Every Shirt CXLVIII: Random Acts of Violence

shirt: Random Acts of Violence
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2006
provenance: band

I probably got this one off the band at this show at the end of 2006, but in truth, there are a lot fewer possibilities on that than there ought to be. My younger brother, who's not particularly active in the scene, has maybe seen them more times than I have, as during the heyday of their activity (between 2003 and this point) I tended to spend a lot of time in Michigan or Germany. As might be inferred, this band isn't together any more, but if you like hardcore-driven thrash metal with melodic leads, they're worth digging up, either for the Cathartes Aura EP this shirt is from, or the earlier full-length that I keep forgetting the name of.

Random Acts of Violence with Revocation, Deadlikedeath, and Medicine 4 Tim [Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, 12/8/2006]

Sharp people who were actually there will go "wait, that's not the order, not the way it was on the bill or the way that you usually do review titles". Well, there's a reason for that, which will become clear as we look at the way the bands actually went down.

On getting in, I was struck really by how small this room is; despite being full way over capacity (194 yeah right) when I was down to see Sigh in 2002, I was almost sure that it was bigger. What the hell ever, it doesn't really matter. The order was somewhat surprising when considered in the abstract, but there are some concrete reasons why Revocation had to go on first.

Revocation [6/7]:
I'm not doing fractional ratings for this show (or any others that I can avoid), and so this stays a 6 rather than going up to a 7. Revocation still continues to get better and better every time I see them (so far, at about even two-week intervals), and with the newly finished "Ducttape and Buttrape" (the instrumental they debuted at the Skybar last time), they have enough material to do a full set of "7" material....albeit an extremely short set. To fill out their playing time, it's "5"-level stuff, and while this stuff is by definition solid, it comes off as down next to the absolutely brilliant stuff they're doing the rest of the time.
If you like thrash metal or prog-death, live in New England, and haven't taken it upon yourself to see these guys, you are missing out. To describe their sound accurately, I have to pull from my full range of cult knowledge: bits of Believer, Cynic, Atheist, mid-period Kreator, Imperium, and Converge all showed up last night, but it takes an experienced ear to discern the ingredients out of the surface impression, which is a totally original and totally awesome blend of basically everything good in technical metal since about 1985. Dave continues to pull out one or two guitar tricks that I didn't think were even possible every set, and Anthony continues to tease people with his occasional Choy/Patterson breaks when you'd normally expect him to be laying down rhythm behind Dave's soloing.
Bonus props to Anthony for his Out of the Dark... shirt -- I thought I was like the only person on this continent who had that EP.

So if these guys are so incredibly awesome, why are they opening this bill of local bands? The reason is simple: Phil is also on drums for RAOV, and as he has not yet been completely replaced with robot parts, he still needs to rest up between sets, and for as long as possible. He battled triumphantly through both sets, but if Revocation had gone on next-to-last, as they probably would have if they didn't share members with anyone else on the bill, about two hours behind the kit playing almost ceaselessly fast thrash metal would probably have taken an undue amount out of him.

Medicine 4 Tim [5/7]:
There's an unwritten rule in the NFL whereby black quarterbacks are compared only to other black quarterbacks, and white wide receivers only to other white wideouts, no matter how stupid or wrong the comparison is, or if there's a player whose attributes more closely match the guy with the exception of skin color. If we didn't have a similar "Female Vocalist Rule" in metal, it would be possible to state that this band sounds most like Pantera with a few gimmicks. Unfortunately, what people expect is more "Holy Moses crossed with Crisis". This is less true, but with so few female-fronted bands out there, comparisons are few and far between. M4T's style, apart from the bagpipe intro that their drummer blew while everyone else was setting up (usually a bonus for a Boston band, but here a little out of place because they didn't expand on it or anything), was somewhat mainstream-influenced thrash, not real technical or especially brutal, but still solidly delivered. The kilts, scally caps, and bagpipes suggested that there might be some trad-Irish influences at work, but there wasn't much to be heard after the intro. The weirdest part of the set, though, was when the vocalist took off her vinyl fetish-nurse costume and stripped down to a silver-lame' bikini top and hot pants. Again, some people may have found this hot, but to me it was just plain bizarre....though this may just be personal taste; 'skinny' is not a sell point on this end.
It seemed like their set got cut off short, either because they ran out of material or for some other reason; no idea over here. It just felt cut off is all, and this is probably accurate because of the circumstances that showed up later during RAOV.

