Horna with Kommandant, Bog of the Infidel, Nachzehrer, and Sarcomancy [Great Scott, Allston, 6/5/2012]

Great Scott has been far from a favorite -- or even frequent -- venue of mine in the past six years, mostly due to being, well, far from places where you can park without a permit.  For this one, I had to get down, and so on the weekend I scouted out the area while breaking in my new boots, talking the FNG at work through his first on-call shift, and postponing the usual round of football, Irish brekkie, and liver damage.  It came ultimately to nothing -- except to the notion that it is not really all that much further (about a quarter-mile each way) than O'Brien's, which I hike to all the goddamned time.  It was accordingly time to buck up and use my damn feets for a change, and despite starting out late and getting jammed up in traffic, I made the two miles or so in 40 minutes and change, and STILL managed to roll up before doors.  No problems.

"Doors", of course, turned out to be a nebulous concept, further gummed up by the venue's split-out of ID check and entry fee into two stations, which backed up the line a little bit.  There was not a whole ton of time to spare, but I managed to get both a pint and four records' worth of touring support into my rig before Sarcomancy started up.

Sarcomancy [5/7]
It had been a while since I'd seen Sarcomancy, but despite the lineup change, the band has continued on in the same vein as previously; an Immortal emulator with, on this particular outing, unfortunately mortal guitar equipment.  They got three songs, which were pretty well-delivered as long as the guitar signal wasn't dropping out, which did substantial damage to what should have been a cool closer.  The current iteration of Sarcomancy should continue to follow on and develop in the same vein as before -- provided they can work out any ground faults in their cable supply.

The venue was really filling in here, and I went forward kind of out of necessity -- but not so far forward as to stand in front of the little dude who was up front as well.  Any kind of deliberate favoritism would be patronizing, of course, but it takes a real dick to stand 6'3" and deliberately stand in front of someone who's barely clearing 3'6".

Nachzehrer [5.5/7]
While they were able to bring Eric back for the last high-profile show they were on, such was not the case here, and so the audience got a good strong sample of Nachzehrer working over what looks to be a full-time transition to only one guitar.  This was kind of a new sound, but one that's still consonant with their recordings, and the quality Great Scott PA and mix allowed all three 'outfield' musicians to pick up more of the weight in carrying the songs forward.  The older stuff lacks a little without the second guitar, but the newer stuff sounds just as good in this alignment, and as the band continues on, more good stuff can surely be expected.

Nachzehrer blasting away, with Alex not looking so much like he's dying up there as usual.

On the night, I also picked up a short stack of Nachzehrer promos to export, which the MBTA Plod did not take off Mike when he got detained.  The RFM is out and about, just watch out where you pull your bulletbelts out of your gear when you're out and about.

Bog of the Infidel [6/7]
I'd also not seen Bog in a while, but they made up for time with a classic set of full-featured, fully-developed second-wave black metal that at this point has thoroughly separated itself from its Norwegian antecedents.  The excellent venue sound only helped in this regard, but the quality of the music is such, at this point, that this set would probably have gotten the same great audience response if it had been played in the dingiest basement, or with the Palladium's most wrong-headed knob twists.  Vattnet and certain trend-streams notwithstanding, it's difficult to see how Bog isn't the next black metal band from eastern New England to make it out to the next level -- and if they aren't, they damn well ought to be.

Bog of the Infidel prepare to unleash satanisms.

It was a while waiting for Kommandant to set up/get strapped into their gas masks, etc, and if I recall correctly I filled in the time happening to discuss the festival climate overseas and do a bit of Party.San boosterism.  The RFM remains out there, and the trip inches closer to planned -- despite the extra expense of having to fly out of goddamned Frankfurt, it's probably less expensive than having to plod all the way back to Berlin from rural Bavaria.  We'll see.

Kommandant [5.5/7]
I hadn't heard Kommandant before, and wasn't sure what to expect, especially after the band came out in costumes reminiscent of Impaled at an early-'90s industrial/fetish rave.  What they brought was a confounding collision between high-level concept gimmickry and stripped-down, ceaselessly-blasting black metal violence.  Relative to their recorded stuff, at least as far as I picked up here, this set came off as less developed and more monotonically violent, but that didn't resolve the visual/musical inconsistency, and the costumes mostly just left the impression that the band badly wants to get on the Bundesverfassungsschutzamt's index unjustly, but without taking the risk of writing anything faintly political.  Their use of forward auxillary percussion was pretty cool, though, even though on a personal level, if you're going to bring out additional drummers on just snares or toms, especially in a band that's putting this much emphasis on visual production, you need to have them in marching harnesses and give the guys playing them something to swing around.  All in all, a cool set, but not one that really required or justified a lot of the visual stuff that went into it.

