With the relatively early doors to this one, I left straight away from work, got bogged down in the usual retarded Pike traffic, and got in to the venue while people were still lined up outside. Only a couple, though, and as I threaded my way in, I got what would be the first of a bunch of compliments on my rig -- in this case, from some dudes who were debatably better ausgerustet. There will be more on this later in the post; this was definitely a kutte-heavy gig, for better or worse.
Mantic Ritual [5/7]
Almost as soon as I got my first beer, these guys started up. I hadn't heard them before -- well, to be accurate, I hadn't heard this band before; everything they did was well-foretokened by Metallica's first two records and Testament in general, even more so than a lot of other thrash-revival bands (think Warbringer doing Exodus, Razormaze's Maiden/Onslaught passages, Toxic Holocaust passing for In The Sign of Evil B-sides, etc.). It was decent music, but you really wonder where the original input is going to come in and make this an original band, rather than an impressionistic cover ensemble doing half Combat and half New Renaissance (stop me when I hit the snooty-I-know-Eighties-underground-thrash-and-you-don't-cap, I don't want to have to namedrop Agony Column or Deadhorse here OH WAIT). That bands like this are able to tour and be successful speaks to the idea that there's a need for music like this, and while it's certainly fun to listen to, the promise of thrash revival is going to go unfulfilled as long as bands are content to do it statically as a form exercise, rather than go back to thrash, start there, and do something totally different from the way that metal's developed since 1988 so far.
I picked up a CD and some jacket parts from them after their set; it's always good to support touring bands, even the middling and not completely original ones. In the process, I saw a lot of Meltdown gear; if you're familiar with thrash revival in Pittsburgh and the "near Midwest", but haven't heard this name recently, that's what Mantic Ritual used to call themselves, with the change likely coming as a result of getting signed to Nuclear Blast. I also got rung up for a badass Krisiun shirt, and what turned out to be entirely the wrong Destruction design, but eh, what the hell.
Krisiun [7/7]
They were awesome the last time they were here, and they were no less awesome this time around, from nearly contact range in a much more intimate venue. The new points in this one were that they played after Mantic Ritual rather than before Behemoth, and they did stuff off Southern Storm, which was not out in 2006; the rest of the set, namely the parts about playing annihilating straight-up brutal death metal and being completely dominant, were pretty much the same as ever. This is about where the pit really started getting cranked up, and when we started getting crowdsurfers -- not as extreme as people doing so at Sputnix or O'Brien's, but still, this is an upstairs show with zero hardcore bands en suite; you know that if things are getting this hectic, it's got to be good, and it sure as hell was. They closed up, some including me felt, a little too soon, given a 7PM doors and how relatively early this one ended up getting out, but it's always better to have people pumped and wanting more after a band, yelling aimlessly at the organizers, than drifting relievedly back to the bar to wait up for the next group. Not surprising, of course; this is freaking Krisiun, the band who legendarily got the most out of their late-90s/early-00s work visas by scheduling tour support slots from the day they landed in the US until the day the permits ran out. There are few bands who as thoroughly define "road warrior", and few who bring as reliably dominant death metal.
The venue was a little underpopulated at the start, but people continued to fill in throughout, to the point where in this break, I noticed a hell of a lot of people up on the "merch deck", the floor modulo the pit being completely packed. Some of them would stay there even through Destruction; while there are some valid reasons, such as personal decrepitude (if my knee wouldn't allow me to go down front, I'd probably be up hung on the railing), you still have to question the able-bodied in that population. Why the hell do you pay 25 bucks to see Destruction and not even try to go down front? One boggles; theoretically, there may be some people who like thrash, but hate getting "stuck in", to use a fitba colloquialism, in or on the walls of the pit, but it's difficult to consider someone like that actually existing.
Destruction [7/7]
This was the best of the three Destruction performances that I've seen; the execution was at least on the level of their last local date (at the Middle East during Metal Winter Break '07), but the content was better, even if not quite on the level of their mega-reunion W:O:A gig that I didn't hear correctly because I was standing in front of the other stage. We got a lot of hella old material, as well as a bunch of new stuff, and it was all seamlessly integrated together; Destruction doesn't really have a disconnect between their first and second active periods, which is an advantage, but it takes performance skill, not just a restricted stylistic range, to do something off your latest album and then follow it up with something from one of your demos and make the shift transparent. There was a fuckload of crowd movement, with a lot of accompanying spillover, all through the set, and though Schmier may have been a little annoyed about the mic stands getting thwacked around by stagedivers, he didn't flip out on anyone, and was probably glad that this venue, packed to the gills, was going flat bananas for his band. I did actually see a fair bit of Destruction as well as hear them, but for a lot of the set I was facing inward on the pit, trying (mostly successfully) to keep myself and those behind me from getting destroyed by the dudes (and ladies) flying around. The knee brace held up, and I only got crushed down once, but even then, my ass didn't hit the floor, and nobody who fell on top of me hit the floor either. That's pro tanking right there.
Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity of slashing, biting D-thrash, including a regulation encore and their trademark rip on "In The Mood", the lights went up and security started shooing us out of the building. With incoherent yells, demands for "MORE!" from much of the audience, and "Zugabe!" from some dick who likes showing off that he can speak German, the thrashing hordes were pushed out the door, past the NEDF street team -- it's not on the same weekend as Party.San! I'm gonna be able to go! -- and to their vehicles. It was still before midnight, but it was the end of a truly kickass gig, and the only regret that anyone should have had was that it didn't go longer.
There was a fair bit of kickup on RTTP, and perhaps other places, that this gig was plagued with what some people see as the bane of the modern scene: kids in cookie-cutter kuttes, couples talking over the bands, people having fun, and general insincerity and not enough old farts scowling while headbanging with their arms folded. All these things were present, but it's an open question as to whether this is the bane of metal or, long term, a positive.
I dig kuttes. I have one, and it's a point of pride for me that mine is one of the more ridiculously overbuilt that may be seen around Boston. A lot of effort and time went into turning a denim jacket into a wearable tapestry of my metal interests: when I wear it, people know where my tastes lie, and when someone sees Judas-Priest-style shoulder stud banks over full sleeves at about 80% patch coverage, they can confidently slap me on the back or punch me in the kidneys (depending if I've recently pissed them off or not) and be confident that they have the right guy. I am pro-jacketcrafting generally; anyone who picks up a needle and turns "a" jacket into their jacket deserves encouragement. That being said, there is generally a right and a wrong way to go about the jacketcrafting process; there's no wrong way to actually build out a vest, but your heart has to be in the right place.
As has been said before, you should build your jacket to be your jacket, not a replica of someone else's you know, or of one you saw in some picture from 1986. Your rig may end up looking like it's from another era, but as long as it's unambiguously yours, rather than someone else's, it's not a problem. You can build a 'true' jacket from easily-accessible parts, and you can build a 'false' one out of ultimate-kvlt patches; there's no bright line here. Thus, it's not wrong to build one that follows the 'formula' (backpatch, three per border side with spacing, one per pec, one per pocket, sleevless denim), but why the fuck would you want to? The idea of "violently different from the norm" still has currency in metal circles, and there are some great violently original rigs out there (mine probably not among them). Go look at them -- not to sew yours up to look like theirs, but to see what they're doing different, and to see what angles of departure fit with who you are and what you want to strap over your back.
With regards the couples issue, yes, it's uncalled for people to have a conversation over the band, but if this is harshing on you, you are obviously not up at the front, where it's too loud and dangerous to carry on a conversation, and my prior comments about not getting stuck in at a thrash metal gig apply. Even for those whom the exceptions apply to, though, a little jibber-jabber is a small price to pay for more women in metal. Even if you don't get any, and even if they merely tolerate the music rather than live for it (not the case for those I saw up front), they are not making their guy quit metal, and their presence reduces the number of guys who quit metal in order to get laid. The more women at shows, the more women will come out to shows, and the more women who come out and honestly thrash out, the more we get rid of the idea that women can't, in general, be sincere about extreme music, which is good for the scene and good for society at large.
Lastly, those who went in for a nostalgia trip went to the wrong show. Destruction's time active and, more importantly, average material quality, are about equal pre- and post-reunion. They are fully as much a modern thrash metal band as a classic thrash metal band, and they're going to pull a current audience as well as us old scowly guys who divide the world between Sounds Like Kreator and Sucks Balls. Additionally, M. Renault is shocked, shocked that people are having fun at a thrash metal gig. You'd never think that energetic music and high alcohol consumption would make people move around and act crazy; it's not like there's five thousand years of recorded historical precedent or anything.
What the ultimate complaint here is is that this is insincere: those who build generic jackets don't care enough about the music to do more; those who chat and make out during the bands don't like them enough to dial in, thrash out, and get back to their lives during the set changes; and those who are flying around all over the place are at the gig because thrash metal gives them license to flip out, not because they love thrash metal so much that they can't avoid flipping out. This is a conclusion, not an observation; people may be no good at jacketcrafting, standing in the back of the hall, or legitimately possessed, and still come off this way, and we shouldn't go out of our way to condemn them. That being said, there is definitely a measure of 'trend' at play here, much in the same way that there's 'trend' at metalcore gigs or in all other walks of life. To some extent, some people at this show were doing what they were doing, wearing what they were wearing, and carrying themselves as they carried themselves because of the impression that that's what you're supposed to do at a thrash metal gig, rather than as an organic response. You can't get away from this, but it's an open question as to how much it matters.
It certainly shouldn't matter to any real fans of the bands. What other people do, provided you're standing somewhere reasonable, is entirely incidental to what the band's doing on stage. It certainly doesn't matter to the bands; the trend followers' money is just as good as ours, and there's often more of it. No underground band is going to ride the waves of trend, especially not long-running ones like the headliners here; rather, they'll be sanguine about it, do what they do, let the tide wash some extra cash into their coffers, and not get bummed out when this particular tide rolls out. The only concern is cultural: the question of whether we as a scene are going to have to deal with this long-term, like the indie/altie crowd has their continual entry-level horde of idiots with that lazy Demitri Martin/Beatles haircut and the unshakable conviction that the Smiths invented the wheel, fire, and upright locomotion. Maybe not, maybe so; I don't have a good and fast answer. We're currently in about year three of the current thrash revival; date it to whenever you like vis-a-vis Municipal Waste breaking out or Three Inches of Blood becoming serious. If it goes on for another five, suspect that it's permanent, as it will have lasted longer than the historical period it's emulating.
Next shows, with hopefully less philosophizing, will be Summoning Hate on Monday night and Metal Thursday's slamboree (ok, only Dysentery is real slam, but with Composted on job hiatus for the time being I have to use the joke somewhere). And a month from now, we do this again, with all the neck-snapping, body-slamming fun up front and teeth-grinding in the back, as Kreator and Exodus (and I think Warbringer) come around to this same room for more thrashmageddon.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
Summoning Hate with Boarcorpse, Unmen, and Untombed [Ralph's, Worcester, 2/19/2009]
The first Metal Thursday of the year (for me anyway), this one started off a little delayed for me as I took my leave from a work get-together a little later than planned (blame an excessive table delay and accordingly, one too many Pacificos, necessitating a longer dry-out time before hitting the Pike, for that one), but I did arrive in time to catch the end of the first set.
Untombed [5/7]
This is Juan (ex-Summoning Hate)'s new band, and it's great to see him back fronting a band regularly. Untombed came off as a little less developed than SH, but provided a solid performance of trad-brutal death metal, something that often gets lost in the shuffle of slam and technicality in this region. I wish that I'd seen more of them, but even this much was good stuff, and got a killer response.
In the break I picked up a beer and a couple Circque du Carne promos; they weren't playing, but they had a stack of CDs out, and since Boarcorpse is still in the process of putting out their demo, and SH appears to be boldly forging along the super-kvlt path of “be awesome, but have absolutely no merch available for purchase”, there weren't a lot of options here for take-out music.
Unmen [5.5/7]
This was a really cool and interesting band, on tour from Jersey, and doing a style of grind that I hadn't really heard before, one that relied as much on thrash circa 1984 as on the good old basics of Napalm Death. The fusion was compelling as well as brutal, in good contrast to the rest of the bill, and anyone who might have been grumbling about their inclusion either wasn't by the end of the set, or has their head screwed on wrong. A ton of energy and some killer music; if you can catch these guys on the road, do so, whether it's on a punk or metal bill.
From them I scored, afterwards, a CD and their last small patch. Bands, especially grind bands for some reason, are wild about huge patches, but they'd do better cash-wise with them if they could dial the ego back a bit and make more smaller ones and fewer larger. With a big patch, you ask yourself, “do I really like this band enough to make them the focal point of my jacket and take up all that real estate”, while with a small patch, it's more on the lines of “hell yes, DO WANT, I'll find somewhere to stick it, these guys rule”.
Boarcorpse [6/7]
This band has taken it up significantly since the last time I saw them; some of this is the addition of the irrepressible Elliot (The Body Farm, Composted, TYAG) Bayless on guitar, but some of it, certainly, is the development and maturation of the music to the point where someone like Elliot fits in with the ensemble and is pushed by the music as much as he pushes it. A lot of structured chaos and hellishly sick technicality, but still solidly within the song frameworks; this is definitely a band to watch going forward, and to pick up their demo when it comes out. Others have made Cephalic Carnage comparisons; I'm not enough into CC to confirm or deny, but it does certainly appear to be on the right track.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
Things had emptied out a little to this point; a consequence of having a very well-attended Metal Thursday, like this one, is that those non-core people are going to leave around midnight, before the headliners start. All this meant, though, was more room in the pit for Chris (the organizer), the Unmen dudes, and eventually Crazy Dan, to fly in and throw themselves around. This was a really good, maybe even peak, set from Summoning Hate, going full time with crushing thrashing death metal – maybe too crushing for the sound system, which didn't catch up to the band for most of the first song, but just right on pitch for Metal Thursday. Juan guested on a couple songs; the band and he are apparently fine with the lineup SH has going right now, and the conclusion seems to be that if he has the time to sing full-time again, why not have two awesome death metal bands instead of one? The logic convinces, not least because the musical results of this parting of the ways are pretty fucking convincing themselves.
Eventually, though, all good things have to come to an end, and the lights went up and I had to bail, having to work in the morning and such. Four awesome bands, a fairly easy drive back, and a great time thrashing; this is why Metal Thursday keeps going, and keeps drawing from even as far as I've got to go to it.
Untombed [5/7]
This is Juan (ex-Summoning Hate)'s new band, and it's great to see him back fronting a band regularly. Untombed came off as a little less developed than SH, but provided a solid performance of trad-brutal death metal, something that often gets lost in the shuffle of slam and technicality in this region. I wish that I'd seen more of them, but even this much was good stuff, and got a killer response.
In the break I picked up a beer and a couple Circque du Carne promos; they weren't playing, but they had a stack of CDs out, and since Boarcorpse is still in the process of putting out their demo, and SH appears to be boldly forging along the super-kvlt path of “be awesome, but have absolutely no merch available for purchase”, there weren't a lot of options here for take-out music.
Unmen [5.5/7]
This was a really cool and interesting band, on tour from Jersey, and doing a style of grind that I hadn't really heard before, one that relied as much on thrash circa 1984 as on the good old basics of Napalm Death. The fusion was compelling as well as brutal, in good contrast to the rest of the bill, and anyone who might have been grumbling about their inclusion either wasn't by the end of the set, or has their head screwed on wrong. A ton of energy and some killer music; if you can catch these guys on the road, do so, whether it's on a punk or metal bill.
From them I scored, afterwards, a CD and their last small patch. Bands, especially grind bands for some reason, are wild about huge patches, but they'd do better cash-wise with them if they could dial the ego back a bit and make more smaller ones and fewer larger. With a big patch, you ask yourself, “do I really like this band enough to make them the focal point of my jacket and take up all that real estate”, while with a small patch, it's more on the lines of “hell yes, DO WANT, I'll find somewhere to stick it, these guys rule”.
Boarcorpse [6/7]
This band has taken it up significantly since the last time I saw them; some of this is the addition of the irrepressible Elliot (The Body Farm, Composted, TYAG) Bayless on guitar, but some of it, certainly, is the development and maturation of the music to the point where someone like Elliot fits in with the ensemble and is pushed by the music as much as he pushes it. A lot of structured chaos and hellishly sick technicality, but still solidly within the song frameworks; this is definitely a band to watch going forward, and to pick up their demo when it comes out. Others have made Cephalic Carnage comparisons; I'm not enough into CC to confirm or deny, but it does certainly appear to be on the right track.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
Things had emptied out a little to this point; a consequence of having a very well-attended Metal Thursday, like this one, is that those non-core people are going to leave around midnight, before the headliners start. All this meant, though, was more room in the pit for Chris (the organizer), the Unmen dudes, and eventually Crazy Dan, to fly in and throw themselves around. This was a really good, maybe even peak, set from Summoning Hate, going full time with crushing thrashing death metal – maybe too crushing for the sound system, which didn't catch up to the band for most of the first song, but just right on pitch for Metal Thursday. Juan guested on a couple songs; the band and he are apparently fine with the lineup SH has going right now, and the conclusion seems to be that if he has the time to sing full-time again, why not have two awesome death metal bands instead of one? The logic convinces, not least because the musical results of this parting of the ways are pretty fucking convincing themselves.
Eventually, though, all good things have to come to an end, and the lights went up and I had to bail, having to work in the morning and such. Four awesome bands, a fairly easy drive back, and a great time thrashing; this is why Metal Thursday keeps going, and keeps drawing from even as far as I've got to go to it.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Dysrhythmia with Tombs, Izzi Creo, Monera, and Led To The Grave [Church, Boston 2/2/2009]
After a long layoff, this was the first show of the new year, and a hell of a way to kick things off in 2009. I got in, as usual, a tad early, because Church was advertising a 7pm doors, and though I came right from work, I didn't make that mark. I did, however, wash up about an hour before the bands actually started, in time to drink some beers, buy some merch, and get complemented on my CD and patch selection by some of the Tombs guys. Huzzah scene points.
Soon enough, though, the music started, which was the reason that we'd all stumped out to this place on a Monday night the day after the Super Bowl.
