also brought a friend up who's just getting his feet wet on this live-performance thing to do some guest vocals, with pretty good results; not John Tardy by a fair stretch, but a lot of that was nerves and more will come with practice. Positive noise, positive chaos, and a good time by all; it may seem weird, but this is what you get with Boarcorpse.

Eventually, though, things had to end, and I dragged myself out over the bridges again to pick up the car, and manifestly got home without killing myself, as this entry makes manifest, though it is so fucking late that that may not have been clear for a while. In the interim, CNV kicked off their tour on the first non-Mos-Eisley Mos Eisley show, and there will be a writeup for that as well....as soon as that one finishes.

Every Shirt CIX: Bone Ritual

shirt: Bone Ritual
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2009
provenance: band

Picked up at their first gig and immediately turned around for the show the next night, this sharp turnaround was executed because the band in question is Wicked Awesome. This shirt is getting its sleeves excised for 100% duty at Party.San, partly because I promised Charlie and Cody that I'd do so (while moderately gassed), partly because there's a lot of overlap between Party.San attendees and their potential audience, and largely because, playing into this, the band is Wicked Awesome. They did a demo release at this gig and are nearly sold out of CD-Rs already; watch for it on Bestial Burst, probably in some ridiculously kvlt format.

Eyes of Noctum with Closed Casket, Bone Ritual, and Who Carries The Lantern [O'Brien's, Allston, 7/15/2009]

There was a lot of sturm and drang about this show going in, ranging from "lol,wut" to "GRR SILVER ENEMA HOSE UP YOUR ASS", to "meh, we'll give it a shot", but fortunately, things resolved to the point that this was a good and largely peaceable show, and the visitors from SoCal made it through the night without that old chant being bellowed at them.

I got bogged down with stuff at work more than anticipated, and thus left late -- and got caught in ANOTHER ridiculous main-thoroughfare closure -- but was able to stump my way in shortly after 9pm, when the bands were supposed to start. Of course, nobody who's gone to more than a handful of shows was anticipating the music to actually start at nine, so I had the chance to hang about, drink beer, try to stay out of the bands' way as they loaded in, watch riders biff it on the Tour, and yack with Dave and Juan about spreading Vicious Insanity, Ill Daemonium, and other materials around to the eastern territories. To be determined if I go hang with said doods Tuesday; I've got a lot of stuff packed into the next week and still have to finish getting all my gear together.

Who Carries The Lantern [5.5/7]
In a welcome respite from the usual go-around (I go to a show, at least one band doesn't have a bass player, I whine about it on the internet but headbang during their set and buy their merch anyway), half of the bands on this bill did cut down their instrumental distribution, but in a way that (decade-old snark about godheadSilo aside) I'm fundamentally more comfortable with. WCTL was the first of the guitarless bands on the bill, and though their doom/post-metal sound wasn't the tightest match for the rest of the bill, that's Ammonia Booking for you; Robin apparently has a fetish for bills that hang together only tenuously, probably for "if the kids are united" reasons as much for maximizing turnout. Here, as on most other occasions, the head-scratching quickly gave way to appreciation; WCTL got a good long set for an opener, and filled it with diverse, heavy, developed, and often melodic music that you might not immediately expect from a vox-bass-drums three-piece. This was some good stuff, and though they played for quite a while, there was never a sense that they were falling into a rut, which is often the case with drum-and-bass bands. They didn't have anything recorded available, which is a shame, but I was able to pick up a button that unfortunately isn't on my rig yet.

Bone Ritual [6.5/7]
There is a certain portion of the black metal population that bought into the drama going into this show and, presumably, hard-line refused to support Wes Coppola going around the country in a van with four other dudes and a bunch of equipment on the basis of his last name and some invented perversion of the true ideals of black metal. This now becomes deliciously ironic and hilarious because these people kvlted themselves out of Bone Ritual's first show, a set which played every other band at this gig off the stage and will likely destroy every subsequent black metal performance in Boston this year with the same facility that it beat out every previous one. Foregoing guitars in favor of Cody/Strep Cunt playing through more and bigger amps than he usually does with Witch Tomb, Bone Ritual blasted the audience with a tight four-song set of not-quite-VON-worship (including, yes, VON's "Dissection Inhuman") blending funeral-doom and ritualistic styles with the black metal filth that was expected going in based on the lineup. The good part was that Bone Ritual played a show, when the band had previously been ambivalent about taking the music live; the bad part was that they had only so much skullcrushingly awesome material on their demo, and couldn't really go on longer without people complaining about them suddenly turning into a VON or possibly Ildjarn cover band.

