The Great Trek into Kvelertak

Star Trek Into Darkness

The first one was a lot of fun, and so is this one. The main problem with the 2009 film was the rather unimpressive antagonist; this time around, they got Benedict Expletive Cumberbatch to work his baritone magic, and even with the almost incoherently silly and convenient script, he managed to play a wonderfully menacing and yet almost empathic bad guy and made the film at least twice as enjoyable as it could have been without him. The rest of the cast did their jobs well enough. There's enough action to fill all of the old Star Trek movies put together, and a different kind of humor that often falls into the referential category. It's this referential thing that's getting a lot of people (mostly die-hard Trek fans) really upset. As this is a "reboot" of sorts, there are going to be many parallels, and that is taken to a bit of an extreme here. It's done a little bit sloppily but I got a ton of enjoyment out of it. Good stuff. Robocop.

The Great Gatsby

 I'd been hearing bad things about this from the first time I heard about it. There have been at least four other Gatsby film adaptations in the past, and I don't think any of them have garnered much acclaim; it's just too much of a masterwork (or so I'm told) to really be "filmable," as people tend to say about things they like a lot. Obviously I haven't read the book so that defensive attachment wasn't an issue for me going into the theater, and I think it helped my experience a lot. It's a beautifully visual film with some pretty great acting, a lot of gorgeous women, and of course the story itself is quite interesting even if it is a bit of a "chick-flick" sort of thing. I'm not a huge fan of voice-over but it worked well enough. Perhaps it has failed though in that I don't really feel like I have to go read the book. Different strokes, Old Sport.

Kvelertak

Check another one off the list of must-see-live bands. I bought this ticket months ago, as soon as the tour was announced. They have come to the U.S. before, but never so close to me, so there was really no choice this time. Their self-titled album from a few years ago topped my list without much even competition (aside from Shining and Ghost). Meir hasn't had nearly the same effect but it's still an excellently feel-good metal album and didn't lessen my love for the band. I spent the majority of their set in the first and second rows, and suffered the requisite beatings from the mosh pit behind me; it was worth it. The frontman went crowd-surfing several times, and at one point one of them starting hanging from the rafters above the crowd. At the end the first few rows were all invited up onto the stage join in with the band in their revelrous finale. Kick-ass.

The openers were pretty good too. The first band, Black Clouds, was an instrumental three-piece playing rather djenty metal similar to TesseracT but with an extremely distorted bass, and a seizure inducing light show. It was fine but I get bored rather quickly without vocals. Next up, Black Tusk performed as the only opener I'd actually heard before, but were unfortunately fairly boring as well. I'm not sure really what made them boring for me. They're really quite similar in sound to the rest of the bill, but there's just something missing. I think the next band, Cancer Bats, managed to find that element that really gets my interest. Could be the rocking guitar riffs or the vocalist's energetic performance (plus pizza shirt), but whatever it was got me to buy their album Dead Set on Living. It's pretty great; a disc full of rip-roaring bluesy metal followed by another disc of Black Sabbath covers, almost exclusively pulled from their first few albums. They've got a new fan for sure.

Spring Breakers, Stoker, and Pig Destroyer

I find myself in a position of writeness.

The only thing I've seen before of Harmony Korine's is this, so my knowledge of his style is limited; however it seems to be pretty consistent with Spring Breakers, a somewhat surreal film that at first glance appears to be something akin to those Girls Gone Wild clips everyone has seen somewhere or another, but is instead a strange, dark story of two humans and a bunch of very troubled people. Yes, there is a lot of skin here, but it's a lot more than that. I've heard comparisons to Natural Born Killers, and those are not unwarranted, although the pace is quite different. It's funny, disgusting, and engrossingly erotic, at times concurrently. James Franco shines brightly as Alien, the stereotypical white-man-who-thinks-he's-black, and the four leading ladies take strangely subdued roles while maintaining nearly constant screen presence. Even more oddly the ones who stay the longest are the least developed. It's a weird movie.