Led To The Grave [4.5/7]
An odd fit to this bill, this band ranged around stylistically; now more death, now more black, now more thrash metal, and while they were decent throughout, the lack of a unified sound hurt the songs as well as the set, and the composition came off as uninspiring. They were decent enough, but 'decent' isn't how you want to come off when you're opening for Dysrhythmia and a bill otherwise kind of lacking in the metal dimension. They'll do much better on something like Metal Thursday, and there's every indication this band will get better, but this band on this bill is, like Mouth Sewn Shut opening for Hirax, pretty much an indicator of Robin's penchant for eclecticism getting the better of him.
Monera [5/7]
Post the metal band, the post-metal bands started; Monera, though, fell much more on the lines of post-hardcore rather than post-metal or post-rock. My appetite for this style is a little diminished, but they put up a good performance, decidedly original while still bearing witness to their HC roots. Of course, I know nothing about this band or its members, but I've been around long enough to recognize signature NE hardcore tropes when they're being thrown about left and right. Decent, again, but unlike the other bands on this bill, these guys probably wouldn't draw me, as someone who was wearing Sodom's s/t cover on his back to this outing, out to a show on their own.
Izzi Creo [6/7]
Though the backline stayed the same from the previous band, the style took a bit of a bend; Izzi's set was instrumental-only post-rock/post-metal in the vein of a cut-down Pelican. I'll take the real Pelican any day, but playing in this slot under Dysrhythmia, a decent impression thereof was plenty cool. Because of the cultishness of this genre as a whole, it's odd to see a band in this style that doesn't blow you away with their originality; these guys were good, and the indication is that they'll keep improving, but their absence from Hydra Head's roster at this point probably isn't a lot to get bent out of shape over.
Tombs [6/7]
At this point, the brutality got added back into the progression. Tombs had warmed up with some Celtic Frost during their soundcheck, and in their full performance, they were a spitting ball of noise fury, Neurosis fused with Scorn (Mitch from Napalm Death's industrial project, remember?). The result was a smashing, aggressive set that reset expectations for the headliners and reminded those who may have dozed off over the last two locals that this was a Relapse show, and things were going to get violent.
Dysrhythmia [7/7]
I don't know when Colin from Behold...the Arctopus joined up with the band, but while he was on a conventional six-string bass instead of some of the weird axes he's slung in the past, this was a definite positive; they announced that they weren't "going to play anything you like tonight", but blasted out a killer, pulverizing set regardless. Everything was dead-on, and the sound clicked all but perfectly, though there were some issues getting everything set up correctly to start. This is kind of a weird band, even so, and they have weird micing requirements, so kudos to the soundguy for letting this all come through. As some dude in the audience said after the show – while we were all standing around waiting for the band and crew to start tearing down, because you don't want to accidentally walk out on a Dysrhythmia encore – this band is now Behold...the Dysrhythmia, a fusion of two of the absolutely top bands in this niche of technical extremity, and the new record that they're working on with this lineup is going to be beyond killer.
They did a song "inspired by Metal Church" -- and while most people probably picked up on the "Ton of Bricks" sting-riff at the end, I'm not sure that many others caught the stuff from "Beyond The Black" woven into the middle. Go go metal nerd power!
Eventually, though, we got the idea from the venue keeping the lights on and the band bumming around in the audience that the show was over; some stayed to drink and hang out, but I'd walked two miles and more to get down, and additionally had to work in the morning. I left, and walked back through the lonesome streets and across the windswept bridges above sprawling fields of ice. Utterly unsurprisingly, I picked up a vicious cold and munged up my feet, and thus missed work. There is a knock-on effect from this, and it is a large part of why this review is so atrociously late. The rest is that work has been absolutely deadly; there's a late Metal Thursday review coming down the pike as well, hopefully tomorrow if I get the time after writing up the Destruction gig tonight.
Soon enough, though, the music started, which was the reason that we'd all stumped out to this place on a Monday night the day after the Super Bowl.
Led To The Grave [4.5/7]
An odd fit to this bill, this band ranged around stylistically; now more death, now more black, now more thrash metal, and while they were decent throughout, the lack of a unified sound hurt the songs as well as the set, and the composition came off as uninspiring. They were decent enough, but 'decent' isn't how you want to come off when you're opening for Dysrhythmia and a bill otherwise kind of lacking in the metal dimension. They'll do much better on something like Metal Thursday, and there's every indication this band will get better, but this band on this bill is, like Mouth Sewn Shut opening for Hirax, pretty much an indicator of Robin's penchant for eclecticism getting the better of him.
Monera [5/7]
Post the metal band, the post-metal bands started; Monera, though, fell much more on the lines of post-hardcore rather than post-metal or post-rock. My appetite for this style is a little diminished, but they put up a good performance, decidedly original while still bearing witness to their HC roots. Of course, I know nothing about this band or its members, but I've been around long enough to recognize signature NE hardcore tropes when they're being thrown about left and right. Decent, again, but unlike the other bands on this bill, these guys probably wouldn't draw me, as someone who was wearing Sodom's s/t cover on his back to this outing, out to a show on their own.
Izzi Creo [6/7]
Though the backline stayed the same from the previous band, the style took a bit of a bend; Izzi's set was instrumental-only post-rock/post-metal in the vein of a cut-down Pelican. I'll take the real Pelican any day, but playing in this slot under Dysrhythmia, a decent impression thereof was plenty cool. Because of the cultishness of this genre as a whole, it's odd to see a band in this style that doesn't blow you away with their originality; these guys were good, and the indication is that they'll keep improving, but their absence from Hydra Head's roster at this point probably isn't a lot to get bent out of shape over.
Tombs [6/7]
At this point, the brutality got added back into the progression. Tombs had warmed up with some Celtic Frost during their soundcheck, and in their full performance, they were a spitting ball of noise fury, Neurosis fused with Scorn (Mitch from Napalm Death's industrial project, remember?). The result was a smashing, aggressive set that reset expectations for the headliners and reminded those who may have dozed off over the last two locals that this was a Relapse show, and things were going to get violent.
Dysrhythmia [7/7]
I don't know when Colin from Behold...the Arctopus joined up with the band, but while he was on a conventional six-string bass instead of some of the weird axes he's slung in the past, this was a definite positive; they announced that they weren't "going to play anything you like tonight", but blasted out a killer, pulverizing set regardless. Everything was dead-on, and the sound clicked all but perfectly, though there were some issues getting everything set up correctly to start. This is kind of a weird band, even so, and they have weird micing requirements, so kudos to the soundguy for letting this all come through. As some dude in the audience said after the show – while we were all standing around waiting for the band and crew to start tearing down, because you don't want to accidentally walk out on a Dysrhythmia encore – this band is now Behold...the Dysrhythmia, a fusion of two of the absolutely top bands in this niche of technical extremity, and the new record that they're working on with this lineup is going to be beyond killer.
They did a song "inspired by Metal Church" -- and while most people probably picked up on the "Ton of Bricks" sting-riff at the end, I'm not sure that many others caught the stuff from "Beyond The Black" woven into the middle. Go go metal nerd power!
Eventually, though, we got the idea from the venue keeping the lights on and the band bumming around in the audience that the show was over; some stayed to drink and hang out, but I'd walked two miles and more to get down, and additionally had to work in the morning. I left, and walked back through the lonesome streets and across the windswept bridges above sprawling fields of ice. Utterly unsurprisingly, I picked up a vicious cold and munged up my feet, and thus missed work. There is a knock-on effect from this, and it is a large part of why this review is so atrociously late. The rest is that work has been absolutely deadly; there's a late Metal Thursday review coming down the pike as well, hopefully tomorrow if I get the time after writing up the Destruction gig tonight.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Mortal Decay with Goreality, Abnormality, and Summoning Hate [O'Brien's, Allston, 11/29/2008]
I'd skipped two shows due to work commitments (part of the reason that this review is so colossally late) -- and depression at Celtic crashing out of Europe -- earlier in this week, so this one was pretty much de riguer. It didn't hurt that it also packed a hell of a lineup, and allowed me to avoid going out locally and running into people back in town for Thanksgiving and/or reunions that I had little interest in seeing.
I left a little late due to working on some other junk, but managed to get in to Boston and stumped over to O'Brien's while the bands were still setting up. It was fairly crowded; Saturday show with a lot of good bands will do that, and there was a decent amount of time to hang out, stretch out, and drink chemicals.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
There are a lot of people who complain about NEDM being all slam these days, and far too many of them just sit on their asses and whine, instead of going out and supporting this band. Summoning Hate's old-school attack may not be as complicated as the other bands on this bill, but holy crap is it heavy, and you're not a fan of the likes of Obituary and Master, you really need to take a look at yourself and try to figure out exactly why you're in death metal, anyway. The songs that they pull Juan back in for may be borrowed finery, but they do a good job with them, and their original material is pretty killer as well. The night did only get better from here, but listening to this set, that wouldn't've been a rational expectation.
David later promised me that they'd have patches out sometime in the nebulous future, but we'll see if this materializes; there was a fair amount of Milwaukee's Purest Biotropic Reactant in play at that point, but doing patches would be in-character for the band, and their logo is pretty freakin badass.
Abnormality [6.5/7]
I thought they'd added a bass player recently, but I was wrong; fortunately, Abnormality proved that they still don't need one, with probably the best set that I've seen from them. Their low end sounded stronger, and the riffs were still ridiculously complex, for a killer total effect that set the stage for the bands to come. This would have been a killer headlining set in any other circumstance, but here it was just the second of four -- we have an embarrasment of riches as far as death metal goes in Boston, so go to local gigs and enjoy it.
Those not in the Boston area can check out Abnormality via their song "Visions" on Rock Band 2 -- and if you like torturing yourself, you can actually try to play it. The track is generally rated "impossible", which is the way technical death metal should be in a rhythm game, and cleverly positioned (Malika, the vocalist, works for Activision) to achieve maximum exposure from the band via YouTube videos of people killing themselves to beat it on Expert.
Goreality [7/7]
This must have been Leave Your Bassist Home Day; I swear that Abnormality announced that they'd got one, and then Goreality, who normally do have a four-stringer in the lineup, came out without theirs. I was initially concerned about this, as what really drives Goreality is the mixture of that absolutely punishing low end with the ridiculous technicality of the guitar lines, but Steve and Mark stepped it up here, and if the rhythm section wasn't as thick and overpowering, the sound wasn't any thinner for it. I'd rather see this band with a bassist than without, but they fully earned this mark even as a four-piece, and that they're able to do such a great set with an integral part of their sound removed is truly mind-blowing. They set a high bar for Mortal Decay to follow, and if they got the exposure that they deserve, they'd be setting that bar for the death metal scene as a whole.
Unfortunately, the number of people who stuck around for their set was a little diminished. Part of it may be people getting into Abnormality from the game, then not wanting to stick around late, but part of it was people leaving to catch the last train to wherever. Part of this is fail on the part of Boston, which needs to keep its public transit open later, but part of it is people needing to buck up and buckle down -- seriously, you go to a DIY bar show and miss Goreality and Mortal Decay? Sure, the first two bands are plenty of value for your seven bucks, but this was some of the best death metal of the year, and missing out on it would've sucked.
Mortal Decay [7/7]
From New Jersey, but frequent visitors to this region, Mortal Decay demonstrated why Boston loves them (and hence, why they love Boston). This was a ripping set of technical brutal death metal that united a lot of elements present in the three bands that had opened up, but also did take it to a higher level, as hard as that is to believe given how good the bands had been to this point. Shit also got brewed up in the crowd as well; Malika and Juan, along with a few others, finally managed to get people moving enough to start a classic O'Brien's pit (one with a pole in the middle), and only a few containers got broken, and nobody injured. Things were running a touch late, so the lights were on for curfew when they finally closed up, but I don't think there was a single metalhead left in the building who actually wanted them to pack up. Seriously, it wasn't even one in the morning! On a Saturday! Bogus is what it is.
Of course, the bar had to close, and threw everyone out, so it was time to beat feet back across the bridges, then get lost in Boston because I fucked up the Memorial Drive approach, but one way or another I got home, and one of the better local shows in recent memory went into the books. Next is a bunch of thrash bands at this same place on the 15th, then not too much until the turn of the year.
I left a little late due to working on some other junk, but managed to get in to Boston and stumped over to O'Brien's while the bands were still setting up. It was fairly crowded; Saturday show with a lot of good bands will do that, and there was a decent amount of time to hang out, stretch out, and drink chemicals.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
There are a lot of people who complain about NEDM being all slam these days, and far too many of them just sit on their asses and whine, instead of going out and supporting this band. Summoning Hate's old-school attack may not be as complicated as the other bands on this bill, but holy crap is it heavy, and you're not a fan of the likes of Obituary and Master, you really need to take a look at yourself and try to figure out exactly why you're in death metal, anyway. The songs that they pull Juan back in for may be borrowed finery, but they do a good job with them, and their original material is pretty killer as well. The night did only get better from here, but listening to this set, that wouldn't've been a rational expectation.
David later promised me that they'd have patches out sometime in the nebulous future, but we'll see if this materializes; there was a fair amount of Milwaukee's Purest Biotropic Reactant in play at that point, but doing patches would be in-character for the band, and their logo is pretty freakin badass.
Abnormality [6.5/7]
I thought they'd added a bass player recently, but I was wrong; fortunately, Abnormality proved that they still don't need one, with probably the best set that I've seen from them. Their low end sounded stronger, and the riffs were still ridiculously complex, for a killer total effect that set the stage for the bands to come. This would have been a killer headlining set in any other circumstance, but here it was just the second of four -- we have an embarrasment of riches as far as death metal goes in Boston, so go to local gigs and enjoy it.
Those not in the Boston area can check out Abnormality via their song "Visions" on Rock Band 2 -- and if you like torturing yourself, you can actually try to play it. The track is generally rated "impossible", which is the way technical death metal should be in a rhythm game, and cleverly positioned (Malika, the vocalist, works for Activision) to achieve maximum exposure from the band via YouTube videos of people killing themselves to beat it on Expert.
Goreality [7/7]
This must have been Leave Your Bassist Home Day; I swear that Abnormality announced that they'd got one, and then Goreality, who normally do have a four-stringer in the lineup, came out without theirs. I was initially concerned about this, as what really drives Goreality is the mixture of that absolutely punishing low end with the ridiculous technicality of the guitar lines, but Steve and Mark stepped it up here, and if the rhythm section wasn't as thick and overpowering, the sound wasn't any thinner for it. I'd rather see this band with a bassist than without, but they fully earned this mark even as a four-piece, and that they're able to do such a great set with an integral part of their sound removed is truly mind-blowing. They set a high bar for Mortal Decay to follow, and if they got the exposure that they deserve, they'd be setting that bar for the death metal scene as a whole.
Unfortunately, the number of people who stuck around for their set was a little diminished. Part of it may be people getting into Abnormality from the game, then not wanting to stick around late, but part of it was people leaving to catch the last train to wherever. Part of this is fail on the part of Boston, which needs to keep its public transit open later, but part of it is people needing to buck up and buckle down -- seriously, you go to a DIY bar show and miss Goreality and Mortal Decay? Sure, the first two bands are plenty of value for your seven bucks, but this was some of the best death metal of the year, and missing out on it would've sucked.
Mortal Decay [7/7]
From New Jersey, but frequent visitors to this region, Mortal Decay demonstrated why Boston loves them (and hence, why they love Boston). This was a ripping set of technical brutal death metal that united a lot of elements present in the three bands that had opened up, but also did take it to a higher level, as hard as that is to believe given how good the bands had been to this point. Shit also got brewed up in the crowd as well; Malika and Juan, along with a few others, finally managed to get people moving enough to start a classic O'Brien's pit (one with a pole in the middle), and only a few containers got broken, and nobody injured. Things were running a touch late, so the lights were on for curfew when they finally closed up, but I don't think there was a single metalhead left in the building who actually wanted them to pack up. Seriously, it wasn't even one in the morning! On a Saturday! Bogus is what it is.
Of course, the bar had to close, and threw everyone out, so it was time to beat feet back across the bridges, then get lost in Boston because I fucked up the Memorial Drive approach, but one way or another I got home, and one of the better local shows in recent memory went into the books. Next is a bunch of thrash bands at this same place on the 15th, then not too much until the turn of the year.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Autumn Above with Drunken Above and The Real Smokin' Power [Dodge Street, Salem, 10/31/2008]
In Which I Discover I Should Have Budged My Lazy Ass Up And Caught The Goddamned Train, And Am Colossally Bad At Figuring Out Alternative Ways To Go Generally North Or East From Salem, But Get A Bonus Eyefull Of Downtown Lynn And Revere.
The headline above basically says it all: when your friend's band is playing in Salem on Halloween, get there early or on public transit. Of course, had I come on the train, I would have gotten stuck thanks to sticking for the Misfits set, but as others have demonstrated, there's more than one way to get out of Salem without motor transport....though for some of those, you may need both a bicycle and a banana costume. (Don't ask. Seriously.)
So I left too later and had to drive over, which had me crunching around through the disordered mess of Salem streets with a bunch of people who didn't know where they were going, around police barricades and through hordes of drunks who believe that Halloween costumes include a force field that wards off cars. Both the railyard and downtown were kind of hopeless, and I parked off 114 on the other side from the Point, then had a way to leg back to the gig. There was allegedly another opener, but by the time I got to the venue and waited out the entry line (the one day a year that you're going to see a lineup at Dodge Street), there was basically just the one band with three faces left.
The Real Smokin' Power [5/7]
Tone and Sean's art-noise instrumental practical joke has developed further since the last time I saw them, but with the expanded audience mostly there to get drunk and slaver over girls dressed like prostitutes, they may not have gotten through to many of those in attendance. The dancing garden gnome was a nice touch that hearkened back to historical non-instrumental participants in weird North Shore bands, but it remains to be seen if this is going to be a regular feature rather than just a Halloween special. Those who "got" this set got a cool time full of both speaker-ripping distortion and layered grooves; those who were staring slackjawed got a dancing guy with a gnome mask and some thorough confusion before they waded back into the bar area.
