Dark Passenger with Faces of Bayon, Obsidian Tongue, and Barren Oak [Ralph's, Worcester, 7/19/2012]

The conditions prevailing the last time out had subsided back to normal, but despite the lane closings getting down to the Pike and the work on 290, I managed to get in just about doors, and had the chance to rest up a little before the bands went on.  The heat was starting to go down a little, but Ralph's' upstairs is kind of steamy even under the best of conditions, so people, even this early, were staying more downstairs and in the parking lot when they came in.  As the bands started up, though, the room did fill in.

Barren Oak [5/7]
This was a slightly larger sample of Barren Oak than I got the last time, but continued to be nothing but thought-provoking.  Some of the stuff that Alex (and now Steve (ex-Cythraul)) was doing here, in particular a lot of the clean vocals and some of the more-jazz driven lines, didn't work that well, but more of their material did, including a lot of a unique take on Amon Amarth's "Victorious March" into Dissection's "Thorns of Crimson Death" that, via the diminished instrumentation, really recalled the MIDI/MOD reprogrammings of metal songs briefly popular at the end of the last century, before bandwidth caught up to processor speeds.  It may be that nothing comes out of this project, but with each show that becomes less and less likely: if nothing else, Barren Oak makes you think about what's possible at the very margins of black metal -- what this music can be, and maybe about what it should and shouldn't be.  Barren Oak still works as a band as well as an intellectual experiment, but the deliberate intent to push the line between experiment and trolling, to test boundaries and affirm or discard them, is likely going to continue to be the driving force behind this project in the future.

Alex in hakama and leather trenchcoat, looking like the black metal Hiko Seijuro.

Obsidian Tongue [6.5/7]
Midway through the set, Brendan asked the crowd "so are you sick of us yet?  We've been here like ten times"; I obviously can't answer for everyone, but as long as OT keeps rolling out performances like this one, it's going to be a long time before anyone has enough.  This set wasn't quite as good as the one at their release show, but it nearly got to that level despite having a pretty minimal overlap in terms of material selection.  Obsidian Tongue continue to develop, but even where they are, they've got a lot of really good material that, as they are now, is consistently performed despite the variety in terms of riffs and composition at a consistently high level.  They're starting to get a little more visibility on the heels of Volume 1..., and every bit of it is deserved.

Faces of Bayon [6/7]
In a way paralleling Napalm Death's flirtation with the absurd as they tested the boundaries in the other direction two decades ago, Faces of Bayon appears to be on a mission to write the longest practical doom song -- and while they've got a ways to go to catch, say, Green Carnation, they're definitely closing in on the limitations of DIY set times.  The new tune that they opened with was deep, extensive, varied, epic, intense, captivating -- and so long that at its conclusion, Matt had to ask the sound guy if they had time for another.  As good as the Heart of the Fire material is, the new stuff is a step forward from there, justifying the anticipation that's sure to build as we get it in drips and drabs thanks to being unable to play more than a handfull of tunes on any one set.  Two songs, on paper, may not look like much of a set, but two Faces songs (or at least the two we got here) represent on the order of half an hour of classic, high-grade, no-limits doom-death in the best old English style.  Great stuff.

Between sets I did merch of some sorts and others; one of the Darkwor guys told me to hang around for more discs to take over, and I picked up both Dark Passenger's record and a shirt from Faces in the process of asking Matt for some stickers for export.  I was kind of torn on Obsidian Tongue - I'm not sure if I already have one of their shirts or not (I think so), but if not, there's another gig next week that I should be able to nab something at.

Unrelated fun fact: Dan from Dark Passenger's other band, Shroud of Bereavement, has at times had a lineup on stage fully as large as all of the first three bands on this gig combined.