Kommandant, fully equipped with gasmasks, front-stage percussion, and decent lighting.

Horna [6/7]
Finally, Horna stepped up in front of the packed house, and delivered a relentless and top-class performance.  I was wedged in at the back to a certain degree, so for me there was no obvious piss involved -- just raw, classically Finnish black metal full of tart folkic melodies and steaming, acrid violence.  (Er, ok.  Not exactly sure where that was going.)  Reminiscent of Finntroll circal 1998, before the humppaa gimmick started to overwhelm their sound, this was true, violent, uncompromising black art, worth the wait between tours and the nebulous NSBM vapors that swirled around this gig in advance of it (but never, fortunately, actively condensed).  It was over all too quickly, though; not on any shortage of music, but just the perception that Horna had stopped playing at some point after they started was problematic enough.  Killer from first to last.

Horna, daubed up in sepulchral paint of uncertain composition.

At the end there was a bit of a punch-up, and then there was a 15-minute wait to use the head (Horna didn't have a green room, so they used the men's room to change, which naturally leads to them pissing themselves on stage.  IT'S IN THE FISHBOWL, BERT!), but one way or another I got out, did the nearly hour-long hike back, and managed to get in to work on Wednesday without dying on either commute.  Density of shows, though, mean this is super late...and the two writeups following it, only marginally less so.

Nocturnal with Witchaven, Sarcomancy, and Nachzehrer [Ralph's, Worcester. 5/24/2011]

No latency on this one; I blasted straight out from work as a result of getting held over there till 8 on a customer call that was probably indistinguishable from the world's stupidest and most complicated ethnic joke ("So this Pole, a Taiwan Chinese, and an American white guy call in to help an Indian and a mainland Chinese install some French software on a German server at a client in Canada, and...."). With the natural lack of traffic at this hour, I got in in good order, and got a decent amount of beer down before the bands started up.

Nachzehrer [6/7]
Another day, another quality set from Nachzehrer. Despite the title of their demo, this set showed the band as they've actually become, thrashing black metal rather than the thrash that would go up later. It can be a pretty fine distinction, and prone to more than a little I-know-it-when-I-see-it-ism, but to the extent that it actually matters, there you go. The unimpeachable musical quality (and as a bonus, antics such as Mike stormdetonating at least one beer all over/through his Beard of Disease) of this set (again, heavily new material) was and should be the real point; if you hear this band and get your pants in a twist because they play thrashing black metal rather than blackened thrash like it says on the label, you're probably too true and ultra-kvlt to go to shows in the first place.

Here, I did merch part 1 and bought a shirt, CD, and tour EP (Das war missbewerbt! 180/200 auf Werbungskopie, und dann ist meins noch 130/200! ANKLAGE!!! ... (hatte ich trotzdem gekauft aber....)) off Avenger, in German, and as in the prior experiment with MDF-bound bands, he didn't appear to notice or react weird. Learn languages, avoid getting ripped off overseas, inject surreality to touring bands' shows in your area.

Sarcomancy [6/7]
Sarcomancy continues to get better and better; on this outing, someone else might have dinged them for going too far towards ATHOW + Mithotyn/early Borknagar/late Enslaved parts, as the set was fairly dominated, in feel and tone, by impressions of Immortal in that period. The reason I don't, though, is that anyone who doesn't think that record is one of the best black metal albums, if not metal albums, period, of its decade, needs a rock bounced off their skull. The musicians in Sarcomancy are too good and accomplished to continue to clone Immortal forever, but as a place to start as regards composition and musicianship, cloning classic Immortal this well is a hell of a place to start. We have a lot of raw black metal bands in New England of varying types, but not many that can put together these kinds of song structures, and fewer still that can do lyric composition and still keep it true.

Witchaven [6/7]
I hadn't heard Witchaven before, and must admit to being pleasantly surprised. As an old guy and one who was kind of ambivalent about Anthrax the first time around at that, the progress of the thrash revival, as it has gone, makes it unfortunately inevitable that a bunch of young guys from Cali are going to get looked askance at. Apologies, dudes; those who have come before you have poisoned the wells. Along with some straightforward if well-worked borrowings from the Black Circle (Mayhem especially), Witchaven laid out a set of solid thrash metal with readily apparent roots in Slayer and Dark Angel rather than the more usual suspects. Though we got a lot of material off their fairly politically-charged Terrorstorm record, Henry played these themes down somewhat on the mic in favor, mostly, of party-hearty banter to keep the floor riotous. Not that it was strictly necessary; Metal Thursday always responds well to thrashing music, and what we got from this band was not just a classic-styled thrash band doing something new with it via the genuine blackened parts, but doing it pretty damn well.