Speaking thereof, the drinks wait for real beer was atrocious, but the club wisely put a bucket of four-dollar cans out their pickup window facing the stage room. Budweiser - It's Not Atrocious, And You Don't Have To Stand In Line For It.
Autumn Above [6/7]
The band continues to evolve; this was probably their most progressive and debatably the heaviest outing yet, but given the environment, this may not have been optimal for their prospects. They opened up with "Trail of Roses" and went backwards through To The Inferno, interspersing new material as they've been doing lately, though with the wider general audience, this might have been a good opportunity to play the CD down in order and sucker people in as they did on their early gigs, get the drunks grooving on the smooth acoustic pop-rock and slowly work the changes until they find themselves neck-deep in a morass of metallic despair. Then again, a confused and disturbed lumpenvolk doesn't exactly go over and buy CDs en masse. Regardless, this was a hell of a good set, with the band pushing harder and reaching further than they've done in the past (or are likely to do again -- see Ryan's comments on never playing three songs as one ever again, which is made more strenuous by the fact that most of AA's songs run around six and a half minutes), to good results.
Drunken Above [5/7]
This is an ad-hoc name suggested by Ryan for a merely somewhat ad-hoc band; here we had Autumn Above playing, in various configurations and with some supplemental personnel, fewer Misfits songs than they initially planned to, aided by as many beers as those of us on the floor could scare up. As alluded to, this set was cut short by the club in favor of some live techno crap that few cared about, but fortunately, Misfits songs are wicked short and fast, and we got about eight ot ten or twelve of them before the plug came out, which was enough time for a ton of frantic thrashing, an accidental fist in the head, and someone's elbow to blow up a beer bottle half over my shirt. A nice slice of fast horror punk, violence, and airborne beer; how the hell could you tell this from a 'real' Misfits show, especially since the Misfits today aren't exactly the Misfits Misfits any more? Good stuff, and it should have gone longer, but this is Salem's big Kommerz night, and something had to give.
It was shortly after 12:30 when they finally closed up, so I would have missed the last train, but I took the walk back up to my ride in stride. Unfortunately, I decided not to fight through the city center and everyone else trying to get out of Salem, and ended up going further south and west, eventually cutting through Lynn and Revere to pick up 60 to 93 to 128. I saw a lot of the southern North Shore that I don't normally see, including a closeup of the dog park at Wonderland, but this was a long drive after a late night that, given that I could have probably walked back as fast, was completely unnecessary. Good show -- not such good planning on the peripheral stuff, especially since I live here and ought to know better.
The headline above basically says it all: when your friend's band is playing in Salem on Halloween, get there early or on public transit. Of course, had I come on the train, I would have gotten stuck thanks to sticking for the Misfits set, but as others have demonstrated, there's more than one way to get out of Salem without motor transport....though for some of those, you may need both a bicycle and a banana costume. (Don't ask. Seriously.)
So I left too later and had to drive over, which had me crunching around through the disordered mess of Salem streets with a bunch of people who didn't know where they were going, around police barricades and through hordes of drunks who believe that Halloween costumes include a force field that wards off cars. Both the railyard and downtown were kind of hopeless, and I parked off 114 on the other side from the Point, then had a way to leg back to the gig. There was allegedly another opener, but by the time I got to the venue and waited out the entry line (the one day a year that you're going to see a lineup at Dodge Street), there was basically just the one band with three faces left.
The Real Smokin' Power [5/7]
Tone and Sean's art-noise instrumental practical joke has developed further since the last time I saw them, but with the expanded audience mostly there to get drunk and slaver over girls dressed like prostitutes, they may not have gotten through to many of those in attendance. The dancing garden gnome was a nice touch that hearkened back to historical non-instrumental participants in weird North Shore bands, but it remains to be seen if this is going to be a regular feature rather than just a Halloween special. Those who "got" this set got a cool time full of both speaker-ripping distortion and layered grooves; those who were staring slackjawed got a dancing guy with a gnome mask and some thorough confusion before they waded back into the bar area.
Speaking thereof, the drinks wait for real beer was atrocious, but the club wisely put a bucket of four-dollar cans out their pickup window facing the stage room. Budweiser - It's Not Atrocious, And You Don't Have To Stand In Line For It.
Autumn Above [6/7]
The band continues to evolve; this was probably their most progressive and debatably the heaviest outing yet, but given the environment, this may not have been optimal for their prospects. They opened up with "Trail of Roses" and went backwards through To The Inferno, interspersing new material as they've been doing lately, though with the wider general audience, this might have been a good opportunity to play the CD down in order and sucker people in as they did on their early gigs, get the drunks grooving on the smooth acoustic pop-rock and slowly work the changes until they find themselves neck-deep in a morass of metallic despair. Then again, a confused and disturbed lumpenvolk doesn't exactly go over and buy CDs en masse. Regardless, this was a hell of a good set, with the band pushing harder and reaching further than they've done in the past (or are likely to do again -- see Ryan's comments on never playing three songs as one ever again, which is made more strenuous by the fact that most of AA's songs run around six and a half minutes), to good results.
Drunken Above [5/7]
This is an ad-hoc name suggested by Ryan for a merely somewhat ad-hoc band; here we had Autumn Above playing, in various configurations and with some supplemental personnel, fewer Misfits songs than they initially planned to, aided by as many beers as those of us on the floor could scare up. As alluded to, this set was cut short by the club in favor of some live techno crap that few cared about, but fortunately, Misfits songs are wicked short and fast, and we got about eight ot ten or twelve of them before the plug came out, which was enough time for a ton of frantic thrashing, an accidental fist in the head, and someone's elbow to blow up a beer bottle half over my shirt. A nice slice of fast horror punk, violence, and airborne beer; how the hell could you tell this from a 'real' Misfits show, especially since the Misfits today aren't exactly the Misfits Misfits any more? Good stuff, and it should have gone longer, but this is Salem's big Kommerz night, and something had to give.
It was shortly after 12:30 when they finally closed up, so I would have missed the last train, but I took the walk back up to my ride in stride. Unfortunately, I decided not to fight through the city center and everyone else trying to get out of Salem, and ended up going further south and west, eventually cutting through Lynn and Revere to pick up 60 to 93 to 128. I saw a lot of the southern North Shore that I don't normally see, including a closeup of the dog park at Wonderland, but this was a long drive after a late night that, given that I could have probably walked back as fast, was completely unnecessary. Good show -- not such good planning on the peripheral stuff, especially since I live here and ought to know better.
Master with Estuary, Sexcrement, and Summoning Hate [Church, Boston, 10/19/2008]
On this night, the choice was either this show or hang out back home and be social watching the Red Sox (ultmately lose the ALCS to the Rays). Naturally, I went with Master and a ridiculous walk in, despite feeling a little under the weather. I'd missed the Amon Amarth gig the night before resting up, which sucked, but those bands tour, generally, and Master pretty much does not.
Despite the aforementioned ridiculous walk -- I parked back in Cambridge again and hoofed it down to the Fenway -- I got in a little early, in time enough to drink a couple beers and do my merch (a bunch of Master swag, and CDs from Estuary and Sexcrement) before the bands started. This wasn't the most well-attended gig I've been to here, but there was a good feeling all around; an Ibex Moon tour is about as interior death metal as you're going to to get, and those who came out were there for mostly the same reasons, and mostly for all of the bands.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
Summoning Hate continues to blast out solid, high-class thrash-death metal; this set was no exception, though it took a song or two for them to get properly cranked up. This was a nice long, filled out set, including a couple of tunes with Juan back on vocals, and high-quality front to back. At this point, the band's main or perhaps sole problem is that they don't have anything recorded available, and it's only so often that they play live. They were a really good match for this show, their style fitting in well with Master's, and they did a hell of a job opening up.
Sexcrement [6/7]
There was a bit of lag going into this set, as Sexcrement had to get their new bass player in; Blue (of Dysentery, Parasitic Extirpation, Porphyria, and it seems like every other slam band in eastern New England) had played another show with PE up in New Hampshire and got down pretty much just in time to load in. Despite working out a new 1/4 of the band, Sexcrement came out hitting on all cylinders, and turned in a thoroughly awesome performance. This band always puts up a good show, but in this case they seemed maybe a little tighter than usual; maybe because they were working out a new member and hadn't rehearsed together enough to play off each other as usual, or maybe because of the brief reunion stint that Goratory recently did in Europe -- whatever it was, this was as good a Sexcrement gig as I've seen in a while, and another indication that this was building towards a truly classic gig.
Estuary [7/7]
This was the most significant surprise of the night; I hadn't heard literally anything from Estuary before, and had bought their CD basically solely on credit, on the idea that if the guys from Incantation had set them up to tour with Master, they had to at least know what they were doing. This hypothesis was vindicated, and then the expectation thoroughly exceeded. If it wasn't Master closing up, Estuary definitely would have stolen the show, blasting the audience with an appropriately old-school but still fresh-sounding blend of thrash and death metal. They got a hell of a reception as well, likely from people who similarly had their minimal expectations shattered; here's hoping that they come back, as the stage height may have been a limiting factor that wouldn't be present at O'Brien's, and, regardless, we'd get another Estuary set.
Master [7/7]
This was the reason that we turned out, and Master certainly didn't disappoint. Master is past their peak at this point, though some of this may be attributable to the fact that Paul built a new American band for this tour rather than trying to bring over the Czech guys that he's been playing with since going into self-imposed exile. There were a few minor flubs, and this obviously wasn't what we'd've gotten had this been 15 years ago, but what Master did then, they still do, and if Master today is Paul Speckmann dragging his sidemen to greatness by pure force of will, he's still certainly able to do so. Just crunching, thrashing, no-nonsense brutality that took back the audience after Estuary's crushing set, and if there was a little grousing about the crowd being run-down on a Sunday night, it didn't lead to an impeded performance. They closed with a Death Strike tune, but it's been so long since I listened to Fuckin' Death that I didn't pick out which -- and it's debatable as to how many others here had managed to reel in that demo out of the dark recesses of the internets to catch the reference.
Slowly, things broke up; it was still an atrociously long walk back to Cambridge when I could have parked closer and I may have picked up a tweak in my left ear from standing up close and unprotected again, but this was the kind of real true, interior death metal gig that only comes around once in a while, and there's no regrets to be associated with what's probably going to come out as one of the best gigs of the year.
Despite the aforementioned ridiculous walk -- I parked back in Cambridge again and hoofed it down to the Fenway -- I got in a little early, in time enough to drink a couple beers and do my merch (a bunch of Master swag, and CDs from Estuary and Sexcrement) before the bands started. This wasn't the most well-attended gig I've been to here, but there was a good feeling all around; an Ibex Moon tour is about as interior death metal as you're going to to get, and those who came out were there for mostly the same reasons, and mostly for all of the bands.
Summoning Hate [6/7]
Summoning Hate continues to blast out solid, high-class thrash-death metal; this set was no exception, though it took a song or two for them to get properly cranked up. This was a nice long, filled out set, including a couple of tunes with Juan back on vocals, and high-quality front to back. At this point, the band's main or perhaps sole problem is that they don't have anything recorded available, and it's only so often that they play live. They were a really good match for this show, their style fitting in well with Master's, and they did a hell of a job opening up.
Sexcrement [6/7]
There was a bit of lag going into this set, as Sexcrement had to get their new bass player in; Blue (of Dysentery, Parasitic Extirpation, Porphyria, and it seems like every other slam band in eastern New England) had played another show with PE up in New Hampshire and got down pretty much just in time to load in. Despite working out a new 1/4 of the band, Sexcrement came out hitting on all cylinders, and turned in a thoroughly awesome performance. This band always puts up a good show, but in this case they seemed maybe a little tighter than usual; maybe because they were working out a new member and hadn't rehearsed together enough to play off each other as usual, or maybe because of the brief reunion stint that Goratory recently did in Europe -- whatever it was, this was as good a Sexcrement gig as I've seen in a while, and another indication that this was building towards a truly classic gig.
Estuary [7/7]
This was the most significant surprise of the night; I hadn't heard literally anything from Estuary before, and had bought their CD basically solely on credit, on the idea that if the guys from Incantation had set them up to tour with Master, they had to at least know what they were doing. This hypothesis was vindicated, and then the expectation thoroughly exceeded. If it wasn't Master closing up, Estuary definitely would have stolen the show, blasting the audience with an appropriately old-school but still fresh-sounding blend of thrash and death metal. They got a hell of a reception as well, likely from people who similarly had their minimal expectations shattered; here's hoping that they come back, as the stage height may have been a limiting factor that wouldn't be present at O'Brien's, and, regardless, we'd get another Estuary set.
Master [7/7]
This was the reason that we turned out, and Master certainly didn't disappoint. Master is past their peak at this point, though some of this may be attributable to the fact that Paul built a new American band for this tour rather than trying to bring over the Czech guys that he's been playing with since going into self-imposed exile. There were a few minor flubs, and this obviously wasn't what we'd've gotten had this been 15 years ago, but what Master did then, they still do, and if Master today is Paul Speckmann dragging his sidemen to greatness by pure force of will, he's still certainly able to do so. Just crunching, thrashing, no-nonsense brutality that took back the audience after Estuary's crushing set, and if there was a little grousing about the crowd being run-down on a Sunday night, it didn't lead to an impeded performance. They closed with a Death Strike tune, but it's been so long since I listened to Fuckin' Death that I didn't pick out which -- and it's debatable as to how many others here had managed to reel in that demo out of the dark recesses of the internets to catch the reference.
Slowly, things broke up; it was still an atrociously long walk back to Cambridge when I could have parked closer and I may have picked up a tweak in my left ear from standing up close and unprotected again, but this was the kind of real true, interior death metal gig that only comes around once in a while, and there's no regrets to be associated with what's probably going to come out as one of the best gigs of the year.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
fucking finally
Thank You for your order!
The order was shipped.
The following articles were ordered:
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Quant. - Itemno. - Name - Price - Total
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1 - 24158 - WOA - 3-Tages ALL-IN -ANNIVERSARY- Festival-Ticket 2009 - 30.07. - 01.08. 2009 - 130,00 EUR - 130,00 EUR
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At long last, my Wacken ticket is on the way. Now I can start planning around W:O:A + Party.San, and not Party.San + Summer Breeze; it's probably too much of a stretch to do the full and undoubtedly filthy W:O:A + Party.San + Summer Breeze, unless of course I drag around a bunch of technological crap and do support whenever I'm not drunk.
It'll be interesting to see what the serial is on this one; last year I was #1419 or thereabouts, but this time there's almost certain to be five digits. Also, I now have to care about the lineup, and hope that more good bands will be added than bad.
The order was shipped.
The following articles were ordered:
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Quant. - Itemno. - Name - Price - Total
------------------------------
1 - 24158 - WOA - 3-Tages ALL-IN -ANNIVERSARY- Festival-Ticket 2009 - 30.07. - 01.08. 2009 - 130,00 EUR - 130,00 EUR
------------------------------------------------------
At long last, my Wacken ticket is on the way. Now I can start planning around W:O:A + Party.San, and not Party.San + Summer Breeze; it's probably too much of a stretch to do the full and undoubtedly filthy W:O:A + Party.San + Summer Breeze, unless of course I drag around a bunch of technological crap and do support whenever I'm not drunk.
It'll be interesting to see what the serial is on this one; last year I was #1419 or thereabouts, but this time there's almost certain to be five digits. Also, I now have to care about the lineup, and hope that more good bands will be added than bad.
Iced Earth with Into Eternity and Saviours [Worcester Palladium, 10/15/2008]
In Which I Am Too Poor To Buy A T-Shirt, But Score Free French Fries And Then End Up Detouring Through Downtown Boston Largely By Accident.
With a headline like that, you know there's going to be a colorful anecdote after the show content. This will come in good time.
As on the night before, I left right after work in order to get over and buy a ticket before they sold out. This was a consequence of me being too damn busy the week before and thus unable to purchase in advance, which kind of had a knock-on effect in terms of the rest of the night. I got in, paid my $25, and after getting my first beer, realized that I didn't have enough money for a t-shirt, thanks to the door cost, getting dinner on the way out, and the fact that Kamelot was like $30 the night before, which wasn't in the budget. This sucked, but I rationalized away; better to not buy beers then, and just camp the rail. I was going to do it anyway, and the rationalization made the fact that I had to do it without a cool Iced Earth tourshirt through my belt a little more palatable.
Saviours [4.5/7]
I didn't got to the extent of finding out how long this band's been around, and thus determining if their late-80s demo-tape sound is a survival or a re-creation; they could go either way, and the fact that I didn't do this research is a strong indicator about the quality of the band. They had some nice riffs, but they never closed the deal in terms of building memorable songs out of them, and I'm not sure that anyone in attendance could accurately determine, based on the performance offered, why they were on this tour. The advantage over any random local band is pretty dubious.
Into Eternity [5.5/7]
Once again, the Palladium's shitty sound strikes down a good band. Even if Tim was back in BC because his wife was having a baby, there's no excuse for the soundboard to effectively turn off both of this band's guitars for the first song and a half. Seriously, you wankers, there's virtually nothing in Into Eternity but guitars, and if they're buried, the audience is full of people looking around at each other wondering seriously, what the fuck is going on? They recovered as soon as the sound guys got their shit together, and did a good set; the new material is pretty cool, and it's an interesting tack to take; one wonders if they're able to pry a couple points out of Century Media to send to a cancer-research fund. No Tim, though, did tell, and this wasn't quite as good a set as some of the earlier ones that I've seen from this band.
