I turned 35 on this 8th of May, 2014. Most of my afternoon was spent standing in front of
The Colbert Report
studios hoping for stand by tickets. I ended up not getting in, but
those three hours I spent waiting were in the greatest city in the
world, talking to interesting people. And there was a metal gig for me
to go to right after. It could have been worse. I could have spent my
birthday in Malaysia.
When I was still a teenager, someone impressed upon me that noise was
the next step after metal. The sentiment didn't make sense for a long
time, but maybe I just needed a band like
Theologian
to appeal to my hesher sensibilities. The trio do the industrial/noise
thing in a way that feels like blackened doom, and without playing a
single recognizable riff. [It's probably not a coincidence that mainman
Bartow is also in
Batillus.]
Amidst the screaming and the oppressive drums, the abstraction appealed
to me in a way most avant acts don't. I may be alone in this: as the
feedback came to a close and the band started disassembling their
equipment, one guy at the front sputtered, "That's it? You've got to be
fucking kidding me!"
I saw Khanate a dozen years ago; even as disparate sources as
The Village Voice and
Terrorizer sung their praises, I couldn't shake the feeling that they were incredibly over-rated. It should follow that I wouldn't like
GNAW
either, which features Khanate vocalist Alan Dubin and is cut from much
the same noise/FX heavy cloth. But I actually found myself appreciating
their tuneless nihilism. It did dawn on me, while nodding along to what
essentially amounted to a guy yelling over feedback that there is a
danger in taking this kind of stuff too seriously. But if
John Zorn can get a genius grant, then GNAW should be able to inspire some unselfconscious rocking out at the very least.
All the same, it was a relief when
Whitehorse's
set signaled a return to actual metal. The Aussies don't exactly
reinvent the wheel, but do integrate noise into their earthshaking
rumble in a way that's fun and fairly noteworthy. More than anything, I
was struck by how much the sludge metal of today has in common with the
doomy hardcore of 20 years ago over traditional doom metal. If you
played Damnation AD or Unbroken at a quarter speed, the result would
probably sound a lot like Whitehorse. [I'm also inclined to believe most
of today's bearded sludge dudes were yesterday's backpacked hardcore
kids.]
I wasn't sure what to expect from
The Body. The Portland duo represent what I like to think of as "
NPR metal",
and indeed there were a significant number of tote bags in Saint Vitus
that night. [Or maybe it's like that every night. You know, being in
Brooklyn and all.] As a two piece, their music is incredibly direct,
more Bastard Noise than Black Sabbath. Guitars and drums marched in
ominous lockstep and we nodded in unison, seekers and worshipers of the
riff.
It wasn't quite the thrill of spending my birthday with Stephen Colbert,
but it's impossible to take for granted that I was able to go to a
metal show without being sure there was one. Thanks again, Saint Vitus.