Dark Passenger [5.5/7]
I hadn't actually heard this band going in, mostly drawn out by good recs, the solid undercard, and the history of Shroud as proof that Dan doesn't get himself involved in no-account bands.  Dark Passenger's fairly new, and the material that they have so far is a little raw and undifferentiated, but the band's performance was strong, and there are seeds of something really cool in the music that they have right now that will surely get brought out further as they write and gig more.  Their sound, at least as far as I can track it, comes from a midpoint between the classic doom of early My Dying Bride and the first Cathedral record and the inward-focused black metal of turn-of-the-century Enslaved; they're still in the process of sorting a distinct Dark Passenger sound out of those influences, but any way you cut it, this is a good and intriguing jumping-off point.  They might have gone on a little longer, just on the available time to curfew, but they ran out of material -- not so great for the audience at the present moment, but a positive sign going forward, as it makes clear that as good, solid, and professional as Dark Passenger is right now, they're still really just starting their journey as a band, and will definitely produce even better stuff and better sets down the line.

Dark Passenger set out across the brine.

After waiting around a bit to pick up those Darkwor materials, and again explaining the legend of Anton Maiden (rapidly becoming the Metal Thursday preferred clear-out music), I hit the road, and despite the fucking DOT closing the onramp to the Pike AGAIN for another 15-minute detour, I got back in good order before work kicked my ass forwards and backwards on Friday, making timely publication impossible.  Next week is the last sprint to the finish line: Agalloch and Mausoleum and Obsidian Tongue again with barely a breather, and after that, it's off across the open seas.

Faces of Bayon with Led To The Grave, Forced Asphyxiation, and Demoralizer [Ralph's, Worcester, 10/13/2011]

This time around, I successfully had enough other shit to work on that getting out, fed, and over on time involved a pretty minimum amount of latency. I got out to Ralph's shortly after doors, but didn't have to waste a whole ton of time aimlessly browsing the Ragnarok distro table while waiting for the bands to start, and unlike last week, it was only one beer from inside to first notes.

Demoralizer [5.5/7]
If deathcore wasn't already a word -- and, more importantly, a deadly slur -- it would be appropriate to coin it for this band. I hadn't seen Demoralizer before, probably because they tend to play doomier and/or more hardcore bills than I tend to go to, on balance, but they kicked out a solid, chunky set here of violent, aggressive music drawing for both its riffs and intonation from death metal and from hardcore. Juan afterwards compared them to Autopsy, which I can definitely see]: old-styled death metal flavored with punk and grind vitriol. Though the vocalist nearly started a nerd fight bantering with Tony over, of course, Star Trek vs Star Wars, it was mostly the music that stayed violent for this set, early as it was in the night. This was a good performance, though the style isn't one that I'd necessarily go hunting a full bill of, and I'm definitely going to watch out for this band in the future.

On the vital question of Star Wars vs Star Trek, which is on course to be come the irrepressible conflict of the Boston scene, pitting the blue of the Federation science officers against the gray of, um, AT-AT walkers, let's go with that rather than those trade-alliance-space-Fu-Manchu-mandarins from The Phantom Menace, the answer is clear: both lose, because the fortress planet of Iserlohn is composed largely of liquid metal armor that would absorb, then out-radiate, the energy blast of the Death Star (fucking conductor physics, how does it work), and the reconfigurability of its weapons systems, both the Thor's Hammer and the normal gun emplacements, means that it could easily concentrate enough firepower to punch a hole in a Dyson sphere (which if you want to get really technical pretty much need to be made of tissue paper in order to be remotely resource-efficient, but whatever). Your humble author nerdfights for keeps, with the power of embarassingly deep kvltness.