Iced Earth [7/7]
It took a while, but here it was; the real thing, in top form. There's a lot to be said about bad business and artistic decisions, and Jon's ego squandering their chances to break through massively, but that Iced Earth is one of the absolute best power-thrash bands currently operating cannot be denied. It felt like a step back, even with Matt in full cry, at the start of the set, but then "Burning Times" starts up, and someone rams into me, and my cold's gone, I'm snorting fire, and I'm back ten years to when I first heard Something Wicked... and everything is right once again. The musicianship was pretty ace, as expected from Matt and Jon, though maybe not from the three interchangeable parts backing them, and covered every record (except maybe The Dark Saga, but they might have squeezed "The Hunter" in somewhere) in at least cursory fashion, though there was a heavy weighting towards the three Something Wicked records -- only one or two from the new album, though, so Jon has a decidedly different idea of what 'touring on a record' is than, say, Steve Harris. This wasn't Iced Earth at their peak, but the reunion felt genuine, and Matt's vocals on Ripper's parts beat the CDs virtually down through the ground. No "Dante's Inferno" or "The Funeral" -- though either was pretty much out of the question from the get-go -- but we didn't have to sit through any political disquisitions from Jon; call it a wash, and also a balls-out performance that challenged Gamma Ray's set in this building last month for the best power metal outing of the year.
On the way home, I stopped as I usually do for some eats and a large cup of cold coffee to keep from crashing into stuff on the way home. I put in my normal order at the McDonald's on the pike, and because there were actually some other people there -- probably also on the way home from the gig -- I got fries tossed in that I didn't ask for. Abstractly, it's healthier to not eat McDonald's' fries than to eat them, but they came free, and technically, I was ahead on calorie burn via only drinking that one beer at the show, and spending the whole time standing. Hooray rationalization! Things got more interesting when I attempted to get off the Pike at 128, and found that the entrance to said road was closed. I followed the detour signs, but apparently not very well, because I ended up pushing east, and eventually got onto Commonwealth Avenue. This was fortunate, because I now knew how to get home. The only problem is that this involved riding into Boston; following the T in from Chestnut Hill in through Allston, through Kenmore and taking the Mass Ave bridge across to the Cambridge side to pick up Memorial Drive, then over to Route 1 and north again. Thus this trip home was kind of a superset of the roads I traveled the night before getting back from Edguy, but done later, as an extension of something that burned a hell of a lot more gas in aggregate.
In retrospect, it's not real interesting. However, even at 1 and 2 in the morning, it's possible to make an adventure out of getting lost rather than cussing because the fucking highway department decided to close the connection between two of the most major roads in the area. And it probably was shorter than following the real detour to the next exit onto 128.
With a headline like that, you know there's going to be a colorful anecdote after the show content. This will come in good time.
As on the night before, I left right after work in order to get over and buy a ticket before they sold out. This was a consequence of me being too damn busy the week before and thus unable to purchase in advance, which kind of had a knock-on effect in terms of the rest of the night. I got in, paid my $25, and after getting my first beer, realized that I didn't have enough money for a t-shirt, thanks to the door cost, getting dinner on the way out, and the fact that Kamelot was like $30 the night before, which wasn't in the budget. This sucked, but I rationalized away; better to not buy beers then, and just camp the rail. I was going to do it anyway, and the rationalization made the fact that I had to do it without a cool Iced Earth tourshirt through my belt a little more palatable.
Saviours [4.5/7]
I didn't got to the extent of finding out how long this band's been around, and thus determining if their late-80s demo-tape sound is a survival or a re-creation; they could go either way, and the fact that I didn't do this research is a strong indicator about the quality of the band. They had some nice riffs, but they never closed the deal in terms of building memorable songs out of them, and I'm not sure that anyone in attendance could accurately determine, based on the performance offered, why they were on this tour. The advantage over any random local band is pretty dubious.
Into Eternity [5.5/7]
Once again, the Palladium's shitty sound strikes down a good band. Even if Tim was back in BC because his wife was having a baby, there's no excuse for the soundboard to effectively turn off both of this band's guitars for the first song and a half. Seriously, you wankers, there's virtually nothing in Into Eternity but guitars, and if they're buried, the audience is full of people looking around at each other wondering seriously, what the fuck is going on? They recovered as soon as the sound guys got their shit together, and did a good set; the new material is pretty cool, and it's an interesting tack to take; one wonders if they're able to pry a couple points out of Century Media to send to a cancer-research fund. No Tim, though, did tell, and this wasn't quite as good a set as some of the earlier ones that I've seen from this band.
Iced Earth [7/7]
It took a while, but here it was; the real thing, in top form. There's a lot to be said about bad business and artistic decisions, and Jon's ego squandering their chances to break through massively, but that Iced Earth is one of the absolute best power-thrash bands currently operating cannot be denied. It felt like a step back, even with Matt in full cry, at the start of the set, but then "Burning Times" starts up, and someone rams into me, and my cold's gone, I'm snorting fire, and I'm back ten years to when I first heard Something Wicked... and everything is right once again. The musicianship was pretty ace, as expected from Matt and Jon, though maybe not from the three interchangeable parts backing them, and covered every record (except maybe The Dark Saga, but they might have squeezed "The Hunter" in somewhere) in at least cursory fashion, though there was a heavy weighting towards the three Something Wicked records -- only one or two from the new album, though, so Jon has a decidedly different idea of what 'touring on a record' is than, say, Steve Harris. This wasn't Iced Earth at their peak, but the reunion felt genuine, and Matt's vocals on Ripper's parts beat the CDs virtually down through the ground. No "Dante's Inferno" or "The Funeral" -- though either was pretty much out of the question from the get-go -- but we didn't have to sit through any political disquisitions from Jon; call it a wash, and also a balls-out performance that challenged Gamma Ray's set in this building last month for the best power metal outing of the year.
On the way home, I stopped as I usually do for some eats and a large cup of cold coffee to keep from crashing into stuff on the way home. I put in my normal order at the McDonald's on the pike, and because there were actually some other people there -- probably also on the way home from the gig -- I got fries tossed in that I didn't ask for. Abstractly, it's healthier to not eat McDonald's' fries than to eat them, but they came free, and technically, I was ahead on calorie burn via only drinking that one beer at the show, and spending the whole time standing. Hooray rationalization! Things got more interesting when I attempted to get off the Pike at 128, and found that the entrance to said road was closed. I followed the detour signs, but apparently not very well, because I ended up pushing east, and eventually got onto Commonwealth Avenue. This was fortunate, because I now knew how to get home. The only problem is that this involved riding into Boston; following the T in from Chestnut Hill in through Allston, through Kenmore and taking the Mass Ave bridge across to the Cambridge side to pick up Memorial Drive, then over to Route 1 and north again. Thus this trip home was kind of a superset of the roads I traveled the night before getting back from Edguy, but done later, as an extension of something that burned a hell of a lot more gas in aggregate.
In retrospect, it's not real interesting. However, even at 1 and 2 in the morning, it's possible to make an adventure out of getting lost rather than cussing because the fucking highway department decided to close the connection between two of the most major roads in the area. And it probably was shorter than following the real detour to the next exit onto 128.
Kamelot with Edguy and Hypersolid [Middle East, Cambridge, 10/14/2008]
This is colossally late due to a thick stretch of shows and high demand at work. There are four such show reviews that will hopefully all get posted before the next gig comes around.
I left right from work for this one, and though I was a little later leaving than I anticipated, I wasn't exactly concerned; seriously, it's Kamelot and Edguy, in Boston -- how many people's it going to draw? Boy was I wrong; I got up to the Middle East, and got re-routed into the end of a ridiculously long line that eventually extended back nearly to the Cambridge Salvation Army and the firehouse. Yes. A lineup nearly a full block long, for a power metal show, in Cambridge. In the future, the answer to that first question is going to be "almost six hundred, and 'go up'".
One way or another I got in, bought a shirt from Edguy, and managed to get kind of forward before the place filled up completely. At the merch stand, I saw a sale lost for the dumbest of reasons -- a markedly rotund patron disappointed by the fact that the bands' shirts stopped at XL. Seriously, you're a power metal band, and you don't stock "size 68 extra fat"? This wasn't even their first tour, where it might be excusable; both Kamelot and Edguy should know their American audience by now.
Hypersolid [5/7]
The second time I'd seen this band in two weeks, the better sound in this venue combined with probably knowing more of the songs better to produce a little flatter experience. They got a little more time, but didn't fill it much better; the Carcass twitches were still there, but overall, they sounded a lot more like a metalcore band obsessed with Dream Theater in this outing, and the heaviness wasn't quite what was needed to really win over the crowd. This was a decent show, but they did better in Worcester.
I pushed a little further forward; these guys were the reason that I came in, and as I had a cold, I was in kind of two minds about staying much after they finished.
Edguy [6/7]
This wasn't really a better performance than when I saw them at Mark's, as they were pinched for time, but it was pretty damn cool all the same. They continued to not play the mid-period stuff (no "Picture On The Wall" or "Pharaoh" still, boo), but did a lot of the new material that people knew, and a few name-checks on their older stuff, with a fairly minimal distribution of infield antics. If's nice that they do this, but here at least, they're realizing that this should probably be saved until we can fix the stupid alcohol laws in this country and set up some real open-airs. Since they didn't have a ton of time, they didn't fuck around much before coming out for "King of Fools"; they got a stellar response, and when they come back in 2009, they'd better be headlining.
At this point I moved back and got another beer; I didn't have a great abiding interest in Kamelot, and I'd rather that someone else saw them up close. Unfortunately, where I ended up standing (next to the mixing stand) turned out to be a really bad choice, as once the band started, Roy's vocals were buried, and the strobe lights were hitting me right in the eyes -- time to move again.
Kamelot [5.5/7]
This was a better performance than I saw at Wacken this year, and I was paying more attention to it, and to their credit the band did keep me there the whole while, even as other fans were leaving -- it's a tough spot to be in on a Tuesday night, having to wake up and go to work in the morning. Nevertheless, they still didn't do anything that would really convert me to being a Kamelot fan; their prog-power sound was much the same as it's always been. It was a decent performance, and those who were singing along definitely liked it, but the band didn't do much to move me, and if they don't have their intended effect in this environment, it's doubtful where they will.
They did, I think, two encores, and the end was a relief that they weren't going to drag things out any longer; as mentioned, there was a slow trickle of fans out the back from about 11:30 onwards that allowed me to move a little forward. Not "too much" Kamelot, but definitely "enough" for all concerned, and given that it was a Tuesday, it was nice not to spend an eternity getting back home. The recharge was swift -- back to work and then out to Worcester the very next night for Iced Earth.
I left right from work for this one, and though I was a little later leaving than I anticipated, I wasn't exactly concerned; seriously, it's Kamelot and Edguy, in Boston -- how many people's it going to draw? Boy was I wrong; I got up to the Middle East, and got re-routed into the end of a ridiculously long line that eventually extended back nearly to the Cambridge Salvation Army and the firehouse. Yes. A lineup nearly a full block long, for a power metal show, in Cambridge. In the future, the answer to that first question is going to be "almost six hundred, and 'go up'".
One way or another I got in, bought a shirt from Edguy, and managed to get kind of forward before the place filled up completely. At the merch stand, I saw a sale lost for the dumbest of reasons -- a markedly rotund patron disappointed by the fact that the bands' shirts stopped at XL. Seriously, you're a power metal band, and you don't stock "size 68 extra fat"? This wasn't even their first tour, where it might be excusable; both Kamelot and Edguy should know their American audience by now.
Hypersolid [5/7]
The second time I'd seen this band in two weeks, the better sound in this venue combined with probably knowing more of the songs better to produce a little flatter experience. They got a little more time, but didn't fill it much better; the Carcass twitches were still there, but overall, they sounded a lot more like a metalcore band obsessed with Dream Theater in this outing, and the heaviness wasn't quite what was needed to really win over the crowd. This was a decent show, but they did better in Worcester.
I pushed a little further forward; these guys were the reason that I came in, and as I had a cold, I was in kind of two minds about staying much after they finished.
Edguy [6/7]
This wasn't really a better performance than when I saw them at Mark's, as they were pinched for time, but it was pretty damn cool all the same. They continued to not play the mid-period stuff (no "Picture On The Wall" or "Pharaoh" still, boo), but did a lot of the new material that people knew, and a few name-checks on their older stuff, with a fairly minimal distribution of infield antics. If's nice that they do this, but here at least, they're realizing that this should probably be saved until we can fix the stupid alcohol laws in this country and set up some real open-airs. Since they didn't have a ton of time, they didn't fuck around much before coming out for "King of Fools"; they got a stellar response, and when they come back in 2009, they'd better be headlining.
At this point I moved back and got another beer; I didn't have a great abiding interest in Kamelot, and I'd rather that someone else saw them up close. Unfortunately, where I ended up standing (next to the mixing stand) turned out to be a really bad choice, as once the band started, Roy's vocals were buried, and the strobe lights were hitting me right in the eyes -- time to move again.
Kamelot [5.5/7]
This was a better performance than I saw at Wacken this year, and I was paying more attention to it, and to their credit the band did keep me there the whole while, even as other fans were leaving -- it's a tough spot to be in on a Tuesday night, having to wake up and go to work in the morning. Nevertheless, they still didn't do anything that would really convert me to being a Kamelot fan; their prog-power sound was much the same as it's always been. It was a decent performance, and those who were singing along definitely liked it, but the band didn't do much to move me, and if they don't have their intended effect in this environment, it's doubtful where they will.
They did, I think, two encores, and the end was a relief that they weren't going to drag things out any longer; as mentioned, there was a slow trickle of fans out the back from about 11:30 onwards that allowed me to move a little forward. Not "too much" Kamelot, but definitely "enough" for all concerned, and given that it was a Tuesday, it was nice not to spend an eternity getting back home. The recharge was swift -- back to work and then out to Worcester the very next night for Iced Earth.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Watain with Withered, Book of Black Earth, Cold Northern Vengeance, Revocation, Blessed Offal, and Ipssisimus [Middle East, Cambridge, 10/7/2008]
Long awaited, it was finally here; the return of Watain to North America (well, techncially they started in Canada 3 days earlier, but still), along with a top-class bill of support, good enough to make up for being as long as your damn arm. Even though this was on a Tuesday, anticipation was still high as they'd been tremendous on the last pass -- their gig upstairs was the short-listed show of the year of 2007. As is getting to be usual for these early-start Boston shows, I left directly from work and got in too early. This gave me time to drink an IPA out of a bizarre triangle-bottom glass, then stand around outside for a while, waiting for real doors. The Middle East was, as usual, a little slow with their Einlass, and as a result, I didn't get in until after Ipsissimus had already started.
Ipsissimus [5/7]
Fortunately, their last song and a half turned out to be about half their set. Well, fortunate for someone who came in late; they, like the other locals, were a little constrained by the fact that there were seven bands on this bill, but they did a good job with the time provided. They've come up significantly since I first saw them, and this was a class performance of melodically complex but still true black metal, which impressed those who were down early and probably led to a bunch of CD sales, even though their EP's been free online for a while. The sound wasn't perfect, but the parts where they were cutting and cool greatly oughtweighed the down bits.
After Ipsissimus, I did most of my merch-getting; some cool shirts, a few CDs that I didn't have, some patches, pretty much the usual. The most notable thing in this was the realization, via Withered's tourshirt, that New York City is actually in Cali. I blame the Pail and Shovel Party, personally.
Blessed Offal [6/7]
To this point, I'd had difficulty getting a firm handle on this band; now, though, they've established themselves a lot more cleanly. There's a lot of good black metal bands in New England, but with this raw, dirty, pummeling black/death performance, Blessed Offal should be out of the pack and readily recognizable. They've still got some issues establishing their lineup (Bobby from Hirudinea on bass for this one rather than Cody from Witch Tomb), but if they can keep this one together, they may well get up into that first rank. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything recorded, but this, too, will probably come with time.
Revocation [7/7]
Prima facie, Revocation did not belong on this bill, as every other band on it is at least partly black metal, and Revocation are composed almost completely of death-thrash. So, naturally, they remedied this situation by writing a long neo-black metal instrumental intro, then ripping through it and playing everyone else off the damn stage. Fortunately, technical execution isn't absolutely necessary for black metal, so this didn't matter a whole lot to the overall enjoyment of the rest of the show, or, I suspect, make the touring bands think they were being upstaged (which, really, they weren't), but god damnit are Dave, Phil, and Anthony good at what they do. Everyone and their brother is thrash-revivaling 1986 in the Bay Area, and these guys are doing Wisconsin, Florida, NYC, and Germany circa 1990 -- plus all this modern tech-death stuff in the bargain.
Revocation were the only band that had merch that I did not buy at least something off of. I felt bad, but I'm full up on their buttons and stickers -- if they made, um, a PATCH or something, I'd definitely put down for such.
Cold Northern Vengeance [6/7]
In their first appearance since putting out Domination & Servitude, CNV came out with a new lineup and a new sound, sticking closer to the old Norwegian sound than their previous resemblances to the east. This is not entirely out of character with their previous stuff, but just darker, more direct, and more droning, and the result is one of the more truly original sounds in USBM. They did only 3 songs (due to length), and all new stuff -- "The Abraxas Trance" was simply massive, and on their closer, they cut out one of the 3 guitars and the bass for a truly cultic sound on the order of Agalloch from the regrowth forests instead of the old-growth. They had a better set the last time they opened for Watain -- which due to recording issues and misconceptions people have about the band, was I think their last show before this -- but there was nothing wrong with what they delivered here.
Book of Black Earth [5/7]
Throughout their set, this band exhorted the crowd to move forward and move around more. If less of the audience had been around for Ipsissimus, and CNV immediately before them, they might have had more success with these appeals; on a musical basis, Book of Black Earth steps away from the 'hipster black metal' tag that may be applied based on the appearance of some of their members, but in this performance they didn't really set themselves a part as being better than the (very good) local support in inaugurating the touring part of the bill. This was a good performance, but Ipsissimus handled their melodics in a more interesting way without resorting to keyboards, and CNV out-grimmed the living fuck out of them. Decent, and worth the CD that I picked up, but they definitely went on in the right place relative to the rest of the touring bill.
Withered [5.5/7]
I was standing further back for Withered, and subsequently; I'd seen the rest of the bands remaining and didn't feel like wedging forward just to say that I was at the front, at the expense of someone who may not have seen either. The result was that the sound felt a little messed-up during Withered's set, and at least less powerful for Watain; others have also commented on the intermittent quality of the board at this gig, but much of it I didn't notice because I was up front getting the sound from the cabs rather than the PA. Regardless, this set wasn't quite as inspiring as the last time I saw them -- here, opening for Grave and Dismember, incidentally, and surprisingly two years ago -- but still provided a nice slice of quality crunching death/doom/black metal. Next to Revocation, this was the least black metal outing of the night, but it was well-delivered, and those who would have objected to them took the opportunity to have a last smoke break or whatever before Watain.