Deadlikedeath [5/7]:
The organizers of this event, these guys played a nice, long, set of Boston hardcore that was just fun enough to take the edge off the length of it. Those more into hardcore probably enjoyed this a lot more, but for me, who's never been particularly into this scene, the set seemed to drag on a bit. It was uniformly well-executed, but there's only so many hardcore songs that I can stand to hear in a row, and DLD went over that number by about 3 or 4 on this set. Are they playing, though, for some git in a Hypocrisy jacket with Judas Priest studs on the shoulders? Hell no, and my personal reaction to this set shouldn't have a bearing on the assessment of the quality of the music that they delivered.

Random Acts Of Violence [7/7]:
Yes, this set was as good as advertised. The edge over Revocation here comes mostly from the general energy level, on stage and in the crowd. Where Revocation tries to blow your mind Atheist-style with technical brutality, RAOV mostly follows the Bay Area pattern of subordinating technicality to the groove, and just plain writing incredible songs, and the result is that it's easier for people to get into and get moving to. It certainly helped that the sound guys got their guitar sound right, because a lot of what they do depends on trading leads, and if the lead isn't cutting through the rhythm, a lot of stuff can get lost. Fortunately, almost all the leads cut straight in as they were supposed to, and the effect was truly transformative. There are still more than a few touches of their old hardcore style in their sound, but it's melded in with their melodic thrash attack almost seamlessly, providing just the right amount of color and shading to their sound. The next time these guys do a show with My Pet Demon, go, and watch out, because it's going to be a battle royale of melodic thrash leads, and neither band is going to be satisfied with coming off second best.

When you add it all up, it was a great show, especially for nine bucks, even if the mids were a little scooped set-order-wise. I picked up a RAOV shirt and buttons from them and Revocation, partly to support the bands and partly because I realized on Thursday while putting the Celtic Frost strip on my kutte that I had lost my Motorhead pig at Blind Guardian, and I needed something else to put in its place on the waist strap. The buttons are a temporary solution while I try to track down some similarly impressive chunk of tin from Slayer or someone, but will be moved up onto the collar and pocket areas once the new pin is in. These guys are awesome and deserving of a place on the jacket, and since neither band has put out patches (hint hint hint), buttons are how it has to go. They also look cool, which certainly doesn't hurt.


Next show is Bodom, Amon Amarth, Gojira, and Sanctity on Saturday, and then I'm going to China. This is much less fun than it sounds, trust me.

Hirax with Mouth Sewn Shut, Random Acts of Violence, Hirudinea, and Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity [Middle East, Cambridge, 11/12/2006]

Two shows in one weekend is a lot for an old dude who still has something fucked up with his back, as well as a book to write and a shitload of Chinese homework to do, but it got accomplished, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Katon needs to start having better judgement about promoters so that Hirax can stop having 60% of their tour cancelled, so that everyone can get a chance to experience something like this.

Of course, the show didn't start out nearly as smooth as it finished. This was a Sunday show, and not everyone has the ability to just take the next day off and rock out, so the hall (downstairs, there were some punk/core/emo [no idea] bands playing upstairs) wasn't completely full, and most of the openers played to pretty much a handful of fans. The overall turnout for the openers was similar to Saturday at the Skybar, but with the vital difference that many more of us in the audience here, in both absolute and relative terms, were not in bands on the bill.

Reverend Grundarr and the Unholy Trinity [5/7]:
Maybe it was the better sound from the music-hall (as opposed to bar) PA, maybe it was because I wasn't half as drunk, or maybe because they were opening up the show rather than following Swashbuckle, but these guys sounded a lot better here than they did at O'Brien's two weeks ago. Unfortunately, this is somewhat restricted information, because the number of people in front of the stage watching them was somewhat desperately limited. After I got down to the front, becoming the fifth audience member, I was going to say something about it being okay to start, now that there were more people in the audience than onstage, but didn't, because I don't really know any of the band members personally, and the only thing worse than playing to a next-to-empty floor is when the next-to-empty floor is also making smartass comments. They persevered, though, showing off the diversity in their writing and composition that often tends to get fuzzed out by the sound equipment of the venues they normally play, even some Bay Area touches that I didn't recall being able to pick out on their CD, and we responded on par with the complement of Henry Rollins' old maxim: if a band, no matter how small, is there playing a show and rocking out, you have a responsibility as an audience to rock hard as well, to show appreciation for their hard work. More people came down during the set, and it had to be counted as a success, but this isn't really the kind of band that's best seen behind a huge metal railing; despite the debits to sound clarity, it's probably better to catch them somewhere where they can set up on the floor in the middle of the audience.