Forced Asphyxiation [6/7]
FA, as entirely expected, smoothed those disputes out by getting the bill back on track with strong, traditional brutal death metal on traditional subjects: weed, corpses, weed, violence, mayhem, and yeah, a few songs about marijuana. For all the "Terrifying Hydroponic Carnage" label they put on their stuff, and for all the ease that people in the scene around here have in referring to any Force Asphyxiation song as being about weed, the signal change in this set was the relative lack of songs about pot (ok, "relative lack" here means "not every song is about weed", but still), despite getting more runtime than I think I've seen from them before. The band's songwriting is developing as surely as their execution; it's not that songs about weed are bad, or that there isn't a lot of room for other death metal subjects to get hackneyed, but constraint in lyrics leads to constraint in music, and the more varied topics Forced Asphyxiation puts into the lyrics, the more variation they're going to put together in the music. This was a good strong performance from a band that has every sign of continuing to develop; they're not quite in the top echelon of NEDM yet, but they're getting there, and the tour that this show kicked off is only going to help.

As mentioned, FA were out on the road for most of 19 days supporting Led To The Grave after this, so I bought a shirt to support and because it was pretty cool. The "most of" in there is because of how LTTG routed the tour; they quite sensibly started with three dates in Worcester, New Bedford, and Boston and will wind it up with a homecoming show out on the Cape; taking advantage of population density and an active local scene to add more dates at the start and end of a tour isn't cheesing, it's smart planning, as the bands get some shakedown days in front of presumably understanding audiences to work the bugs out and get used to playing out every night. The fact that it makes a more impressive itinerary without adding more days of sleeping in a van without showering is a side benefit.

Led To The Grave [5.5/7]
As noted back a bit, doing this tour is a challenge for Led To The Grave that they're going to have to meet eventually in order to decide how they continue as a band. On the evidence of this set, there's every indication that they're at least prepared to make that step up. There were still more than a few moments of "yeah, we've heard this before", but more of "wow, this is really cool" then previously. There is not as much unbroken ground in thrash metal now as there was 20 and 25 years ago, just due to the passage of time, but LTTG did show some signs here of at least differentiating themselves from those replacement-level associations. More of the stuff on the new EP is more different, and just better, than the stuff on their first record, and their live execution continues to improve. The difference between them and their nominal support is not quite as large as the granularity of the arbitrary numbers pasted here suggests, and other people might have marked their cards differently. This was one of the stronger sets I've seen from this band and a good tour kickoff; we'll see where they stand when they get back.

Already having a shirt in my belt and mindful of the giant piles in my closet, and also wanting to get a listen of the band's new stuff, I picked up the Sent To Burn EP from Led To The Grave and through a miscommunication got the Extreme Audio Gangbang split-7" as well. No problem with either of those; the EP is a decent enough record and the split includes not only one of LTTG's better songs, not available elsewhere, but also tracks from Dead Languages in what felt like a better presentation than I've heard from them on CD, and Macerated, whose demo from way back is probably at the bottom of a pile or something. Very cool.

Faces of Bayon [6/7]
In Which A Headliner Plays Four Songs, And Nearly Gets Yelled At For Running Over. As noted previously, Faces of Bayon have a habit of writing extremely long and grindingly heavy tunes; this set was about half of the meaty parts of Heart of the Fire, plus "So Mote It Be" after Matt confirmed that they had the time for one more. One more ten-plus-minute song might have been pushing it a little, but the band pushed it as well; relentlessly solid execution here as on any time I've seen this band. My personal preferences in doom may be coloring perceptions somewhat (first Cathedral record only or you're a false), but it's pretty undeniable that Faces of Bayon consistently produce solid, well-executed, heavy-as-fuck metal whenever given the opportunity. Killer stuff.


Following the close-up of festivities, I dumped my remaining wallet contents on the Ragnarok table, picking up stuff from Dormant and Abaroth, both of which proved their mettle on the drive home. I'm on call now, but tomorrow, Impiety's bringing the wrath to these trembling halls: if I miss out on that, not only do I miss probably my only chance to ever see Impiety, but there might not be a Ralph's left for another Metal Thursday.