Watain [6.5/7]
There were a lot of high expectations for this performance, and most of them were met. However, while this was a really great set, it wasn't perfect, and the expectations made for a high wall to climb. Last year, Watain played upstairs and produced debatably the best gig of the year, and on this run, they were playing in a larger space, and had loudly advertised their intent to go whole hog, with more blood and Satanism and dead animal parts than they'd been allowed to do on the last run. Unfortunately, the plug got pulled on new blood -- the red-brown dust all over their gear, and the accompanying reek, testified that they are serious about this stuff -- or dead flesh, and what was left was a solid musical performance that fell a little short of the peak, perhaps also hampered by the sound being less than optimal. This was still a Watain gig, and a damn good Watain gig, but between the PR and the word-of-mouth from last year, people were expecting Live In Leipzig part II, and it didn't happen. It may be unrealistic for anyone to be disappointed with this set, but it's certainly understandable: even in the raw and bloody-minded world of underground black metal, people can build castles in the air, and get run down when they crumble on contact with reality.
There was allegedly some aggro between NS skins and SHARPs afterwards, but I didn't see it, having bugged out ASAP; I had to work in the morning, and the demands of work have gotten this review impossibly delayed down to the current point. Next gig's tonight in this same hall...though Kamelot and Edguy will draw a LITTLE different crowd. Iced Earth tomorrow, then I get my extreme-metal bonafides back with Amon Amarth and Master on the weekend.
Ipsissimus [5/7]
Fortunately, their last song and a half turned out to be about half their set. Well, fortunate for someone who came in late; they, like the other locals, were a little constrained by the fact that there were seven bands on this bill, but they did a good job with the time provided. They've come up significantly since I first saw them, and this was a class performance of melodically complex but still true black metal, which impressed those who were down early and probably led to a bunch of CD sales, even though their EP's been free online for a while. The sound wasn't perfect, but the parts where they were cutting and cool greatly oughtweighed the down bits.
After Ipsissimus, I did most of my merch-getting; some cool shirts, a few CDs that I didn't have, some patches, pretty much the usual. The most notable thing in this was the realization, via Withered's tourshirt, that New York City is actually in Cali. I blame the Pail and Shovel Party, personally.
Blessed Offal [6/7]
To this point, I'd had difficulty getting a firm handle on this band; now, though, they've established themselves a lot more cleanly. There's a lot of good black metal bands in New England, but with this raw, dirty, pummeling black/death performance, Blessed Offal should be out of the pack and readily recognizable. They've still got some issues establishing their lineup (Bobby from Hirudinea on bass for this one rather than Cody from Witch Tomb), but if they can keep this one together, they may well get up into that first rank. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything recorded, but this, too, will probably come with time.
Revocation [7/7]
Prima facie, Revocation did not belong on this bill, as every other band on it is at least partly black metal, and Revocation are composed almost completely of death-thrash. So, naturally, they remedied this situation by writing a long neo-black metal instrumental intro, then ripping through it and playing everyone else off the damn stage. Fortunately, technical execution isn't absolutely necessary for black metal, so this didn't matter a whole lot to the overall enjoyment of the rest of the show, or, I suspect, make the touring bands think they were being upstaged (which, really, they weren't), but god damnit are Dave, Phil, and Anthony good at what they do. Everyone and their brother is thrash-revivaling 1986 in the Bay Area, and these guys are doing Wisconsin, Florida, NYC, and Germany circa 1990 -- plus all this modern tech-death stuff in the bargain.
Revocation were the only band that had merch that I did not buy at least something off of. I felt bad, but I'm full up on their buttons and stickers -- if they made, um, a PATCH or something, I'd definitely put down for such.
Cold Northern Vengeance [6/7]
In their first appearance since putting out Domination & Servitude, CNV came out with a new lineup and a new sound, sticking closer to the old Norwegian sound than their previous resemblances to the east. This is not entirely out of character with their previous stuff, but just darker, more direct, and more droning, and the result is one of the more truly original sounds in USBM. They did only 3 songs (due to length), and all new stuff -- "The Abraxas Trance" was simply massive, and on their closer, they cut out one of the 3 guitars and the bass for a truly cultic sound on the order of Agalloch from the regrowth forests instead of the old-growth. They had a better set the last time they opened for Watain -- which due to recording issues and misconceptions people have about the band, was I think their last show before this -- but there was nothing wrong with what they delivered here.
Book of Black Earth [5/7]
Throughout their set, this band exhorted the crowd to move forward and move around more. If less of the audience had been around for Ipsissimus, and CNV immediately before them, they might have had more success with these appeals; on a musical basis, Book of Black Earth steps away from the 'hipster black metal' tag that may be applied based on the appearance of some of their members, but in this performance they didn't really set themselves a part as being better than the (very good) local support in inaugurating the touring part of the bill. This was a good performance, but Ipsissimus handled their melodics in a more interesting way without resorting to keyboards, and CNV out-grimmed the living fuck out of them. Decent, and worth the CD that I picked up, but they definitely went on in the right place relative to the rest of the touring bill.
Withered [5.5/7]
I was standing further back for Withered, and subsequently; I'd seen the rest of the bands remaining and didn't feel like wedging forward just to say that I was at the front, at the expense of someone who may not have seen either. The result was that the sound felt a little messed-up during Withered's set, and at least less powerful for Watain; others have also commented on the intermittent quality of the board at this gig, but much of it I didn't notice because I was up front getting the sound from the cabs rather than the PA. Regardless, this set wasn't quite as inspiring as the last time I saw them -- here, opening for Grave and Dismember, incidentally, and surprisingly two years ago -- but still provided a nice slice of quality crunching death/doom/black metal. Next to Revocation, this was the least black metal outing of the night, but it was well-delivered, and those who would have objected to them took the opportunity to have a last smoke break or whatever before Watain.
Watain [6.5/7]
There were a lot of high expectations for this performance, and most of them were met. However, while this was a really great set, it wasn't perfect, and the expectations made for a high wall to climb. Last year, Watain played upstairs and produced debatably the best gig of the year, and on this run, they were playing in a larger space, and had loudly advertised their intent to go whole hog, with more blood and Satanism and dead animal parts than they'd been allowed to do on the last run. Unfortunately, the plug got pulled on new blood -- the red-brown dust all over their gear, and the accompanying reek, testified that they are serious about this stuff -- or dead flesh, and what was left was a solid musical performance that fell a little short of the peak, perhaps also hampered by the sound being less than optimal. This was still a Watain gig, and a damn good Watain gig, but between the PR and the word-of-mouth from last year, people were expecting Live In Leipzig part II, and it didn't happen. It may be unrealistic for anyone to be disappointed with this set, but it's certainly understandable: even in the raw and bloody-minded world of underground black metal, people can build castles in the air, and get run down when they crumble on contact with reality.
There was allegedly some aggro between NS skins and SHARPs afterwards, but I didn't see it, having bugged out ASAP; I had to work in the morning, and the demands of work have gotten this review impossibly delayed down to the current point. Next gig's tonight in this same hall...though Kamelot and Edguy will draw a LITTLE different crowd. Iced Earth tomorrow, then I get my extreme-metal bonafides back with Amon Amarth and Master on the weekend.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Amorphis with Samael, Virgin Black, and Hypersolid [Worcester Palladium (upstairs), 10/2/2008]
Second verse, not quite the same as the first; as per the day before, I left right from work, but there were a few contributing factors that slowed down the ride out, and as a consequence, I got in right after doors rather than right before. With the lack of a lineup, I got "VIPed" in; security at this point knows my ID by heart and is pretty confident I'm not going to stab anyone, but as professionals they're not going to wave 'regulars' through while they've got a lineup to process correctly.
As on Wednesday, the attendance was a little sparse, especially at the start, but it would pick up as the night went on. I picked my way through the few there and picked up a couple CDs as well as a first beer, then tried to finish up the text I was writing to avoid being "that guy" for Hypersolid.
Hypersolid [5/7]
Unfortunately, I wasn't completely successful, and I was a little zoned for their first song or two. Once concluded, though, they cetainly didn't disappoint, and in contrast to the last one, there was a lot more late Carcass (mostly Swansong, but some Heartwork too) in their prog-thrash sound than I remembered from before. Their overall execution level's come up since 2006 as well, despite the fact that they were working out a new guitarist; if you missed them here, you can see them with Edguy in a week or two, and marvel that with the change in their sound to more prog-thrash (which fit better here) than prog-power, they're still able to get opening slots on power metal bills.
Virgin Black [6/7]
The crowd was still a little light at this point, and between the volume and the band's sound, it definitely felt like this would have gone even better upstairs at the Middle East. The only really cult band on this tour, they made their presence felt with a deep, solid set that closed with a shattering rendition of "Walk Without Limbs". In contrast to the more accessible bands at the head of this bill, Virgin Black's vicious blend of gothic black metal and funeral doom was pitched straight for the undergrounders in the audience -- which on a Thursday, and at the start of the touring bill, was maybe more than a significant minority.
Samael [6/7]
It's hard to find a dedicated Samael fan these days, and the balance of this set definitely testifies as to why; the black metal in their sound is deprecated in favor of more mainstream, accessible, stuff, and while this was a decent time, Samael have been better than this. Those who missed it, though, missed out: not only is Xy still about the best live drum programmer going, but they did "Into The Pentagram" for the first time in the US (allegedly), and for the duration of the song, new Samael was old Samael again, just with the instruments a little changed up. They did a couple more after, and while they should have just closed up after "Into The Pentagram", the little extra blackdustrial is to be forgiven since we, y'know, got "Into The Pentagram" out of the band.
At one point, Vorph referred to Passage as an "old album". It is, but that makes me an Old People -- what the hell is Ceremony of Opposites then? Well, besides 'awesome', but you get the idea about how this band currently looks at their catalog, and how that varies from how we see it out in the cheap seats.
Amorphis [6.5/7]
There'd been some scuttlebutt before the gig that Tomi had lost his voice earlier on the tour, but he'd recovered enough by this gig to put up a stellar performance. He was still swigging tea rather than water or beer throughout, but his voice held up all the way through a long and diverse set covering a bunch of tunes from the last couple albums, but also more early stuff than likely anyone was anticipating. It was a better outing than I saw last year at Wacken, and on the music rather than just on the minimum qualification of the venue not catching on fire. Like Samael, Amorphis may get written off these days due to the changes in their style, but more unambiguously than the band that preceded them on this bill, they've improved as well as changed. Another Thousand Lakes tune or two instead of taking a break before their encore, and this might have gone full marks; regardless, it was a great set to cap off a great show, and a great two-day stand at this venue.
The trip home wasn't that difficult, and the next show promises to be awesome; Watain Tuesday night in Boston with six other bands including CNV and Revocation. After that, free time to take care of personal matters, and then something like 6 or 7 gigs in 8 days. We'll see how many of those actually get attended.
As on Wednesday, the attendance was a little sparse, especially at the start, but it would pick up as the night went on. I picked my way through the few there and picked up a couple CDs as well as a first beer, then tried to finish up the text I was writing to avoid being "that guy" for Hypersolid.
Hypersolid [5/7]
Unfortunately, I wasn't completely successful, and I was a little zoned for their first song or two. Once concluded, though, they cetainly didn't disappoint, and in contrast to the last one, there was a lot more late Carcass (mostly Swansong, but some Heartwork too) in their prog-thrash sound than I remembered from before. Their overall execution level's come up since 2006 as well, despite the fact that they were working out a new guitarist; if you missed them here, you can see them with Edguy in a week or two, and marvel that with the change in their sound to more prog-thrash (which fit better here) than prog-power, they're still able to get opening slots on power metal bills.
Virgin Black [6/7]
The crowd was still a little light at this point, and between the volume and the band's sound, it definitely felt like this would have gone even better upstairs at the Middle East. The only really cult band on this tour, they made their presence felt with a deep, solid set that closed with a shattering rendition of "Walk Without Limbs". In contrast to the more accessible bands at the head of this bill, Virgin Black's vicious blend of gothic black metal and funeral doom was pitched straight for the undergrounders in the audience -- which on a Thursday, and at the start of the touring bill, was maybe more than a significant minority.
Samael [6/7]
It's hard to find a dedicated Samael fan these days, and the balance of this set definitely testifies as to why; the black metal in their sound is deprecated in favor of more mainstream, accessible, stuff, and while this was a decent time, Samael have been better than this. Those who missed it, though, missed out: not only is Xy still about the best live drum programmer going, but they did "Into The Pentagram" for the first time in the US (allegedly), and for the duration of the song, new Samael was old Samael again, just with the instruments a little changed up. They did a couple more after, and while they should have just closed up after "Into The Pentagram", the little extra blackdustrial is to be forgiven since we, y'know, got "Into The Pentagram" out of the band.
At one point, Vorph referred to Passage as an "old album". It is, but that makes me an Old People -- what the hell is Ceremony of Opposites then? Well, besides 'awesome', but you get the idea about how this band currently looks at their catalog, and how that varies from how we see it out in the cheap seats.
Amorphis [6.5/7]
There'd been some scuttlebutt before the gig that Tomi had lost his voice earlier on the tour, but he'd recovered enough by this gig to put up a stellar performance. He was still swigging tea rather than water or beer throughout, but his voice held up all the way through a long and diverse set covering a bunch of tunes from the last couple albums, but also more early stuff than likely anyone was anticipating. It was a better outing than I saw last year at Wacken, and on the music rather than just on the minimum qualification of the venue not catching on fire. Like Samael, Amorphis may get written off these days due to the changes in their style, but more unambiguously than the band that preceded them on this bill, they've improved as well as changed. Another Thousand Lakes tune or two instead of taking a break before their encore, and this might have gone full marks; regardless, it was a great set to cap off a great show, and a great two-day stand at this venue.
The trip home wasn't that difficult, and the next show promises to be awesome; Watain Tuesday night in Boston with six other bands including CNV and Revocation. After that, free time to take care of personal matters, and then something like 6 or 7 gigs in 8 days. We'll see how many of those actually get attended.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Kataklysm with Dying Fetus, Eluvetie, and Keep of Kalessin [Worcester Palladium (upstairs), 10/1/2008]
In the middle of a hard week at work, I also get the bonus of two high-line shows in a small space at reasonable prices, which I guess makes up for getting blitzed over the weekend and being first busy drinking, then tremendously hung over, for last weekend's gigs, both of which planned I missed. This wasn't the case here; I finished up a couple knotty problems and headed out directly from the office, arriving a little early due to light traffic. I got in and processed smoothly once the doors opened; this was upstairs, and the floor area wasn't anywhere near full at first, though as the night went on more people piled in.
With time to kill I hit the merch stand and got the Eluvetie swag that I hadn't been able to afford at Metalfest, and also Keep's new disc. This was in the upstairs of the upstairs, which remained sparsely populated throughout the show; Wednesdays will do that, and if this was less convenient to get to than had it been at the Middle East's upstairs, it was a lot easier to move around.
Keep of Kalessin [6.5/7]
I don't know that I've headbanged this hard to a black metal band since Emperor. I saw them on Metalfest, of course, but that performance paled next to this one; a lot of it echoed Emperor, but to call it "standard-form" in any way is not only a disservice to the band, but also an indication that you may not listen to as much black metal as you think you do. There's a lot of black metal that's a hell of a lot worse than this, especially in the modern era; that we went back convincingly to the sound of the Norwegian second wave, and the band blew the roof off in the process, should not be treted as an everyday occurrence. Great stuff, and maybe a couple songs short of full points.
This was, as can be seen up top, a really, really weird lineup to be all touring together. It seems like the idea was that there'd be people who liked Keep and Eluvetie, Keep and Kataklysm, and Kataklysm and Dying Fetus at this one, thus bringing in three distinct audience segments, but that's kind of a weird organizing principle, and when you do it on a Wednesday night, you may get into rougher shoals. They did draw more, though than any of those three tuples would have as their own tour playing the Mideast Upstairs, so perhaps there's something to be said for it.
Eluvetie [6/7]
Also back from Metalfest was this Swiss horde, who were short their piper for this outing. How much of a problem this was is debatable; they did a really good set, if not quite as strong as back in April, but there was next to nowhere for anyone in the band to move around on stage, and it's difficult to see where they'd've found space to add a seventh across the front. Some of their tunes, particularly the one they closed up with, reminded me really strongly of In Extremo; part of this is the founder effect of said band basically re-inventing folk metal, but some of it may be intentional: since In Extremo's basically let North America go by singing almost exclusively in German, why shouldn't another band that does more in English bring that same sound over here, and earn a share of the success? Not the best set I've seen from them, but to say this about a Swiss folk metal band in North America at all is pretty damn staggering, and this was quite a fine performance even so.
The funniest moment of the night was doubtless about 3 songs in, when the singer yelled "ARE YOU GUYS STILL SOBER?!" and more people answered with "HELL YEAH!!!" than "FUCK NOOOO!" If you're either a) not paying attention and just yelling whenever someone does stage banter, or b) so goddamn drunk on a Wednesday night that you can't understand what the singer's saying at the start of the second band's set, you deserve to get ripped on, as the band briefly did before hitting back into the music again.
Dying Fetus [6/7]
I was talking with some acquaintances before the show started up, and one mentioned that he'd never seen Dying Fetus; I'd been in this position as recently as before Carcass, and he found it just as odd as I did then. Anyone else in the audience who hadn't seen DF live yet got a solid representation of the band; a nice thick set of relentlessly arranged stone-brutal death metal. It didn't stand out to me as superlative, but even when Dying Fetus is just simply executing, the result is impressive to behold. I'm more of a fan of other kinds of death metal, but this was a great (and ridiculously battering) time, and a high-quality set.