After Witchaven wrapped, I picked up some patches and a CD off Jorge and Erik via a sequence of events that is difficult to understand and far too stupid to be related here, the stupidity coming mostly on my end and the classic banter on theirs. Nevertheless, CD GET, so I get the excuse to talk further about Terrorstorm. This is a really "correct" CD, from someone whose main interest in thrash is the "culmination" period between 1986 and about 1992. In addition to the musical stuff discussed in the bit about the band's set above, there's the sharp, brutal lyrical focus on socipolitical issues and the 100% oldschool layout and liner notes content in the booklet. It looks and "smells" right, and there's enough substance to it that you can discard the thesis "well, the band just really likes that period of musical history too, so they designed the booklet that way to look like a Kreator insert from 1989, not because doing what they want to do has the end product of looking like a Kreator insert from 1989." That doesn't wash. Full marks for the old-kuttentraeger audience.

Nocturnal [7/7]
There are points to pick that maybe this set shouldn't go quite this high, but it's better than a 6.5 and I try, admittedly without much success lately, to avoid split ratings. Also, everything they played after, about, "Merciless Murder" is difficult to put much below this mark, so grumpy persons can fuck off. Coming off as closer to Destruction than Desaster, as far as the Germanic black/thrash axis goes, Nocturnal laid waste to the room with a brutal onslaught of fast, screaming, DIY blackened thrash metal. The turbulence continued even after the dude who was falling about like Sergio Busquets on fainting-goat pills (or, in reality, half the bottle of whiskey he snuck in with him) got ejected for mosh fail, through the end of the set, the preceded-with-minimal-bullshit encore, and the band's closing rendition of Manowar's "Kill With Power". (This marks the first time that I've seen a Manowar song done live by a band not from the North Shore; Koblenz isn't on the north shore of jack shit.) After this, the venue ops put the lights on, and it was sadly made clear that the band wasn't getting any more time; so it goes, at least for those of us who weren't going down for MDF.

I picked up another Nocturnal single on the way out the door; either there was a communication breakdown or I for certain won't be harassing them in their campsite with a slab of Radeberger on my shoulder at this year's P.SOA. Wenn so, so gehts, wenn nicht, Saufwettkampf! I made it back in good time and in one pice, but unfortunately had to bag Born of Fire due to camping prep; next show is coming up quickly regardless, and the tour after that, almost as fast. Enjoy MDF, you lucky feckers, I'm off to drink in the woods.

Sarcomancy with Oneiric Realm [O'Brien's, Allston, 4/14/2011]

I got out of work a little later than expected, but still managed to make it over to the venue in good time. It's one of the virtues of a late start; among the others, that I avoided watching most of a particularly slapdick and hopeless Bruins opening loss. Rage at hockey players mailing it in gradually boiled off, more people got in, and presently the bands started.

Oneiric Realm [5.5/7]
The changes from July are probably down to time as much as a different presentation; the band's continued to develop, and if there's less third-wave in their sound, it's been to make more room for early-90s Enslaved and mid-90s Twin Obscenity. The resulting sound made for a really good blend, and the Emperor cover ("Curse Ye All Men", reminding most of those in attendance "oh yeah, IX Equilibrium was a pretty good record after all, what the hell did I do with my copy?") was pretty well delivered as well; maybe a little less tight than their originals, but probably less badly than the band slagged it as. Weirdo yelling about lack of grimness aside, this was a good solid set from a band that we'll hopefully be seeing more of.

In the set break, I got flyers from Nachzehrer promoting a gig with Black Anvil and from Dysentery promoting Defeated Sanity. Both are in the must-catch list; Triumvirate is a killer record and the support is solid on the first count, and I've been kicking myself for most of the last three years for missing Defeated Sanity the last time they came around. For Boston people, if you don't know where "Gay Gardens" is for the DF gig, ask someone in one of the bands on the bill; it's not like Blue isn't all-present at DIY shows in this area or anything.