Faces of Bayon with Black Pyramid, Dead Languages, and Pilgrim [Ralph's, Worcester, 6/24/2011]

Due to a late-breaking prod ticket tying me up at work, I wasn't able to make it in to Abnormality the night before, but with my on-call shift finished and nothing tying me down for the weekend, it was a quick out to Worcester for Faces of Bayon's release show. As usual due to consistently budgeting more time for travel than I actually need, I was one of the earlier members of the general public in, but the room quickly filled in as Pilgrim set up and got ready.

Pilgrim [5/7]
Whether you define this band as "classic" or "not doing anything new" is primarily going to come down to how you feel about doom metal in general. This underage power trio sump-vented a thick, long set of slow, heavy material inspired heavily by Black Sabbath and Candlemass, and did so with a quality of execution, especially on the mostly melodic vocals, that a lot of other bands can only aspire to. At the same time, though, there wasn't a lot in this set that didn't have those obvious precursors, and on a couple songs, the length of the composition somewhat overran the ability of the riffs to hold it up. Local bands being heavily influenced by those that have gone before them, in any style, though, is not exactly news, and Pilgrim are all really young; if they've crystallized doom as a style to this extent at this age, it's going to be really interesting to see where they go with it in the future.

During Pilgrim's set, they mentioned that this was about the largest number of people they'd ever played for. This was one of the denser crowds that I've seen at Ralph's for an all-local show (probably have to go back to Darkwor for an immediate comparison), but given their performance, they'll likely be back on a Metal Thursday bill for a similar audience sooner or later.

Dead Languages [5/7]
Despite having spent a significant amount of time on the 2010 Euro tour (pssst, time is running out on the 2011 RFM) moving their records and stickers (and of course, on the front end listening through the EP I had in order to know what I was talking about), this was the first time I'd actually seen Dead Languages live. They generally matched up to recorded expectations; mostly doom, but with occasional grind tendencies that manifested themselves off and on in faster tempos, breaking up the main flow of slow, heavy, heavily distorted doom. Most of the set here was off their Ancient Astronauts record, but they also did a hardcore song that nobody in attendance was able to claim the prize for recognizing...maybe because doom and hardcore don't traditionally have a huge degree of audience overlap, but maybe also because they doomed it up, taking the tempo down by half and burying the expected up-beat hits beneath a sludgy morass.

In here, I did most of my merch (getting a self-build kit of Dead Languages' record later), which ended up running to recorded material from all four bands, which is kind of rare these days. Pilgrim and Faces of Bayon on CD, and Black Pyramid's Stormbringer 8" on what turned out to be red vinyl -- I don't collect, so no care -- plus a nontrivial whack of various kinds of Black Pyramid stickers for export. Unlike the last two pretty-much-doom-dominated shows I was at, though, I didn't end up with one of the bands giving me a free undersized t-shirt for little readily discernable reason, so that part of the export mix remains unaffected.

Black Pyramid [6/7]
While the other two openers followed mostly in Faces of Bayon's vein of extremely heavy, graveling doom, Black Pyramid cut the other way, pulling in more melodics while still not stinting on the heaviness. That's in many ways the great strength of this band: the ability to pull in early-Iron-Maiden shadings from prog rock and early-'70s electric folk rock (cf. Wishbone Ash) in a doom context and play equally as well, and as well-received, with Faces of Bayon as with a band like Truckfighters in a couple weeks. Seriously, listen to something like "Macedonia" and try to honestly claim there's no late-'70s/early-'80s Harris influence in the mix. This was a killer set that got a strong and turbulent crowd response, probably more so than most people would have expected from a doom metal band, sending more than a few people running for cover when they unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of the pit.

The crowd filtered down a little after Black Pyramid, which was a bit of a shame; on the one hand, some people do have to work Saturdays, but this was pretty late already, and Faces of Bayon was about to put up a pretty class set themselves.