Post-DF, I was significantly impressed enough to go up to the merch stand again and pick up one of their "antipope" shirts; while bumming around as Kataklysm set up, I ran into a short sample of several North Shore metal bands....who were bummed out that they'd only gotten to the venue in time to pay $20 for 2 Dying Fetus tunes. They weren't much into Kataklysm either, and a little at loose ends about what to do with themselves. Some of the answer to this involved sitting around upstairs heckling the Canucks as they set up, and some of it involved yelling Manowar memes at people downstairs who weren't listening; hail creativity.
Kataklysm [5/7]
I didn't stick for their whole set, but I resolved to stay long enough to give them a fair shake; my opinions on this band's rapid and seemingly nonsensical decline have been made very clear in the past, but every new album is a chance to get back to relevance, and every gig is a chance to wake up and play soe interesting music. I hung around for four or five songs, but the verdict is still unchanged; not so much Canadian Hyperblast as Canadian warmed-over Hypocrisy. This wasn't a bad set, but Kataklysm will continue to run aground as long as they a) continue to ignore their earlier material, which has a distinct voice of its own, and also b) continue to suggest a lamer Hypocrisy to anyone who listens to them. Sure, echoes of more famous bands were kind of a theme tonight (except for Dying Fetus, who are the imitated rather than the imitators), but Keep and Eluvetie's material can stand in, more often than not, with that of their exemplars, and Kataklysm's new stuff just can't. Those who came for them appeared to be having fun, but those like me who came for any of the other three were either upstairs or shortly on the way out.
Leaving early, I managed to get back home a little after midnight. Tonight's probably into the breach again; Amorphis, Samael, and Virgin Black, same time same station.
With time to kill I hit the merch stand and got the Eluvetie swag that I hadn't been able to afford at Metalfest, and also Keep's new disc. This was in the upstairs of the upstairs, which remained sparsely populated throughout the show; Wednesdays will do that, and if this was less convenient to get to than had it been at the Middle East's upstairs, it was a lot easier to move around.
Keep of Kalessin [6.5/7]
I don't know that I've headbanged this hard to a black metal band since Emperor. I saw them on Metalfest, of course, but that performance paled next to this one; a lot of it echoed Emperor, but to call it "standard-form" in any way is not only a disservice to the band, but also an indication that you may not listen to as much black metal as you think you do. There's a lot of black metal that's a hell of a lot worse than this, especially in the modern era; that we went back convincingly to the sound of the Norwegian second wave, and the band blew the roof off in the process, should not be treted as an everyday occurrence. Great stuff, and maybe a couple songs short of full points.
This was, as can be seen up top, a really, really weird lineup to be all touring together. It seems like the idea was that there'd be people who liked Keep and Eluvetie, Keep and Kataklysm, and Kataklysm and Dying Fetus at this one, thus bringing in three distinct audience segments, but that's kind of a weird organizing principle, and when you do it on a Wednesday night, you may get into rougher shoals. They did draw more, though than any of those three tuples would have as their own tour playing the Mideast Upstairs, so perhaps there's something to be said for it.
Eluvetie [6/7]
Also back from Metalfest was this Swiss horde, who were short their piper for this outing. How much of a problem this was is debatable; they did a really good set, if not quite as strong as back in April, but there was next to nowhere for anyone in the band to move around on stage, and it's difficult to see where they'd've found space to add a seventh across the front. Some of their tunes, particularly the one they closed up with, reminded me really strongly of In Extremo; part of this is the founder effect of said band basically re-inventing folk metal, but some of it may be intentional: since In Extremo's basically let North America go by singing almost exclusively in German, why shouldn't another band that does more in English bring that same sound over here, and earn a share of the success? Not the best set I've seen from them, but to say this about a Swiss folk metal band in North America at all is pretty damn staggering, and this was quite a fine performance even so.
The funniest moment of the night was doubtless about 3 songs in, when the singer yelled "ARE YOU GUYS STILL SOBER?!" and more people answered with "HELL YEAH!!!" than "FUCK NOOOO!" If you're either a) not paying attention and just yelling whenever someone does stage banter, or b) so goddamn drunk on a Wednesday night that you can't understand what the singer's saying at the start of the second band's set, you deserve to get ripped on, as the band briefly did before hitting back into the music again.
Dying Fetus [6/7]
I was talking with some acquaintances before the show started up, and one mentioned that he'd never seen Dying Fetus; I'd been in this position as recently as before Carcass, and he found it just as odd as I did then. Anyone else in the audience who hadn't seen DF live yet got a solid representation of the band; a nice thick set of relentlessly arranged stone-brutal death metal. It didn't stand out to me as superlative, but even when Dying Fetus is just simply executing, the result is impressive to behold. I'm more of a fan of other kinds of death metal, but this was a great (and ridiculously battering) time, and a high-quality set.
Post-DF, I was significantly impressed enough to go up to the merch stand again and pick up one of their "antipope" shirts; while bumming around as Kataklysm set up, I ran into a short sample of several North Shore metal bands....who were bummed out that they'd only gotten to the venue in time to pay $20 for 2 Dying Fetus tunes. They weren't much into Kataklysm either, and a little at loose ends about what to do with themselves. Some of the answer to this involved sitting around upstairs heckling the Canucks as they set up, and some of it involved yelling Manowar memes at people downstairs who weren't listening; hail creativity.
Kataklysm [5/7]
I didn't stick for their whole set, but I resolved to stay long enough to give them a fair shake; my opinions on this band's rapid and seemingly nonsensical decline have been made very clear in the past, but every new album is a chance to get back to relevance, and every gig is a chance to wake up and play soe interesting music. I hung around for four or five songs, but the verdict is still unchanged; not so much Canadian Hyperblast as Canadian warmed-over Hypocrisy. This wasn't a bad set, but Kataklysm will continue to run aground as long as they a) continue to ignore their earlier material, which has a distinct voice of its own, and also b) continue to suggest a lamer Hypocrisy to anyone who listens to them. Sure, echoes of more famous bands were kind of a theme tonight (except for Dying Fetus, who are the imitated rather than the imitators), but Keep and Eluvetie's material can stand in, more often than not, with that of their exemplars, and Kataklysm's new stuff just can't. Those who came for them appeared to be having fun, but those like me who came for any of the other three were either upstairs or shortly on the way out.
Leaving early, I managed to get back home a little after midnight. Tonight's probably into the breach again; Amorphis, Samael, and Virgin Black, same time same station.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
hail hail the Celtic discounts
In addition to a nice win at Killie on the weekend and a fitting domination in their League Cup opener today, there is some extra-good news out of Celtic Park: the super-awesome old away kit is on sale to clear inventory to make space for the weird yellow ones. Unless you, like, have a bowler hat implanted directly in your brain and you never take off your Rangers shirt because it's signed by everyone from your local UDA cell, you should agree that the "Iggle green" shirt is wicked awesome, and with slow shipping, it'll get to your door in two weeks for about $30.
If enough people buy these shirts, maybe the club will a) realize that the new away uniforms look silly, even with the positive quote under the collar, and b) use the extra money to buy a new left defender when the transfer (kind of like free agency) market opens up again in January.
If enough people buy these shirts, maybe the club will a) realize that the new away uniforms look silly, even with the positive quote under the collar, and b) use the extra money to buy a new left defender when the transfer (kind of like free agency) market opens up again in January.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Helloween with Gamma Ray [Worcester Palladium, 9/20/2008]
There will be some who will slag on me for going to this show; call me a pussy, or a poser, or some such shit because I went to see these bands rather than Deceased and their local support. These people, though, were probably not at the grindcore combine Friday night, and if they were there, they didn't see as close to as a full-on classic Helloween reunion as we are likely to ever get, especially in North America (see below).
I got out with plenty of time to spare, and ran into an old Landsmann going in; once inside, I headed for the rail through the largely empty floor. Things would fill in later, but getting in early definitely had its advantages.
Gamma Ray [7/7]
A disadvantage, though, was that I was on the rail drinking my beer and waiting for the long part of an hour before these guys went on. The advantage, of course, was that I got a top-class Gamma Ray set essentially at contact range. Unlike the last time they were here, they didn't do the full version of "Rebellion In Dreamland", but they did do "Heaven Can Wait" and "Heavy Metal Universe", plus all their festival-scale fan-participation stuff, in a hall that was filled up and actually allowed for it. Kai didn't hit all of the high notes on the records, but the performance was incredible regardless, and if they only did one song on their encore, it was after nearly and hour of normal set, and it was "Send Me A Sign", in the which process I really felt like I'd break my own neck headbanging.
Some time, someone needs to interview Dan Zimmerman rather than Kai, and at that time ask him something along the lines of "given how heavy the start of 'Empress', which you wrote. is, how come Freedom Call is uniformly so, um, poofty?" Seriously. By a significant margin, Gamma Ray had the best regular set of the night, and the authentic, hard-hitting heaviness had a lot to do with this. (The rest was having significantly more really good material, but that'll be as it may.)
During the break, I got another drink, hit the head, and picked up a Gamma Ray shirt; $25, so US bands charging more are officially on notice. I'd previously been a little peeved about the $40 asking price for tickets ($35 plus bogus "convenience" charge), but now, after Gamma Ray's actual set, I was just fine with going home after the stellar headliner-caliber performance, like I'd missed two locals and another touring band upstairs or something while waiting on the rail. Anything we got out of Helloween was going to be purely bonus.
Helloween [7/7]
This is based largely on their encore, which is also treated as a separate set below. The main part of their set was strong enough, and we got a lot of Keys material, but there was a lot stronger of a correlation between those two points than the band might have liked. You listen to the singles off the recent discs, half In Flames and half Schlaeger, and then the old stuff, and it becomes crystal clear that this band peaked ridiculously early, back in 1988, and while half of this is probably that no one else has materially surpassed the Keeper of the Seven Keys records with regard to inaugurating a power metal epoch either (okay, HammerFall's Glory to the Brave, but that CD is a lot less good than it is influential), half is that Kai Hansen wrote all the good music, and they picked Kiske over him and got the band in this mess themselves while Hansen's been doing awesome metal with pure integrity ever since. This was a decent Helloween set, but as implied from the foregoing comments, it was about to become superlative, probably the best that we're likely to get in the modern era.
HelloweenoRay [7/7]
Ingo Swichtenberg has passed on out of this world. Michael Kiske is so far away musically from the rest of the remaining lineup as to make a reunion of the living Keepers members impossible. But Jericho -- that's something else. The acrimony of the original split made it hard to contemplate, but it was still at least possible. And 'possible' became 'actually happening' as the techs dragged a fourth mic out, putting the lie to the venue ops who had turned some of the lights on. I was expecting the reunion. What we got was something entirely different.
Dan Zimmerman was out in the bus packing up his kit and making sure the local meth fiends didn't steal his cymbals or something, but every single other member who'd been on stage to this point came on back, Dirk and Markus doubling up the low end while Sascha and Henjo traded leads, Kai and Weiki ripping up their fretboards and rubbing shoulders, chatting like they haven't been moderately estranged for most of the last 20 years, and Andy Ders trying, occasionally in vain, so find somewhere to stand that didn't have a headstock flying through it. The world's best eight-member German power metal combo cranked up "Future World" and "I Want Out", to massive acclaim and backing vocals from a thousand or so fans; this was technically Helloween playing, but not Helloween the band as they currently are. This was Helloween the history, the idea, the manifestation on a stage in North America of the fundamental idea of German power metal: fast, heavy, singalong, melodic, and overall fun. If you missed it, you probably wouldn't appreciate it -- and if you did, where the hell were you, this didn't sell out or anything.
At the end of it all, it was a nice swift swing back north; next week's somewhere betweeen two and four shows, depending on if I go to Apocalyptica and this punk show Friday or just the metal gigs on the weekend. We'll see.
I got out with plenty of time to spare, and ran into an old Landsmann going in; once inside, I headed for the rail through the largely empty floor. Things would fill in later, but getting in early definitely had its advantages.
Gamma Ray [7/7]
A disadvantage, though, was that I was on the rail drinking my beer and waiting for the long part of an hour before these guys went on. The advantage, of course, was that I got a top-class Gamma Ray set essentially at contact range. Unlike the last time they were here, they didn't do the full version of "Rebellion In Dreamland", but they did do "Heaven Can Wait" and "Heavy Metal Universe", plus all their festival-scale fan-participation stuff, in a hall that was filled up and actually allowed for it. Kai didn't hit all of the high notes on the records, but the performance was incredible regardless, and if they only did one song on their encore, it was after nearly and hour of normal set, and it was "Send Me A Sign", in the which process I really felt like I'd break my own neck headbanging.
Some time, someone needs to interview Dan Zimmerman rather than Kai, and at that time ask him something along the lines of "given how heavy the start of 'Empress', which you wrote. is, how come Freedom Call is uniformly so, um, poofty?" Seriously. By a significant margin, Gamma Ray had the best regular set of the night, and the authentic, hard-hitting heaviness had a lot to do with this. (The rest was having significantly more really good material, but that'll be as it may.)
During the break, I got another drink, hit the head, and picked up a Gamma Ray shirt; $25, so US bands charging more are officially on notice. I'd previously been a little peeved about the $40 asking price for tickets ($35 plus bogus "convenience" charge), but now, after Gamma Ray's actual set, I was just fine with going home after the stellar headliner-caliber performance, like I'd missed two locals and another touring band upstairs or something while waiting on the rail. Anything we got out of Helloween was going to be purely bonus.
Helloween [7/7]
This is based largely on their encore, which is also treated as a separate set below. The main part of their set was strong enough, and we got a lot of Keys material, but there was a lot stronger of a correlation between those two points than the band might have liked. You listen to the singles off the recent discs, half In Flames and half Schlaeger, and then the old stuff, and it becomes crystal clear that this band peaked ridiculously early, back in 1988, and while half of this is probably that no one else has materially surpassed the Keeper of the Seven Keys records with regard to inaugurating a power metal epoch either (okay, HammerFall's Glory to the Brave, but that CD is a lot less good than it is influential), half is that Kai Hansen wrote all the good music, and they picked Kiske over him and got the band in this mess themselves while Hansen's been doing awesome metal with pure integrity ever since. This was a decent Helloween set, but as implied from the foregoing comments, it was about to become superlative, probably the best that we're likely to get in the modern era.
HelloweenoRay [7/7]
Ingo Swichtenberg has passed on out of this world. Michael Kiske is so far away musically from the rest of the remaining lineup as to make a reunion of the living Keepers members impossible. But Jericho -- that's something else. The acrimony of the original split made it hard to contemplate, but it was still at least possible. And 'possible' became 'actually happening' as the techs dragged a fourth mic out, putting the lie to the venue ops who had turned some of the lights on. I was expecting the reunion. What we got was something entirely different.
Dan Zimmerman was out in the bus packing up his kit and making sure the local meth fiends didn't steal his cymbals or something, but every single other member who'd been on stage to this point came on back, Dirk and Markus doubling up the low end while Sascha and Henjo traded leads, Kai and Weiki ripping up their fretboards and rubbing shoulders, chatting like they haven't been moderately estranged for most of the last 20 years, and Andy Ders trying, occasionally in vain, so find somewhere to stand that didn't have a headstock flying through it. The world's best eight-member German power metal combo cranked up "Future World" and "I Want Out", to massive acclaim and backing vocals from a thousand or so fans; this was technically Helloween playing, but not Helloween the band as they currently are. This was Helloween the history, the idea, the manifestation on a stage in North America of the fundamental idea of German power metal: fast, heavy, singalong, melodic, and overall fun. If you missed it, you probably wouldn't appreciate it -- and if you did, where the hell were you, this didn't sell out or anything.
At the end of it all, it was a nice swift swing back north; next week's somewhere betweeen two and four shows, depending on if I go to Apocalyptica and this punk show Friday or just the metal gigs on the weekend. We'll see.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Wendol with Atakke, Ramming Speed, Man The Conveyors, and Unholy Goatfucker [Democracy Center, Cambridge, 9/19/2008]
Originally, this was supposed to be the middle show of a three-day stand, but that was before the Mass. DOT/DPW decided that it would be a smart thing to close the ramp onto the Pike from 95 on Thursday night. I got spun around, missed the northbound entrance, and said fuck it, by the time I fight through the southbound backup again, fuel up, and drive out to Worcester, Summoning Hate will probably be closing up. Not a good time; fortunately, I got down to this show without state or commercial interference.
I left directly from work because this was billed as a 7pm show; I got in on time, but, as per the last time I was at a gig here, the bands weren't quite there yet. The locals were loaded in, but the touring bands were still inbound; traffic was apparently really tough from New York on up, but despite the later start, none of the sets really felt cramped for time. During the intervening time, I pretty much hung around and killed some time by reading through a couple zines; Boston anarchists and a prisoners-rights group. Some people might not be comfortable having a 9 to 5 job, then showing up at an underground grind-thrash show held at an all-purpose radical clubhouse, but think about it; if you believe in the idea of the underground, it's better to take money out of the corporate system and put it into the underground, rather than refrain from doing so because you're afraid of going to cult shows.
Soon enough, though, the bands went on, and concerns of ideological economics were pretty much put aside.
Unholy Goatfucker [5/7]
This band's changed up their lineup, I think, since I last saw them back at the Midway, but the change has definitely been for the better; the sound, at least, was a lot better here, allowing the content of the music to come through. In principle, this isn't anything new; however, if you consider it old hat, you probably have even more records issued on Head Not Found and Napalm between 1995 and 1998 than I do. Unholy Goatfucker's sound hearkens back to this era of the solidification of the Norwegian black metal sound, somewhere between Gorgoroth's early stuff and bands like Twin Obscenity and Obtained Enslavement. It's at least superficially odd to hear on a bill like this -- the long-noted correspondences between black metal and punk rock notwithstanding, the sound'll fit in a lot more seamlessly when they play with One Master and Witch Tomb at the end of the month -- but still cool to hear. We're still waiting for some recorded material, but the live stuff is good as it is, and having a classic-Norweigan-sounding, corpsepainted black metal band around definitely increases the already-strong diversity of the New England black metal scene.