Hirudinea [5/7]:
I could say that this band put together a strong set of blackened death/thrash, but then someone would certainly say that this statement actually doesn't carry any information at all. Both parts of the above are certainly correct; Hirudinea's sound is mostly thrash with a few death metal turns and some black metal shadings, but just saying so doesn't really give any indication of what this makes them sound like. It probably helps to note that their current release is the A side of a split with Watchmaker, and that they covered the Cro-Mags and some early Mayhem in this set with about equal power and punch. They have good execution and intensity, and their overall sound is plenty cool, but they seemed to need just that little more on their original stuff to make them really stand out. Maybe it's on the CD (which I haven't listened to yet, that's on the plate for tomorrow), or maybe it's still ahead; regardless, these guys are playing good brutal thrash right now, and it's quite worth going up front for if they're opening a show you're at. The only disappointment was that they had to stop right after doing "Deathcrush"; it felt like they were only just getting fired up.

Random Acts of Violence [6/7]:
These guys have played a lot of shows with My Pet Demon, but I somehow hadn't managed to actually see them before this show. In contrast to the rest of the bill, including the headliners, they showed off a much more melodic thrash style, more "North Shore" than "South Shore", which has got to be one of the silliest scene splits out there. It wasn't just the change of pace that set these guys apart; there were some serious skills being shown off here, in the context of a bunch of good music. Their CDs are also on deck for tomorrow, at which point I'll have made a significant knowledge turnaround on yet another "should know more but don't" band; if you don't know these guys yet, you should also do likewise.

Mouth Sewn Shut [5/7]:
Abstractly, these guys were pretty cool; brutal hardcore changed up with reggae, which at least is different and which in this case was executed pretty well. Concretely, though, you really have to wonder what the HELL they were doing on this bill, as they had almost nothing in common with either the headliners or the other local support. They were a nice oddity and had some good music, but they felt a little out of place here, and didn't really endear themselves to anyone by running over their scheduled timeslot and pushing Hirax later. This is a band that you really have to see yourself to decide an opinion on; their mix of the intense and the laid back will appeal to some people, but others will hate it with even greater intensity.

Hirax [7/7]:
If you've got an illustrated dictionary (to pull out and mock people with when they go back to that old stereotype of metalhead == retarded), and it doesn't have a picture for AWESOME, Aaron has plenty of pictures from this set that you can print out and just paste in next to the definition; almost anything will do. Seriously, this set was something to behold; not as packed down front as this hall was for Vital and Dismember last month, but this just gave the pit more room to be absolutely insane, and the front row was still so thickly stuffed that Katon was able to surf out off the railing on several occasions. The band's intensity and firepower was further amplified by some deft showmanship; the thrash metallers were full up for a rare Hirax date from the start, but they lit a royal fire under the hardcore segment with a punishing cover of "Hostile Territory", and in doing so got everyone's energy up even further. The end of the set -- until the encore, where we had to stop and roar the band back onstage -- was kind of a blur mostly from that point, as I was banging around, throwing moshers -- including this little ~40-year-old-guy who could teach any dozen Palladium tough guys a thing or two about totally insane thrashing -- back into the pit, and much more feeling the music than listening to it. Still, AWESOME. Opeth, you lean back and listen; Hirax, you charge forward and feel. Rumor is that the band will be coming back around "soon", or maybe just "next year", and it's not totally impossible that someone in Rhode Island could get a backline and some axes together for the band and get the Providence date on the 16th uncancelled; whatever the opportunity that avails itself, you should take advantage and check these guys out.

My stack of patches that I still haven't put on my jacket increases; I got one of Hirax's good (as opposed to the more common "crummy plain cloth") patches in addition to the Barrage of Noise EP, and may have time to sew it up on Friday before Hypocrisy (yes, Suffocation and Fear Factory are nominally above them on the bill, but my jacket should speak amply for my mind on the matter), if I'm not doing Chinese homework or typesetting the book. This'll be the only show next weekend; someone's getting up a gig at Mark's on Saturday, but there is officially No Fucking Way I miss Michigan battle Ohio State effectively for the national title. GO BLUE!!!