Faces of Bayon [6/7]
Most stuck, though, and those who hadn't bought the CD at the start of the night and spun it in their cars during parking lot rituals in preference to seeing the other bands on the bill got a good first look at the record as the band played it straight down, thirteen-minute songs, tricky and ethereal ambient parts, and all. This was an emotional set for the band -- a year removed from their first show (if I remember Matt's words correctly), and they've not only finally gotten this record out, but tragically lost their original drummer -- but they executed the material little short of flawlessly, conveying those emotions of passion and desolation out to the audience. Heart of the Fire is a long, meaty, diverse record, the variation in sound making this performance come off a little close to Sabbath and a little farther from early Cathedral than I've heard from them in the past, but there was plenty of molten-glass pounding in the set as well, especially in closing with "So Mote It Be".

As mentioned, Heart of the Fire is kind of a long album, so when the band finished up, we were basically shooed out by the venue management; I gave trying to buy Drudkh's Blood In Our Wells off the Ragnarok distro table a pass and headed out, getting back home a little past 3 AM. Fortunately, I don't have to work weekends, so I could sleep all day and then stay out on the booze till 3 on Saturday as well; eventually, I recovered from all of this and got this pile of likely-mostly-inaccurate verbiage loaded out just in time to head in to see Scaphism.


As alluded, there is a month until I head out across the ocean, and these are the remaining shows:

Jun 28 - Scaphism, Totality - Church (Boston, MA)
Jun 30 - Coffin Birth, Totality - Ralph's (Worcester, MA)
Jul 7 - The Accursed, Warblade, Hirudinea, Autolatry - Ralph's (Worcester, MA)
Jul 8 - Untombed, Humanity Falls - Champions Cafe (Everett, MA)
Jul 9 - Hate Eternal - Palladium (Worcester, MA)
Jul 14 - Truckfighters, Black Pyramid, Mockingbird - Ralph's (Worcester, MA)
Jul 16 - Abnormality, Human Infection - Ralph's (Worcester, MA)
Jul 17 - Ash Borer - PT-109, Allston (provided I remember to get the location from the Nachzehrer guys)
Jul 21 - Morgirion, Nathruzym, Vattnet Viskar, Bog of the Infidel - Ralph's (Worcester, MA)
Jul 23 - Vital Remains - Middle East (Cambridge, MA)
Jul 24 - Acaro - Church (Boston, MA)

The last two may be somewhat endangered by my on-call schedule, so get your stuff in early.

November's Doom with Woods of Ypres, Gwynbleidd, Goddamn Zombie, and Faces of Bayon [Ralph's, Worcester, 5/6/2011]

With the earlier start (and the lurking threat of a sellout), I had an earlier start coming out, and thus a bit more traffic. Regardless, I got out in good order, and in to the bar just as November's Doom was closing up their soundcheck. I picked up a beer and restrained the urge to pour the contents of my wallet out entirely over the Oak Knoll table; Jeremy always has a great selection -- and this time, a brand new Black Harvest record -- but there were four touring bands this time, and I wanted to be sure I could support as needed.

Faces of Bayon [5/7]
Whether it was because they were opening, or just because Matt'd had his gall bladder out the day before, this wasn't quite as ripping or as powerful a set as I'd seen from the band last time. The brutal, crushing, glacial doom was the same, and the heaviest doom on the bill this night, but maybe not as violent in pushing the nails through your boots and into the floor. They're putting out a new record at the end of June; with a headlining slot and hopefully none of the band recovering from surgery, the record release show will hopefully see them step up again.

Goddamn Zombie [4.5/7]
The last crowd reaction to that I recall as comparable to this band that I can recall is Graveside Service at the Skybar four years back. This is appropriate, because with two guitars, no other instruments, costumes, stage dressing, and extensive playback, this band is like the other half of Graveside Service (at least as they were four years ago). And like GSS, this band is probably too weird and not metal enough to get a uniformly good reaction from the serious (and, frankly, occasionally SRS BSNS) metalheads at a show like this. Their nifty cover of Death's "Zombie Ritual" and the "it's not murder, it's just meat" refrain aside, it's hard to argue that this band wouldn't do a hell of a lot better with a more gothic audience than the one they had here. They had some decent moments, but the unenthusiastic reaction was pretty much warranted; when you've got two vocalists and your entire rhythm section on playback already, there's just no excuse for having vocals on playback while one of the vocalists isn't singing.