Man The Converyors [5/7]
With the initial wait resolved, the bands came fast and clicking. Man The Conveyors came out with a ripping set of thrashed-up grind that got the crowd moving. They had had some turmoil (allegedly, I picked this all up at the show, so there's no prior information or sources outside the band) since their last tour, but from this set, it looks like they've got their feet back under them, and definitely with enough punch to provide good entertainment for anyone into grindcore.
I picked up their CD after their set, after rehydrating, and in the booklet there's some nice explanations of the lyrics alongside the actual texts. As noted alongside one of the songs, too often radical politics becomes a scene-points contest, and there's little education to go with the advocacy; this is a good step in the opposite direction, which is kind of necessary given that people tend to gut-level oppose progressive changes until someone explains to them exactly how they benefit when everyone benefits.
Ramming Speed [6/7]
How is a bat like a pterosaur? When you answer this question, you can also answer how this band is like, say, Tankard, twenty-five years earlier. The combination of punk, hardcore, and melodic metal now sounds almost perfectly like the thrash revival, but it's convergent evolution in this case, and the result is that they're probably the most likely of the Boston party thrashers to take their sound to that higher level. Here, the execution was top-notch, and so was the response; in addition to the requisite moshing, there were also a couple abortive attempts at crowdsurfing, and, of course, you had metalheads, punks, and crusties of all stripes (patches ranging, for example, from Infest to Asbestos to Amebix to Iron Maiden to Sodom to Pungent Stench) banging along. The touring bands made a strong case for themselves, but it could also be equally argued that Ramming Speed put up the best set of the night.
I picked up their CD from Ricky after they closed up, and since they're going on tour for most of the next six weeks, I have a fair margin to review it (as I ended up not promising Jonah because I suck at replying to email) before they start calling me a hoser. Watch this space.
Atakke [6/7]
The NYC half of the traveling bill was up first, and they hit like a ton of bricks. I love the hell out of early D-thrash (in this case Kreator, Sodom, and Holy Moses -- and their actual sound, too, not just the singer's gender), and Atakke's fusion of grindpunk into their Ruhrpott influences kicked a hell of a lot of ass. The floor may not have been as strictly nuts as during Ramming Speed, but the total area thrashed over may have been larger. This set felt a little foreshortened, but the music was good enough that it didn't really hurt. Definitely a band I've got to watch in the future, especially since they're based relatively close.
I meant to pick up their 7", but I declined to between sets; I'd have to either hold onto it through Wendol's set, or put it in my back pouch, and in the first case, someone would probably run into it, and the second, I'd almost certainly lean on it without thinking and break it in half. Supporting bands is good an sich, but I actually have a record player and hence wanted to also listen to the disc in question. Unfortunately, by the time that Wendol finished, they'd already packed their merch up; maybe order, maybe next time.
Wendol [6/7]
From melo-thrashing black metal to thrash-grind to re-evolved party thrash to grindpunk D-thrash, this show ranged all over the map genre-wise, and the final act was no exception. Wendol had a couple difficulties with the PA early, but once they hit their groove, there was no denying the quality of their nearly 50-50 mix of death metal and grindcore. They changed up straight-up death and straight-up grind section by section and track by track, but kept both integrated into a single sound; an impressive compositional feat, but if it didn't kick ass as well, it would have been for naught. Fortunately, everything worked, and this was a strong set right up to the point where the curfew came in; like Coffins the last time, they got a real encore by genuine popular demand versus the venue. Unlike Coffins, though, this felt like a fully fleshed-out set; like them, though, it was a worthy capstone to a quality show.
With the early curfew, I was able to get back home by a little after midnight, even counting time spent chasing down Wendol's guys for merch; they got in late and didn't have time, as alluded to above, to get set up before they had to set their gear up and start playing. This was their split CD and a large patch; there's a space for it on my least-built vest, but I'm not sure where yet. Next gig's tonight with Gamma Ray and Helloween; after that, things are a little up in the air.
I left directly from work because this was billed as a 7pm show; I got in on time, but, as per the last time I was at a gig here, the bands weren't quite there yet. The locals were loaded in, but the touring bands were still inbound; traffic was apparently really tough from New York on up, but despite the later start, none of the sets really felt cramped for time. During the intervening time, I pretty much hung around and killed some time by reading through a couple zines; Boston anarchists and a prisoners-rights group. Some people might not be comfortable having a 9 to 5 job, then showing up at an underground grind-thrash show held at an all-purpose radical clubhouse, but think about it; if you believe in the idea of the underground, it's better to take money out of the corporate system and put it into the underground, rather than refrain from doing so because you're afraid of going to cult shows.
Soon enough, though, the bands went on, and concerns of ideological economics were pretty much put aside.
Unholy Goatfucker [5/7]
This band's changed up their lineup, I think, since I last saw them back at the Midway, but the change has definitely been for the better; the sound, at least, was a lot better here, allowing the content of the music to come through. In principle, this isn't anything new; however, if you consider it old hat, you probably have even more records issued on Head Not Found and Napalm between 1995 and 1998 than I do. Unholy Goatfucker's sound hearkens back to this era of the solidification of the Norwegian black metal sound, somewhere between Gorgoroth's early stuff and bands like Twin Obscenity and Obtained Enslavement. It's at least superficially odd to hear on a bill like this -- the long-noted correspondences between black metal and punk rock notwithstanding, the sound'll fit in a lot more seamlessly when they play with One Master and Witch Tomb at the end of the month -- but still cool to hear. We're still waiting for some recorded material, but the live stuff is good as it is, and having a classic-Norweigan-sounding, corpsepainted black metal band around definitely increases the already-strong diversity of the New England black metal scene.
Man The Converyors [5/7]
With the initial wait resolved, the bands came fast and clicking. Man The Conveyors came out with a ripping set of thrashed-up grind that got the crowd moving. They had had some turmoil (allegedly, I picked this all up at the show, so there's no prior information or sources outside the band) since their last tour, but from this set, it looks like they've got their feet back under them, and definitely with enough punch to provide good entertainment for anyone into grindcore.
I picked up their CD after their set, after rehydrating, and in the booklet there's some nice explanations of the lyrics alongside the actual texts. As noted alongside one of the songs, too often radical politics becomes a scene-points contest, and there's little education to go with the advocacy; this is a good step in the opposite direction, which is kind of necessary given that people tend to gut-level oppose progressive changes until someone explains to them exactly how they benefit when everyone benefits.
Ramming Speed [6/7]
How is a bat like a pterosaur? When you answer this question, you can also answer how this band is like, say, Tankard, twenty-five years earlier. The combination of punk, hardcore, and melodic metal now sounds almost perfectly like the thrash revival, but it's convergent evolution in this case, and the result is that they're probably the most likely of the Boston party thrashers to take their sound to that higher level. Here, the execution was top-notch, and so was the response; in addition to the requisite moshing, there were also a couple abortive attempts at crowdsurfing, and, of course, you had metalheads, punks, and crusties of all stripes (patches ranging, for example, from Infest to Asbestos to Amebix to Iron Maiden to Sodom to Pungent Stench) banging along. The touring bands made a strong case for themselves, but it could also be equally argued that Ramming Speed put up the best set of the night.
I picked up their CD from Ricky after they closed up, and since they're going on tour for most of the next six weeks, I have a fair margin to review it (as I ended up not promising Jonah because I suck at replying to email) before they start calling me a hoser. Watch this space.
Atakke [6/7]
The NYC half of the traveling bill was up first, and they hit like a ton of bricks. I love the hell out of early D-thrash (in this case Kreator, Sodom, and Holy Moses -- and their actual sound, too, not just the singer's gender), and Atakke's fusion of grindpunk into their Ruhrpott influences kicked a hell of a lot of ass. The floor may not have been as strictly nuts as during Ramming Speed, but the total area thrashed over may have been larger. This set felt a little foreshortened, but the music was good enough that it didn't really hurt. Definitely a band I've got to watch in the future, especially since they're based relatively close.
I meant to pick up their 7", but I declined to between sets; I'd have to either hold onto it through Wendol's set, or put it in my back pouch, and in the first case, someone would probably run into it, and the second, I'd almost certainly lean on it without thinking and break it in half. Supporting bands is good an sich, but I actually have a record player and hence wanted to also listen to the disc in question. Unfortunately, by the time that Wendol finished, they'd already packed their merch up; maybe order, maybe next time.
Wendol [6/7]
From melo-thrashing black metal to thrash-grind to re-evolved party thrash to grindpunk D-thrash, this show ranged all over the map genre-wise, and the final act was no exception. Wendol had a couple difficulties with the PA early, but once they hit their groove, there was no denying the quality of their nearly 50-50 mix of death metal and grindcore. They changed up straight-up death and straight-up grind section by section and track by track, but kept both integrated into a single sound; an impressive compositional feat, but if it didn't kick ass as well, it would have been for naught. Fortunately, everything worked, and this was a strong set right up to the point where the curfew came in; like Coffins the last time, they got a real encore by genuine popular demand versus the venue. Unlike Coffins, though, this felt like a fully fleshed-out set; like them, though, it was a worthy capstone to a quality show.
With the early curfew, I was able to get back home by a little after midnight, even counting time spent chasing down Wendol's guys for merch; they got in late and didn't have time, as alluded to above, to get set up before they had to set their gear up and start playing. This was their split CD and a large patch; there's a space for it on my least-built vest, but I'm not sure where yet. Next gig's tonight with Gamma Ray and Helloween; after that, things are a little up in the air.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Impaled with Phobia, Kill The Client, Illogicist, Maruta, and Defeatist [Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, 9/9/2008]
Eighteen bands in six days is a hell of a lot of death metal. Fortunately, this concluding segment to the very-long-weekend that began with Boarcorpse on Thursday was just as eminently worthy as the previous two.
Because the show was a bit of an early start, and I was concerned that I'd miss bands as well as waste gas if I went home, I worked a little late, then drove right in; it ws a little bit of an early start, but between traffic and other built-in delays, there wasn't that much latency between when I got in and when the bands started. Unfortunately for my wallet, there was almost precisely enough time to find the one Sear Bliss DVD in the Pathos table, which predictably looted 15 bucks from my wallet and immediately handed the money to Dwyer before jumping into my vest pocket and zipping itself in. Beware black/death metal with trombones; they'll jump you and make you purchase them.
Defeatist [4/7]
Defeatist opened the proceedings with a decent, fairly standard-form grindcore set. As I'm not really a grindcore fan, there wasn't a lot in it that really stood out for me, but the execution was front-to-back solid, at least; grind basically is as grind is, so those who were here for the more grind half of the bill probably dug the hell out of this band. Other mainly-death-metal-fans, maybe not so much, but it was a decent set, and I'm sure that nobody minded their presence or anything.
Maruta [5/7]
I missed this band at the NEDF because I was a goober and didn't go to the first day, and while people who'd seen them earlier ranked this set below their prior performance, it was still a nice sharp deathgrind outing. Sure, they don't have a bassist, but they seem to be getting along just fine without one; the guitarist showed a lot of chops using his seventh string to build low-end while not letting the lower notes dominate over what he was doing on the higher strings. Solid grind, with nice tech chops on top; good stuff.
They had jacket parts, so I ended up picking up a patch in addition to their CD; it'll take some arranging to place and sew it in to maximum effect, but it'll look pretty cool as a finished product. Now I just need to get those other parts from Hell's Headbangers and order that Celtic badge...
Illogicist [5.5/7]
These guys put out a good set, but in any other city, it probably would have rated substantially better. Why? Because in Boston, we have Revocation, who do basically everything that Illogicist do in the line of tech-death, only better and at bar shows like, every other week. This isn't a knock on Illogicist, who played some great tunes, but just an assessment of bad luck that they may have had with their audience selection. If you could get past the "wait, Dave and Phil are down here in the audience, so how are they on stage too?" angle, this was a good set, and if they brought coals to Newcastle, at least it was some nice coal that contrasted well with the grind-heavy balance of the bill.
Kill The Client [6/7]
Nothing but high-quality, straight-from-the-shoulder grindcore. Where Phobia and Maruta did some balance of deathgrind/grind-death (yes, there is a difference, though you may need to own all of Carcass' demos on tape and the entire Swans back catalog to determine exactly what) and Defeatist had a fair salting of death elements, KTC just went straight for the throat with loud, violent, grind. The motion started to pick up in the crowd at this point, maybe because there were more people in, and likely partly because the vocalist dived off the stage a couple times to get things brewing himself. In addition to the rampage through their own material, they also did an Infest cover, which I didn't recognize because the top patch on my main jacket is from Running Wild. (If you're concerned that you may be automatically disqualified to comment on grindcore, don't worry; you already are. Fortunately, nobody cares.)
Phobia [6/7]
It's been a while since I actually listened to the one Phobia record that I've acquired over the years, but though I couldn't recognize any individual songs, the overall sound, grind with a ferocious death punch, was completely familiar. The band killed as could be expected, with the final result being the best grind set of the night, a hard mark given the competition, but seriously, this is Phobia, and excellence is expected. Were this just a grind tour, and they the headliners, I doubt that anyone would have been bummed about this as a headlining set -- though a pure grind tour involving fewer bands would also likely mean longer sets for everyone, and a couple more tunes couldn't've hurt here.
Impaled [7/7]
Impaled, though, crushed all; part of this is that my tastes play into their thrashed-up death style, and part of it is that they kicked ass on a lot of strong material over a nice meaty set. The uniforms were a touch gimmicky, but like other costumed bands that I could mention, they were having fun with it, though perhaps a little subdued to avoid rubbing any of the 'no fun - no mosh - no core' crowd who might have showed up at this show the wrong way. (Though, seriously, who believes in that stuff and goes to a show with Phobia this high on the bill? No idea.) As might be expected when you have six bands and a hard 12:15 curfew, their set was a little shorter than most people might have wanted, but they recognized the time limitations and announced that they were skipping the "let's pretend to walk off the stage lolz" bullshit, and just going straight into the encore portion of the set. Good music, and better honesty; I'm sure that most metalheads would gladly put the planned-encore phenomenon to death in order to get another song in the three minutes the band usually spends jacking around waiting for the crowd to make enough noise.
Alas, shows at the Middle East have to stop the music right on 12:15, so this one did have to come to an end. I headed north and made good time, assisted by not hitting anything; come Saturday, I'll be back down for Wargasm's reunion, but until then, just resting up.
Because the show was a bit of an early start, and I was concerned that I'd miss bands as well as waste gas if I went home, I worked a little late, then drove right in; it ws a little bit of an early start, but between traffic and other built-in delays, there wasn't that much latency between when I got in and when the bands started. Unfortunately for my wallet, there was almost precisely enough time to find the one Sear Bliss DVD in the Pathos table, which predictably looted 15 bucks from my wallet and immediately handed the money to Dwyer before jumping into my vest pocket and zipping itself in. Beware black/death metal with trombones; they'll jump you and make you purchase them.
Defeatist [4/7]
Defeatist opened the proceedings with a decent, fairly standard-form grindcore set. As I'm not really a grindcore fan, there wasn't a lot in it that really stood out for me, but the execution was front-to-back solid, at least; grind basically is as grind is, so those who were here for the more grind half of the bill probably dug the hell out of this band. Other mainly-death-metal-fans, maybe not so much, but it was a decent set, and I'm sure that nobody minded their presence or anything.
Maruta [5/7]
I missed this band at the NEDF because I was a goober and didn't go to the first day, and while people who'd seen them earlier ranked this set below their prior performance, it was still a nice sharp deathgrind outing. Sure, they don't have a bassist, but they seem to be getting along just fine without one; the guitarist showed a lot of chops using his seventh string to build low-end while not letting the lower notes dominate over what he was doing on the higher strings. Solid grind, with nice tech chops on top; good stuff.
They had jacket parts, so I ended up picking up a patch in addition to their CD; it'll take some arranging to place and sew it in to maximum effect, but it'll look pretty cool as a finished product. Now I just need to get those other parts from Hell's Headbangers and order that Celtic badge...
Illogicist [5.5/7]
These guys put out a good set, but in any other city, it probably would have rated substantially better. Why? Because in Boston, we have Revocation, who do basically everything that Illogicist do in the line of tech-death, only better and at bar shows like, every other week. This isn't a knock on Illogicist, who played some great tunes, but just an assessment of bad luck that they may have had with their audience selection. If you could get past the "wait, Dave and Phil are down here in the audience, so how are they on stage too?" angle, this was a good set, and if they brought coals to Newcastle, at least it was some nice coal that contrasted well with the grind-heavy balance of the bill.
Kill The Client [6/7]
Nothing but high-quality, straight-from-the-shoulder grindcore. Where Phobia and Maruta did some balance of deathgrind/grind-death (yes, there is a difference, though you may need to own all of Carcass' demos on tape and the entire Swans back catalog to determine exactly what) and Defeatist had a fair salting of death elements, KTC just went straight for the throat with loud, violent, grind. The motion started to pick up in the crowd at this point, maybe because there were more people in, and likely partly because the vocalist dived off the stage a couple times to get things brewing himself. In addition to the rampage through their own material, they also did an Infest cover, which I didn't recognize because the top patch on my main jacket is from Running Wild. (If you're concerned that you may be automatically disqualified to comment on grindcore, don't worry; you already are. Fortunately, nobody cares.)
Phobia [6/7]
It's been a while since I actually listened to the one Phobia record that I've acquired over the years, but though I couldn't recognize any individual songs, the overall sound, grind with a ferocious death punch, was completely familiar. The band killed as could be expected, with the final result being the best grind set of the night, a hard mark given the competition, but seriously, this is Phobia, and excellence is expected. Were this just a grind tour, and they the headliners, I doubt that anyone would have been bummed about this as a headlining set -- though a pure grind tour involving fewer bands would also likely mean longer sets for everyone, and a couple more tunes couldn't've hurt here.