I've tried watching the Revenge trilogy aside from Oldboy without much success. It probably deserves another go. Same with that one vampire movie that I was so excited about and never got around to seeing. Park Chan Wook definitely proved himself with Oldboy, and Stoker is no slouch either. Like his previous masterpiece, this one is intensely creepy, and probably very offensive to a lot of people who will never see it. It's impressive that the Korean director's first English-language/acted film is as good as it is, although a lot of the dialogue is really quite awkward; this may be intentional but I tend to think it could be a by-product of the language barrier. It sure doesn't hurt the atmosphere. Mia Wasikowska plays a beguilingly strange young woman with some sort of psychosis that gives her heightened senses and a bloodlust suppressed by her father. Her estranged uncle comes into the picture with the intention of showing her her true self. Madness and a possibly unnecessary shower scene ensues. I enjoyed it all.

Pig Destroyer has been one of my top favorite bands for several years now, ever since I clicked with either Phantom Limb or Terrifyer; I can't remember which. Their most recent album, Book Burner, takes a more traditional grind-core route than their last few but still rips tremendously, and has a few of my favorite tracks of their discography (notably The Bug.) The band doesn't tour much (they have jobs), which made it even more unlikely for me to ever have a chance to see them, until I moved down to the DC area, which just happens to be where they are based. Still it took over three years before I got to experience this megalith of grind in person. It was worth the wait. A good portion of their set at Black Cat was from their latest, but there was definitely a generous sampling of their past catalog as well. I couldn't really sing along of course due to having no idea what the words are for the vast majority of their songs, but when I could I felt like their biggest fan, up there in the middle of the second row fighting to stay upright against the pummeling mass of moshers. Kat Katz came on for a couple songs which was fantastic; it's entirely awesome that such a slight, beautiful woman can belt out that kind of vitriol so violently and maintain her elegance. I hope to see these guys (and gal, perhaps) destroy the stage again, hopefully soon.

Good night.

Y’all want a 2012 top 10 music thing?

No, you don’t. Here it is anyway.

Stolen Babies – Naught

2006’s “There Be Squabbles Ahead” is awesome. It’s definitely in the top tier for me. Oddly though I didn’t really follow Stolen Babies’ progress after that, and it turns out for most of the time there wasn’t any. They took a big hiatus, but eventually they found out that people actually wanted to hear more music, and they happened to have a some on the burner; and so Naught came to pass. It’s as good as Squabbles if not better, and slightly darker, meaner, but still jaunty dark cabaret masterpiece. Their headlining show that I caught this year was possibly the greatest concert I’ve ever attended (along with the 15 other people who decided to show up).

Pig Destroyer - Book Burner

“Dangerously angry one minute, rocking and rolling the next!” These guys never disappoint, except for the whole barely ever performing live thing. Book Burner is the best sort of grindcore; honest, raw, and heavy as balls. It’s just great. It is, in a way, a regression though. It sounds quite a bit more like their earlier work, say Prowler in the Yard, as opposed to the slower brutality of Terrifyer and Phantom Limb. This is due to the replacement of their drummer with the guy from Misery Index. It works.

Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind

I really don’t like the album cover art, but what does that matter? It’s another column of hellfire from the masters of true metalcore, Converge. They’re a close second to Stolen Babies for best concert experience of my life; these guys just tear it to pieces. All We Love… is not much of a progression, but Axe To Fall is hard to follow in that regard. It’s an extremely solid piece of music with everything I’ve grown to love from them.

Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan

A momentary detour from the metal bits. I’m not sure why I tried this. Maybe just because I kept seeing the cover of Bitte Orca and being intrigued by it. Turns out that one isn’t really my thing, but this right here is just wonderful. It’s got a great sort of angularity in every aspect of the music, and lots of the lyrics pierce my little emo-heart.

 

Die Antwoord - Ten$ion

Definitely a worthy follow-up to 2010’s $O$, Ten$ion is another tongue-in-cheek masterwork of weirdness and irony that just hugs my hipster self all warm-like. Yo-landi and Ninja’s artistry is a sort that might be dismissed as trash by a lot of people, but underneath the ugly exterior is some positively innovative stuff.

 

Mares of Thrace - The Pilgrimage

Back to the metals! Mares of Thrace is primarily a female death/sludge metal duo with a huge sound. Their previous album, The Moulting, didn’t really do much for me aside from impress me by the concept of two beautiful ladies playing metal so honestly, but this year they really created something I can enjoy on its own merits. It’s got that angularity that I crave in spades, and it’s just straight-up heavy.

Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

It’s another Gojira album! It can not suck! That’s why it’s here. Like Converge, they didn’t really forge any new ground, just made yet another hugely enjoyable, groovy metal album. I’ve got to catch these dudes live before I get sick of them.