Gwynbleidd [6/7]
Much more Opethy than the last time they were around (which shook out more like Primordial), Gwynbleidd executed a top-class set of melodic doom metal that really got the audience going again after the dip; this was the first set of the night that wouldn't've been out of place on the really stellar outing the night before. A lot of the set came off the new(ish) record, Nostalgia, but they didn't slack on the older material for either volume or quality, closing with "Awakening" off Amaranthine to huge acclaim.

All of the following should be easily corroborated by anyone else who showed up. It's not at all influenced by the fact that the Gwynbleidd guys are cool dudes who gave me a free shirt (naw sized for my frame, but I'll find a good home for it) and a large stack of stickers to take over on the festival tour. I got some stickers off them for that purpose by request; the unsolicited, much larger, extra stack was just bonus.

Woods of Ypres [6.5/7]
Probably down in significant part to being a lot more balanced, across all four-and-a-half records, than the last time, this was a better Woods set than I've seen since last year, and in its diversity and strong black metal components the best set of those on offer here tonight. Omitting "Ontario Town" (shock horror) and changing up the selections from Woods I and Woods II, the band continued to demonstrate their strength in depth as well as the virtues of the current record and the current single that they effectively released at this gig. If this band comes by and you miss them, you're missing out; they're on a hardcore touring binge, but with this variety in the set, you're going to miss great performances of classic songs.

Also, bring your wallet. Dan maintains high standards of quality in design and manufacture in Woods' merchandise, but this comes at a cost. It hurt not having the $40 for the "whoodie" they had on offer, and it hurt forking out $20 for the new single, but this is $20 for a new, limited, hand-numbered, Woods 45 on clear vinyl, signed by all the band members, and with an enclosed coupon for a free download of the new tracks, so you don't need to dig out the USB cable for your turntable to get them into a portable format. That's what you call "improving the value proposition". The music is also pretty cool, so buy the record, provided they have copies left when they come by your town.

November's Doom [6/7]
By this time, weighted down with only three hours' sleep between shows, I was approaching dead on my feet. Fortunately, the band was far from it, smashing out a strong and consistent set of precisely-machined death-doom. The setlist was built strongly around the new Aphotic record, but also pulled in a fair measure of older stuff; I've never been super into this band, so while I can't attest to how they did on really early material, they hit my personal high points off The Pale Haunt Departure and sold the new one pretty well. Tremendous music and an entirely worthy capstone to Metal Thursday's anniversary mini-fest.

Somehow, I managed to get home in one piece and neither stabbed nor arrested while out on the booze Saturday; that and paying two nights' worth of sleep debt Sunday is why this is a little late. Next gig is probably Destruction provided it doesn't sell out; my Party.San ticket should get in shortly, and when that's in and the tour's planned, there'll be a formal RFM.

Faces of Bayon with Vaporizer, Wizardry, and Orim [Ralph's, Worcester, 6/17/2010]

I ended up missing out on the moved Eyehategod show on the Tuesday before this, mostly due to work commitments, but also due to a troublesome trend; if you look back at the two previous shows written up here, you'll notice that the dates involved are also the dates on which the Celtics lost in the Finals. Nights on which I had to sit home, they won. I clearly SHOULD have gone down to the Cambridge Elks for that gig, then, because the Celts ended up losing that night (indicating that I wasn't the jinx), and it was by all reports amazing, but I did still have work stuff to deal with that would have made it difficult.

The upshot of all of this is that if the Celtics were still going to fuck it up while I was sitting home, I had no excuse for not going out to a good show and ignoring the basketball. I was going out to this one anyway, but ignoring the game, as well as the buildup via going right from work, turned out to be the adaptive path. The last I saw, the score was in the single digits, and then coming out, I was on a lingering doom metal contact high and not bothered. I got in with decent timing, and it wasn't too long before Orim started things off.