Of course, this then begs the question of who would object, really, to having bands occasionally perform full cover sets of obscure and/or defunct underground bands; yes, it's not the same as the real thing, and touring on it would be a ripoff, but it's easier to woodshed on a couple records for three weeks than to convince VON to reunite and play gigs, and cheaper to show up for gas money and a pizza than it is to bring in Witch Trap from Colombia. A scene that does this too regularly becomes vinyl-bound and loses its own creativity, but once or twice a year isn't going to hurt anything, and may convince the real bands to tour once they see there's a demand for their imitations.

Closed Casket [5/7]
I don't think anyone was actually confused or disturbed by Closed Casket having guitars, though some may play it so for the lulz in retrospect. They came down from Maine and acquitted themselves pretty well with a mix of black metal and NWOSDM that acquitted itself well, neither hitting any real highs nor being so boring or mis-composed as to drive people out of the room. I'm sure that, given the distance, they'd like to have made a bigger splash, but when you follow Bone Ritual, ending up at "decent" rather than "totally underwhelming" is a bit of an accomplishment in itself. I'm a little skeptical about them ending with "Killers"; while two of the other three bands also did prominent covers, they finished strong with their own material. Of course, this may just be me; my views on what Iron Maiden covers are interesting are well attested. Unfortunately, they didn't appear to have any merch available; differences between live and studio abilities aside, you usually get a better idea of a band's music on CD at your own leisure rather than while buzzed and shell-shocked from another band's set, and I wanted to make sure to give them a fair shake.

Between bands, I got Bone Ritual's standard merch bundle off Charlie (drums) and somehow scraped up enough quarters that he didn't have to break any bills, then, after leaning back against the post, had Nicholas Cage just walk on past in front of me to stand over by the end of Noctum's merch table. Holy fuckin' shit, man.

Eyes of Noctum [5.5/7]
First: EoN is not touring solely on Wes Coppola's last name. Second: if his last name wasn't what it is, they'd probably be touring with another band ot two rather than solo, much like the last black metal show I saw in this place, which featured 2-3 bands (given the near-100% overlap between Ashdautas and Volahn's live lineup, I'm not going to call this 3 bands without any qualification) from the same general part of the world. They played a decent set that incorporated a bunch of death elements, including a Bloodbath cover, sagged in the middle, and sounded nearly as much like Dimmu as advertised. Wes ran out some inter-song banter that seemed not to have been written by a native English speaker, but also threw in a self-deprecating joke about perceptions of his dilettantism ("I just became a vocalist an hour ago"), showing that he at least understands where the anti-elite-elitists are coming from. I got their CD, and a shirt because the merch chick was having trouble breaking the bill and I hate inconveniencing bands; not sure that I'd go out of my way to see them again, but this set at least was decent.

After the initial shock of Pops Coppola showing up at this shindig, we also got an illustration writ larger than usual of a phenomenon that, as Rev. Aaron's been quoted, is not so usual: parents showing up for shows, and beyond this, parents who show up to gigs and cause a distraction. Parental intervention usually involves both pride ("I'm glad, deep down, that my dad cares enough to show up and support when I'm playing a gig") and embarrassment ("I'm on stage in face paint and goth elevator boots singing about cannibalism, and my frickin dad is out there in the pit clapping along"), but in the case of the front-and-center parent, this can also turn into Oedipal frustration; no matter how much musicians say they want to not seek fame, when you're up on stage, you want people to pay attention to you....and when halfway through your set, it's half black metal doods and suddenly half preppie starfuckers who are grabbing your dad for pictures, it's got to rankle. Unlike some other cases, though, Pops Coppola was not looking for attention, just standing to the side, in the back, in front of nobody but the mixing stand, and since Wes has grown up his whole life with famous parents, he doubtless understands that this sort of comes with the territory. If his dad's following him around the whole tour, things could get awkward, but I've got to believe that a guy who changed his name to step away from his own family when he was coming up as an actor would have enough sense and taste not to helicopter his own kids. Also, I'm having a hard time seeing him wanting to take on three weeks of standing in dingy dive bars, getting pestered for pictures by non-fans and yelled at by liquored-up black metal dudes that he hasn't made a good movie since The Rock. Shit sucks; if it wasn't for the "rich" bit, nobody would ever do the "famous" part.

Tonight: moar black metal, fewer celebrities, out in Worcester.