 

Absvrdist - Illusory

Here we start getting ito somewhat less familiar territory. I found a review of this on MetalSucks, and though of lot of the stuff they’ve been recommending lately is starting to leave my areas of interest, I was intrigued by the “blackened grindcore” description, which isn’t really a thing that happens much aside from with the increasingly stagnant Anaal Nathrakh. This here is mostly just good grindcore with occasional black metal mixed into some of the later tracks, but it’s still really enjoyable. “Come on, doesn’t anybody wanna slam-dance?”

Matt Elliott - The Broken Man

Elliott’s perfected his style here. Misery loves company. I can’t get enough of “Dust Flesh and Bone”

 

 

Andy Stott - Luxury Problems

I think I’ve only listened to this three times or so, but I’m still including it here because it’s just so different. I don’t think I’ve heard anything like it before, which is probably because my dabbling with electronic music is sadly limited. This is not typical techno or whatever by any means; it’s a dynamically vibrant, lush, dark experience. Highly recommended.

Some extras that deserve attention but I’m done writing so whatever

Napalm Death - Utilitarian
Beach House - Bloom
Nachtmystium - Silencing Machine
Abigail Williams - Becoming
Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
Gaza - No Absolutes in Human Suffering 

Things

So hey, how’s it been? It’s nice outside.

Since last I wrote, I’ve seen The Avengers twice, Sound of My Voice, a few concerts, and probably some other stuff I can’t remember. I’ve spent a lot of time outside and have had no impulse to write about anything, but it’s all just piling up and I still have a vague sense of responsibility for some reason. Now since I’m taking the day off to recover from Meshuggah last night I’ve got some time to kill. Here we go.

The Avengers is super great as expected. It seems anything Joss Whedon controls is destined for wonderfulness, and now that he’s a got a familiar property to play with he’s finally getting the recognition he deserves, breaking pretty much every box-office record there is like Chris Nolan and James Cameron before him. It’s certainly not a perfect movie, but as far as super-hero stuff goes it’s what it needs to be, and Whedon’s penchant for witty dialogue and excellent handling of large principal casts makes it crazy entertaining.

Sound of My Voice is basically garbage. Don’t bother unless you like being bored and only enjoyed Lost before they started answering questions, except that’s not really even a valid comparison because Lost is good.

As I mentioned, I saw Meshuggah last night along with Decapitated and Baroness. Decapitated were pretty boring, probably because I don’t really know their songs at all, but they struck me as border-line deathcore of a sort I don’t really dig. Baroness kicked all sorts of ass and included a few songs from their yet-to-be-released Yellow and Green album, which seemed okay for the most part. Meshuggah owned the stage of course. I had to push my way out of the crowd though because the middle of a Meshuggah audience is no place for a short, bespectacled music lover.

The night before that I got to see Reggie Watts with some friends. I’m only passingly familiar with him so I probably didn’t enjoy the show as much as I might have, especially since as soon as any sort of music starts playing the speech-center of my brain shuts down completely and words lose all meaning to me. His standup was pretty good though. Very nerdy.

I saw Converge a while back too, which was just extremely excellent. It’s the second time I’ve seen them but this time I was much closer to the stage, which is really the only way to experience their ridiculous intensity. Jacob Bannon is a monster of a performer. They played a number of new songs, which didn’t really sound like anything as revolutionary (for them) as Dark Horse did before Axe to Fall was released, but they were definitely solid and I look forward to them. I only caught one of the opening acts, Loma Prieta, which sounded nothing like music at all and made me wish I’d remembered to bring my earplugs.

I watched some shows too. Some friends got me into Adventure Time, which is a great cartoon made for pretty much everybody, drawing from stuff like Dungeons and Dragons and Candyland, with both childish and adult sensibilities throughout. It’s a joy to watch. I also caught up with Justified, which seems to almost be a spiritual successor to Deadwood, starring the same Timothy Olyphant and guest-spotting a bunch of other alumni. It’s fantastically written and almost every episode is a gripping reprieve from some other less-awesome shows I’m still holding on to.

Community is not one of those less-awesome shows. It’s probably the most awesome. Shame that it probably won’t be next season though. We’ll miss you Dan.

I think that’s everything.