Orim [5/7]
The first of four bands on this bill that I hadn't seen yet, these guys started a little shaky, but solidified, presenting a solid if somewhat derivative set of good old USHM roughly along the lines of Ravage. Orim had a little more in the way of Iron Maiden in the vocals, and a little more reliance on low-ended riffing to set up their songs, but clearly are coming out of the same American tradition, which is cool and more than a little impressive when you consider that the great balance of new ideas in power/traditional metal has been coming out of Europe over the last 15 years. They didn't have anything recorded yet, but will allegedly have a demo out in the near future; something to watch out for, even if only to see how this band, which is either relatively new or has been extremely insular in western MA for the last five years, develops this sound.

Wizardry [5.5/7]
Though these guys have cut down to a power trio from the five-piece listed on their current CD, they haven't cut down the sound much if any; this was a full-throated set of roaring metal building on about equal parts archetypal/stereotypical stoner doom and USHM in the Manowar-inherited-via-Slough-Feg style that (IMNSHO) we don't see enough of in this kind of music. The material, even more than the performance, seemed to get stronger as the set went on, so it's going to be interesting to see how these guys develop, and how they sound on record with the current lineup.

In addition to their self-titled record, I also picked up a bunch of matchbox-sized Wizardry promo cards to take overseas. With a month or so still to go before I ship out, New York is nearly as well represented in the grab bag of stuffs as New England; that's liable to change going forward, though, and it's certainly not like the bands aren't eminently deserving of the exposure.

Vaporizer [7/7]
Wow. Just unreal. To the extent that "doomcore" actually exists, this band are in the first echelon. There was a lot of hardcore in this mind-blowing set, but at least as much doom metal; this may be me just having watched the DVD that came with Deaf To Our Prayers again, but the total experience here was like nothing so much as if Heaven Shall Burn grew up filling their heads with Southern Lord's roster rather than Regain. A complete full immersion of thrashing doom, this also saw the most floor motion of the night; maybe not up to the very high standards of peak Metal Thursday moshing, but this was a doom metal night, and the crowd was both slightly different and less disposed to hit one another than on that'd be in for a more death/thrash/whatevercore bill.

These guys didn't end up having anything recorded available, so I got a shirt instead, and felt bad about the difficulty they went through digging out something in XL. More relevantly, people need to start paying more attention to Vermont, and to do more to bring bands out of there; there's a significant amount of good music, even just going on random gigs from the past year or so, that has developed in relative isolation because the state happens to not be strongly connected to the coastal belt. The major population centers are further north even than Maine, and the road network sucks with regard to getting people to Manchester, Worcester, Springfield, and Albany. It'd be more natural to play out more in Montreal, and from there the other populated parts of Canada, but someone put a national border and a language barrier in the way. Vaporizer's been putting some decent runs of dates together, so they may be over this hurdle, but people interested in interesting new metal bands might be well advised to check out the land of hippies and maple syrup.

Faces of Bayon [6/7]
This is pretty much letter-perfect as to what I want to hear, personally, when I listen to doom metal: fewer Sabbath structures and more of the pounding low end death metal at glacial tempos a la Cathedral's first album. By far the slowest and heaviest band of the night, this resulted in less floor motion, but built into a punishing set of moderately epic proportions that put a convincing capstone on a solid, well-rounded night of diverse perspectives on doom. Pure quality; their coming gig with Sin of Angels, no slouches in the dirty-and-excruciatingly-slow department themselves, will be a molten glass deathmarch of the first order.

Things eventually closed up, and people found out that the basketball game had gone the wrong way, but that was immaterial; this was a stellar show and a free and easy drive back, no matter how dead I ended up being the next day, which contributed to the lateness of this writeup. The last one should be done shortly, and then the one from either Abnormality or Hivesmasher, depending on how that coinflip goes, this weekend.