Impaled [7/7]
Impaled, though, crushed all; part of this is that my tastes play into their thrashed-up death style, and part of it is that they kicked ass on a lot of strong material over a nice meaty set. The uniforms were a touch gimmicky, but like other costumed bands that I could mention, they were having fun with it, though perhaps a little subdued to avoid rubbing any of the 'no fun - no mosh - no core' crowd who might have showed up at this show the wrong way. (Though, seriously, who believes in that stuff and goes to a show with Phobia this high on the bill? No idea.) As might be expected when you have six bands and a hard 12:15 curfew, their set was a little shorter than most people might have wanted, but they recognized the time limitations and announced that they were skipping the "let's pretend to walk off the stage lolz" bullshit, and just going straight into the encore portion of the set. Good music, and better honesty; I'm sure that most metalheads would gladly put the planned-encore phenomenon to death in order to get another song in the three minutes the band usually spends jacking around waiting for the crowd to make enough noise.
Alas, shows at the Middle East have to stop the music right on 12:15, so this one did have to come to an end. I headed north and made good time, assisted by not hitting anything; come Saturday, I'll be back down for Wargasm's reunion, but until then, just resting up.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Carcass with Suffocation, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, 1349, Rotten Sound, Beneath The Massacre, and Veil of Maya [Worcester Palladium, 9/5/2008]
The reunion tour of the summer came around and fulfilled all expectations; I'm still nearly knocked out from exhaustion and such, but even if there hadn't been Summoning Hate et al on Thursday night and Impaled coming on Tuesday, this would be well sufficient for any weekend.
I took a half day from work, and as later comments will show, probably should have just taken the whole day off. Regardless, I had plenty of time to get fueled up and into the Palladium on time. Since I didn't particularly care about Veil of Maya, and because the gig started so early that most people were still at work, I didn't have much difficulty picking up a couple (very expensive) shirts from the merch stand. The weak dollar is probably as much to blame as greed; if you could buy anything in England with twelve quid, maybe Carcass would be a little more sanguine about a $25 price point.
Veil of Maya [4/7]
The most ill-matched band to this bill (well, maybe next to 1349), it's difficult to see even why they're touring with Dying Fetus. They weren't any better or more interesting than their previous appearance at the NEMHCF, and probably the best part of their set was that most of the ninjas got their energy out doing backflips in the empty pit, and didn't go injuring people during the later bands. This was the sole band of the night where I was, seriously, scratching my head wondering how people get into this kind of music; repetitive riffs and unineteresting composition. Maybe it's a moshing thing, but more people were more violent for the next band, and I thought that was why old thrash metal was coming back anyway.
Beneath The Massacre [5/7]
This, on the other hand, was a nice set of straight-ahead mosh music. Beneath The Massacre does not do a whole lot of variety, but fast, dense, tight, deathcore, they do in spades, and they do it very well. I'm not a huge fan of this style without the other adornments of, say, a Dying Fetus, but the execution here was absolutely dead-on. I was up in front of the mixing stand, but it sure looked like those on the floor were enjoying the hell out of the band. Good stuff, even if just for the technical aspect.
Rotten Sound [6/7]
I really can't explain how this band didn't get more of a reaction than they did. The singer's accent was a little dense, but they were still the only 100% grindcore band opening up for Carcass, and people had been thrashing mightily just before they went on. Maybe a different audience; Rotten Sound did a hell of a good performance, and while there was some moshing, this set downstairs at the Middle East -- or, seriously, upstairs here -- would have been a sea of flying bodies most of the way through. Alas, most of the kids who came for Heartwork have no idea who Trap Them are, so the reference and the shirt were probably for naught.
On the other hand, it seemed like everyone who is in a metal or grind band in New England turned out for this -- namedropping said bands individually would take up probably more space than several actual review entries -- and they definitely did pick up on it.
1349 [5/7]
Aborted dropped or didn't show up or something, so 1349 got slightly longer after a slightly longer wait, and from where I was standing made the most of it. I don't know whether they've developed since I last heard them, or if it was just the soundboard fucking up again, but I didn't recall them having so many black-and-roll tunes previously. It made the fit with the rest of the bill a little better, but they're 1349, not Vried, and their more directly chaotic black metal personally came off better.
Dying Fetus [6.5/7]
I really had to go back and check -- did I really never see Dying Fetus before? Well, I missed them at NEDF, and they were touring last fall and I had to go to Texas, I think, rather than seeing them at the Middle East. Before that, I was probably in Germany and before that, in Michigan and/or dead broke. Not so hard to believe after all. I'm not as into DF as the other bands remaining, but this was a great, powerful set, showing off a lot of death-grind punch and a good amount of variety in its application. Good stuff -- now I've just got to remember to go see them when they come around with a headlining slot.
At the conclusion of their set, they told people to stick around for Necrophagist; on one level, this was cool, because there had been a lot of uncertainty about the lineup -- a kind of Champion's League of death metal, with all the early angst about who was going to make it through the qualis -- and it wasn't concretely established that Necrophagist was going to play here, period. On the other hand, it was concerning -- how in the hell does Necrophagist play after Dying Fetus in North America, even supporting Carcass? I mean, I'm much more into Necro than DF, and it sounds weird even to me.
Necrophagist [7/7]
The new drummer's no Marco Minneman, but was definitely up to the standard of their previous material. Naturally, the set as a consequence wasn't as stunning as their headlining appearance at last year's Summer Slaughter, but merely up to their previous standards of ridiculous technicality. This was a top-class set of tech-death, but as good as the band was, even better was the announcement from Muhammed that there's going to be another Necrophagist album, and that they'll be back next year on Summer Slaughter. The tour's less important -- even though it assures that unlike this year's iteration, the package will unilaterally be worth seeing -- than the notice that the preeminent Turco-German musician of his generation isn't ready to trade in his guitar for an AutoCAD workstation just yet. As good as this band is, whenever Muhammed decides that he's going to get on with the rest of his life, it'll be a sad day, but the knowledge that we'll get at least another full-length out of them, plus the as-yet-unnamed Suicmez/Minneman collaboration that's in the works, is a definite positive.
Suffocation [7/7]
I hit the floor at this point, taking advantage of the change in style to get down on the rail. Doing otherwise with a bad knee would be little short of suicidal; as it was, I saw relatively little of Suffocation as opposed to listening to them while keeping a weather eye on the crowd to keep myself and those around me from getting totally wrecked. The music was ripping as usual, including a brand new song from the forthcoming record, which sounded as supremely finished as you'd expect from a Suffocation composition, even though they're still working on the disc in question. Frank also provided a nice sense of history, referencing their past swings with Carcass back in the early '90s, and Suffocation provided an eminently headliner-quality set of slammingly brutal death metal. Killer stuff, but the best was still to come.
Carcass [7/7]
This was what we'd been waiting for since the reunion was announced, and for those who remembered how successful Heartwork was for the band, there's no way they came away disappointed. (Those who somehow forgot shouldn't be chastised too severely; this was, after all, 15 years ago.) This was a longer and slightly deeper set than they did in Germany, but -- perhaps because I had that prior experience, or perhaps because Ken didn't fly over to make a special appearance as he did at Wacken -- in some way not quite as amazing. This was still, of course, Carcass, and ripping through a bunch of killer material as though they'd never been gone, but just great, rather than historically great. The only unfortunate part was, as usual, that they didn't go on longer, but "A Night with Carcass" might have been a harder sell for a band that's been out of commission for 15 years than a conventional tour like this.
Finally, the stage techs rather than the band came out to break the backline down as the autopsy footage rolled, and it was time to head home. It wasn't until after I got onto 128, though, that getting less than three hours' sleep after Summoning Hate the night before (viz "trap show" comments way back up at the top) really started to hit, and I didn't have enough of C.W. McCall's "shot[s] of black C" to make it back reliably without running the car into anything. Luckily, my work is on the way back, so I could take a detour to get an "hour of Zs" in the parking garage and recharge. Well, 30 minutes, but it was enough, and I'm still alive, and if it wasn't absolutely the best show that it could possibly have been, you can't honestly argue with the quality of the actual performances involved.
There's been a fair bit of grousing around some of the circumstantials here, stopping just short of suggesting that Carcass is doing this reunion mainly for the money; high merch prices, most of the set from their mst popular works, et cetera. Those burned up about this should bear the following two points in mind:
1) Every reunion of a successful band after a long layoff is to at least some degree driven by economic factors. Every single one, from Black Sabbath on down.
2) This reunion would not have happened if Holger Hubner had not sat down with Jeff, Bill, and a suitcase containing one million euros, and said "It's yours if you get the band back together and play Wacken and Bloodstock".
The last is a paraphrase, sure, but there have been too many rumors of the million-euro guarantee floating around in the last two years to overlook it entirely. Just from Jeff's commentary in the limited windows that I've seen the band, it's pretty clear that the band is still not terribly happy with the Swansong material and how that record turned out, and that they're not tremendously comfortable with going on as Carcass without Ken Owen in the mix. Instead of grousing about commercialism, people should instead be happy that Carcass is going out and executing with professionalism, passion, and artistic integrity in the middle of what is a fundamentally commercial endeavor. It's possible to do a bad reunion if the band is solely stuck together for the cash, but the Carcass guys still actually like one another, and can still go back to those early days in Midlands clubs while they're on stage, even if it's 20 years on, and they're playing in the US to, largely, people who were in elementary school when Symphonies of Sickness was being written. I'm not crazy about paying 30 bucks for a shirt either, but if this tour doesn't math out as a commercial prospect six months ago, they don't do it, and the band is drinking beers with Ken right now, counting the payoff from the summer's festivals, and there's no Carcass reunion for us in North America. Those who were there got a hell of a lot more Carcass than anyone thought they'd ever get even five years ago, and even if this is all the Carcass we get for another fifteen years, there's a hell of a lot of quality in their performance here to last, Kommerz or no Kommerz.
Next gig is probably Impaled -- who will probably never be accused of commercialism -- and after that Wargasm -- another reunion, but probably with a significantly smaller profit motive -- both at the Middle East. For now, I'm just recovering, and just glad there's no shows I have to feel bad about missing.
I took a half day from work, and as later comments will show, probably should have just taken the whole day off. Regardless, I had plenty of time to get fueled up and into the Palladium on time. Since I didn't particularly care about Veil of Maya, and because the gig started so early that most people were still at work, I didn't have much difficulty picking up a couple (very expensive) shirts from the merch stand. The weak dollar is probably as much to blame as greed; if you could buy anything in England with twelve quid, maybe Carcass would be a little more sanguine about a $25 price point.
Veil of Maya [4/7]
The most ill-matched band to this bill (well, maybe next to 1349), it's difficult to see even why they're touring with Dying Fetus. They weren't any better or more interesting than their previous appearance at the NEMHCF, and probably the best part of their set was that most of the ninjas got their energy out doing backflips in the empty pit, and didn't go injuring people during the later bands. This was the sole band of the night where I was, seriously, scratching my head wondering how people get into this kind of music; repetitive riffs and unineteresting composition. Maybe it's a moshing thing, but more people were more violent for the next band, and I thought that was why old thrash metal was coming back anyway.
Beneath The Massacre [5/7]
This, on the other hand, was a nice set of straight-ahead mosh music. Beneath The Massacre does not do a whole lot of variety, but fast, dense, tight, deathcore, they do in spades, and they do it very well. I'm not a huge fan of this style without the other adornments of, say, a Dying Fetus, but the execution here was absolutely dead-on. I was up in front of the mixing stand, but it sure looked like those on the floor were enjoying the hell out of the band. Good stuff, even if just for the technical aspect.
Rotten Sound [6/7]
I really can't explain how this band didn't get more of a reaction than they did. The singer's accent was a little dense, but they were still the only 100% grindcore band opening up for Carcass, and people had been thrashing mightily just before they went on. Maybe a different audience; Rotten Sound did a hell of a good performance, and while there was some moshing, this set downstairs at the Middle East -- or, seriously, upstairs here -- would have been a sea of flying bodies most of the way through. Alas, most of the kids who came for Heartwork have no idea who Trap Them are, so the reference and the shirt were probably for naught.
On the other hand, it seemed like everyone who is in a metal or grind band in New England turned out for this -- namedropping said bands individually would take up probably more space than several actual review entries -- and they definitely did pick up on it.
1349 [5/7]
Aborted dropped or didn't show up or something, so 1349 got slightly longer after a slightly longer wait, and from where I was standing made the most of it. I don't know whether they've developed since I last heard them, or if it was just the soundboard fucking up again, but I didn't recall them having so many black-and-roll tunes previously. It made the fit with the rest of the bill a little better, but they're 1349, not Vried, and their more directly chaotic black metal personally came off better.
Dying Fetus [6.5/7]
I really had to go back and check -- did I really never see Dying Fetus before? Well, I missed them at NEDF, and they were touring last fall and I had to go to Texas, I think, rather than seeing them at the Middle East. Before that, I was probably in Germany and before that, in Michigan and/or dead broke. Not so hard to believe after all. I'm not as into DF as the other bands remaining, but this was a great, powerful set, showing off a lot of death-grind punch and a good amount of variety in its application. Good stuff -- now I've just got to remember to go see them when they come around with a headlining slot.
At the conclusion of their set, they told people to stick around for Necrophagist; on one level, this was cool, because there had been a lot of uncertainty about the lineup -- a kind of Champion's League of death metal, with all the early angst about who was going to make it through the qualis -- and it wasn't concretely established that Necrophagist was going to play here, period. On the other hand, it was concerning -- how in the hell does Necrophagist play after Dying Fetus in North America, even supporting Carcass? I mean, I'm much more into Necro than DF, and it sounds weird even to me.
Necrophagist [7/7]
The new drummer's no Marco Minneman, but was definitely up to the standard of their previous material. Naturally, the set as a consequence wasn't as stunning as their headlining appearance at last year's Summer Slaughter, but merely up to their previous standards of ridiculous technicality. This was a top-class set of tech-death, but as good as the band was, even better was the announcement from Muhammed that there's going to be another Necrophagist album, and that they'll be back next year on Summer Slaughter. The tour's less important -- even though it assures that unlike this year's iteration, the package will unilaterally be worth seeing -- than the notice that the preeminent Turco-German musician of his generation isn't ready to trade in his guitar for an AutoCAD workstation just yet. As good as this band is, whenever Muhammed decides that he's going to get on with the rest of his life, it'll be a sad day, but the knowledge that we'll get at least another full-length out of them, plus the as-yet-unnamed Suicmez/Minneman collaboration that's in the works, is a definite positive.
Suffocation [7/7]
I hit the floor at this point, taking advantage of the change in style to get down on the rail. Doing otherwise with a bad knee would be little short of suicidal; as it was, I saw relatively little of Suffocation as opposed to listening to them while keeping a weather eye on the crowd to keep myself and those around me from getting totally wrecked. The music was ripping as usual, including a brand new song from the forthcoming record, which sounded as supremely finished as you'd expect from a Suffocation composition, even though they're still working on the disc in question. Frank also provided a nice sense of history, referencing their past swings with Carcass back in the early '90s, and Suffocation provided an eminently headliner-quality set of slammingly brutal death metal. Killer stuff, but the best was still to come.
Carcass [7/7]
This was what we'd been waiting for since the reunion was announced, and for those who remembered how successful Heartwork was for the band, there's no way they came away disappointed. (Those who somehow forgot shouldn't be chastised too severely; this was, after all, 15 years ago.) This was a longer and slightly deeper set than they did in Germany, but -- perhaps because I had that prior experience, or perhaps because Ken didn't fly over to make a special appearance as he did at Wacken -- in some way not quite as amazing. This was still, of course, Carcass, and ripping through a bunch of killer material as though they'd never been gone, but just great, rather than historically great. The only unfortunate part was, as usual, that they didn't go on longer, but "A Night with Carcass" might have been a harder sell for a band that's been out of commission for 15 years than a conventional tour like this.
Finally, the stage techs rather than the band came out to break the backline down as the autopsy footage rolled, and it was time to head home. It wasn't until after I got onto 128, though, that getting less than three hours' sleep after Summoning Hate the night before (viz "trap show" comments way back up at the top) really started to hit, and I didn't have enough of C.W. McCall's "shot[s] of black C" to make it back reliably without running the car into anything. Luckily, my work is on the way back, so I could take a detour to get an "hour of Zs" in the parking garage and recharge. Well, 30 minutes, but it was enough, and I'm still alive, and if it wasn't absolutely the best show that it could possibly have been, you can't honestly argue with the quality of the actual performances involved.
There's been a fair bit of grousing around some of the circumstantials here, stopping just short of suggesting that Carcass is doing this reunion mainly for the money; high merch prices, most of the set from their mst popular works, et cetera. Those burned up about this should bear the following two points in mind:
1) Every reunion of a successful band after a long layoff is to at least some degree driven by economic factors. Every single one, from Black Sabbath on down.
2) This reunion would not have happened if Holger Hubner had not sat down with Jeff, Bill, and a suitcase containing one million euros, and said "It's yours if you get the band back together and play Wacken and Bloodstock".
The last is a paraphrase, sure, but there have been too many rumors of the million-euro guarantee floating around in the last two years to overlook it entirely. Just from Jeff's commentary in the limited windows that I've seen the band, it's pretty clear that the band is still not terribly happy with the Swansong material and how that record turned out, and that they're not tremendously comfortable with going on as Carcass without Ken Owen in the mix. Instead of grousing about commercialism, people should instead be happy that Carcass is going out and executing with professionalism, passion, and artistic integrity in the middle of what is a fundamentally commercial endeavor. It's possible to do a bad reunion if the band is solely stuck together for the cash, but the Carcass guys still actually like one another, and can still go back to those early days in Midlands clubs while they're on stage, even if it's 20 years on, and they're playing in the US to, largely, people who were in elementary school when Symphonies of Sickness was being written. I'm not crazy about paying 30 bucks for a shirt either, but if this tour doesn't math out as a commercial prospect six months ago, they don't do it, and the band is drinking beers with Ken right now, counting the payoff from the summer's festivals, and there's no Carcass reunion for us in North America. Those who were there got a hell of a lot more Carcass than anyone thought they'd ever get even five years ago, and even if this is all the Carcass we get for another fifteen years, there's a hell of a lot of quality in their performance here to last, Kommerz or no Kommerz.
Next gig is probably Impaled -- who will probably never be accused of commercialism -- and after that Wargasm -- another reunion, but probably with a significantly smaller profit motive -- both at the Middle East. For now, I'm just recovering, and just glad there's no shows I have to feel bad about missing.
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