Concert Review: Die Antwoord at 930 Club, 12 Feb 2012

Pitchfork’s recent review of Die Antwoord’s new second album, Ten$ion, is pretty scathing. The 4.2/10 rating is accompanied by words mostly going on about the emptiness of the lyrics and failed attempts at irony or relevance. In a purely analytical sense, I agree with pretty much everything in the piece. However, much as with the first album, I can’t help but love it. I had to see this sordid display in person.

The night began pretty lamely. I got to 930 club about an hour after opening due to metro track work and a bit of a late start, but it seems I didn’t miss anything. The opening act was some DJ who I don’t even care to look up because all he did was play samples of hip-hop and EDM songs I’d never heard. I’m just not accustomed to that and didn’t enjoy it at all. It didn’t help that he was on stage for another one and a half hours, and then Die Antwoord didn’t come on stage until 10. Of course once they finally showed up, it made the wait well worthwhile.

One of the more entertaining parts of the trio’s presentation is the visual aspect, which until now I only really knew from their videos. I love Yolandi’s freakish sex appeal and Ninja’s wiry, nerdy aggression, and the many faces of DJ Hi-Tek give the band a bit of mystery to their façade. All these elements were on intense display last night. The two front-people went through several flashy outfits throughout their set, and their movements were constantly energetic.

As for the music, it pretty much as powerful as on the albums. Although I kind of fail to see the point of including the DJ aside from maintaining the character, there were some slight differences here and there. Of course Yolandi and Ninja couldn’t replicate their vocal performances perfectly but they did with tons of vigor and the volume made up for the loss in production quality. Yolandi’s voice in particular often brought back memories of my last concert experience with Blood Ceremony’s flautist.

I think they mostly stuck to songs from Ten$ion, but they did hit a bunch of the great ones from $O$ and ended the show with Beat Boy and Enter the Ninja, which were both pretty bangin’. It was about an hour all told, which was alright with me as it allowed me to catch the metro before it closed.

This was my first rave show, and my second hip-hop show, although my first was MC Lars so I don’t think it really counts. Definitely a new experience for me. I didn’t really participate much aside from a bit of head-banging (what else is a metalhead to do?), but I think I got the drift. Probably not going to attend many similar things. Unless it’s Die Antwoord again.

Concert Review: Ghost at The Rock N’ Roll Hotel, 2012-01-19

Ancient Wisdom hails from Austin, Texas, and in keeping with the rest of the night, play a pretty hard-to-pin-down sort of sludge/rock/doom. They were definitely interesting to watch as the frontman is also the drummer, but doesn’t sit on a throne; rather, he hits the bass drum with his left hand and the rest of the stuff with his right, producing a pretty slow, tribal sort of beat. As is the case with most drummer-singers his vocal stylings are a bit rough, especially since he’s opted out of the growls. They rock pretty hard though.

Blood Ceremony was a real treat. They’re not the first female-fronted metal band I’ve seen live but definitely the prettiest one. Also the most interesting due to the flute. Put that thing through a PA and it pierces your very brain in twain. They play traditional doom, very Black Sabbath influenced from what I could tell. All four of the charismatic Canadians seem to be very capable on their instruments and laid down a ton of gripping riffage. I’ll be checking them out further.

Ghost of course was the reason I bought the ticket. They were the breakout act of the year in 2011, brought to most people’s attention by the main dude behind Darkthrone. I hear them described as Mercyful Fate-like all the time but I consider their Opus Eponymous to be miles better than anything I’ve heard from them; King Diamond’s voice is something I just can’t get into. Also their songs are just devilishly catchy. Their stage presence is incredibly entertaining what with all their silly costumes and antics, and “Papa” really has a handle on interacting with the audience while maintaining the character. It’s really like watching a play with face-melting sounds coming out of it than attending a metal concert. One of the highlights of their set was their cover of Here Comes the Sun, which I expected might be an encore but ended up somewhere in the middle; the actual encore was strangely omitted.

It was a fantastic night. The venue was nice enough, a bit smaller than Black Cat or Sonar, but the stage was pretty well elevated and the sound was good for the first two bands; Ghost’s mix sounded pretty muddy for a lot of their set unfortunately.