Sarcomancy [6/7]
Sarcomancy's also improved since that gig; more material and more firm development along the lines of a more lyric turn-of-the-century Immortal make for a hell of a headline set. Josh's bass technique is pitch-perfect in this context, complex but never dominatingly technical, lyrical enough to drive the songs and interesting enough internally to make bassists nerd out over it as demonstrated in the last sentence. I wasn't able to pick up a demo off the band; either they'd moved them all during the hockey game before I showed up, or they just decided not to set up, and I missed asking, but it's definitely one to watch out for.

The turnout on this gig was a little light relative to past Born of Fire instances; this may be due to neither of the bands really being established on their own yet, probably a lot more than the no-evidence hypothesis of the show being on the same night as day 1 of NEMHF. Looking at the bands that played Thursday night, it will be readily apparent that there was about zero overlap between the target audience for that bill and a DIY black metal show.


Heading out was a quick hike back, and I didn't get syrupbottled this time; all the better for a quick regeneration to get ready to go out to Worcester on Saturday, as NEMHF, like a decaying fission product, flashed briefly into an interesting state.

Oneiric Realm with Katahdin, Vaitarna, and Sarcomancy [Champions', Everett, 7/10/2010]

Hideously late, but here goes, as I clean up two weeks' worth of shows so that it won't be past all hope by the time I get back from Europe.


I came in by a different route for this time than I did last time due to the Saturday slot (so I wasn't coming from work, just from putting my Germany shirt away after the victory), which resulted in getting lost and taking some minor detours around the back streets of Revere and Everett in order to get back on line and over to the venue. Nevertheless, I made it in good time and was able to stand outside for a bit, and also get some beers drunk before the bands started.

Sarcomancy [5/7]
A new band featuring several scene stalwarts, this was their first show, and while they didn't have a lot of material prepared, it was good stuff all the way through. The sound was very heavily and obviously Immortal-influenced, but there was more than a little early Enslaved in there as well. Four songs isn't a whole lot to judge any band on, but they executed well, and with this kind of lineup, they've definitely got the potential to build on the stuff they presented here and develop it further. One to watch out for, provided that the members' other-band commitments don't ride roughshod over this project.

The blessing and curse of this show was that, to avoid policing requirements, the organizers had to move a table to block the bar off from the stage area. This meant that you could not get a beer and then just go in to watch the band, glass in hand (the Everett PD would have wanted a detail officer in the bar in that case, the expense of which was the reason for the table jammed into the doorway), but it did induce people to go outside as much as possible, getting the audience fresh air and venting out the venue every so often, keeping it from getting too hot inside. A decent tradeoff, but it would've worked better if in this country like most others, it was not a problem to take a beer out onto the sidewalk. Plastic cups + trashcan (+ organizers giving aggro if people tossed their cups in the street) = sorted.

Vaitarna [5/7]
Up from Connecticut, these guys had a decent traveling support and some good, solid riffs, but the connections between the riffs, and the overall songwriting structure left a little to be desired. Without either vocals or the sense of structured repetition, this set felt at times like a mostly-black-metal extended jam session; musically good stuff, but still needing more in the way of song structure to bring everything together. This is kind of a problem in general with this sort of instrumental post-metal, really, and these guys definitely did have good chops, so the set, all in all, was still pretty decent and still a good time.

Katahdin [6/7]
Though for whatever reason they didn't bring their bassist up, Katahdin still put on a kickass set of solid black metal with pagan leanings reminiscent of the eastern-European sound (potentially due to the way the sound was balanced without the bass, but still). Unfortunately, they didn't have their new record with them, as it came out the following week; oh well, but if the quality of this performance and the quality of the response it earned is any indication, they'll be back in greater Boston soon enough, and this won't be an issue.

I did however, get a shirt, because I wanted to support the band and because the design (just the bandlogo) was pretty cool. Unfortunately, they didn't have change for my $20, so this turned into a shirt and a round for the band, and me being more skint than I expected faster. It's still a frickin nice shirt, though.

Oneiric Realm [6/7]
Capping off the night (since Anticosm, who would have played after them, pushing Sarcomancy off at the front, had to drop due to vehicle problems), these guys closed in style with a nice set of melodic black metal that still retained enough of an edge to keep it out of post-black territory. Though, really, the bands don't sound terribly much alike, and nobody actually has Wait Me At Dusk, a good point of comparison in what they're doing with the general black metal sound might be Solar Signs -- hopefully, they won't fall off the map like those guys did, as this is music that deserves a wider hearing. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything recorded available, so that dimension is going to have to wait for a bit.

Things having concluded, I headed home; the next day, between a friend's housewarming, the World Cup final, and another cool show, was going to be pretty eventful.