Concert Review: Man Man at Black Cat, 2011-06-03

The Show is the Rainbow

Although not the worst opener I’ve ever been subjected to, the one-man rap-artist The Show is the Rainbow has the honor of the being the most retarded. The music wasn’t too bad, but being prerecorded I didn’t have much respect for him; in my limited research of the lineup before the show I saw hints that he had a band at one time, but they split. It doesn’t take much to imagine why. This guy is a wacko, pathetic pot-head. Most of the stuff he said between songs was about how great pot is and that he has no fans. Thankfully he was only “on stage” for about half an hour.

Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

To me, this band was an experience similar to Secrets of the Moon; a band I’d never heard of that tore up the stage without the benefit of rabid fans, and had me transfixed. They’re definitely not the same sort of music of course, there was no metal to be had this night; still, the intensity and power that Shilpa threw into that microphone was pretty staggering for such a small person. They do a sort of jazzy punk-rock with a lot of soul and plenty of punch. All of the players were great. The guitarist’s sound was wonderfully distorted and colorful, the bass was clear and punchy, the drummer was the most animated person on stage all night, and Shilpa’s dynamic voice owned me. Possibly even more interesting was the strange instrument she was playing which is apparently a harmonium. They got a CD purchase out of me.

Man Man

This band could be one of my favorite bands one day. As it stands though I haven’t heard enough of their music enough times for it to click with me. They have a lot of the elements I enjoy, including frequent time-changes, quirky vocals, some pretty heavy bits, and just general strangeness, but for some reason up to this point they haven’t grabbed me. I heard a bit more Tom Waits influence on their recorded stuff than I did in the live setting, which was a bit disappointing.

The main problem for me though was situational; the fans were here to party, and party they did. I was pretty near the stage and a mosh-pit broke out almost as soon as the band started playing after their somewhat ridiculous and prolonged abandonment of the stage after setting up their instruments, presumably to get into their uniforms and face-paint. I’m not a fan of moshing. Since I’m a short guy, moving away from the stage obscured the band from my view, so I just went to the back of the club to sit down. After that the music was okay but a bit muffled.

I think the main reason people claim the band is better live is their theatrics. There was much standing on top of things and being strange, and the instruments themselves were all decked out with plastic fingers and bicycle pieces; pretty neat to see but it didn’t add much for me. It was nice to see Shilpa help out with the vocals a couple times.

This was the second time I’ve been to Black Cat, and it’s a pretty nice venue. It’s quite cave-like, a lot like Sonar but a bit more friendly seeming. The area in the back is quite nice thankfully, a raised platform with chairs, tables, and even a couple couches. The sound’s pretty good and the alcohol is apparently pretty cheap for the area. I expect to be going back there a bunch in the future.

Kvelertak

Back in January, a band called Shining released an album that had me hooked from the first note. I thought it couldn’t be topped. Amazingly though, it seems 2010 had even more to offer. I first heard of Kvelertak on MetalSucks, a rather fantastic music blog which has been a great resource for me lately. The first thing to catch my interest was not the review itself, but the awesome John Dyer-Baizley artwork. I’ve been a fan of his since Baroness’ Red Album (Baizley is a member of the band); his visual touch has since been a near-perfect indicator of quality behind the cover. Sure enough, this new Norwegian band has created a monolith of feel-good genre-fusion extremely worthy of the lustrous illustration John so graciously/profitably contributed.

The band’s debut opus is an immensely cohesive mixture of punk, hard rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and Norway’s specialty, black metal. I’m actually quite surprised how well it works. I guess it might not be quite as infectious if the black metal part was more prominent; for the most part it’s relegated to the vocal section, while popping up once in a while amongst the riffing. I do suspect however that the screechy voice is what will hold this back from becoming a truly prominent album. There are tons of people who simply can’t stand that sort of thing, and I pity them for it. As far as these go, they’re not the best extreme-metal vocals ever, but hardly weak by any stretch. Combined with a few folk-metal tinged choruses and gang-vocals, the screeches fall into place better than any punk-rocker’s marble-mouth I’ve ever heard. Even though the lyrics are all in Norse, it’s easy to envision the folkloric fantasies and bar-stool anthems held within them.

Every track is a blood-pumping thrill-ride. I can’t count the number of times I’ve listened through this in my car; it’s just so perfect for keeping up-beat during such a frequently boring commute. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t really heard enough of the more traditional genres it’s drawing from, but this just seems so new to me. I feel like everyone should like this. Unfortunately there doesn’t yet seem to be any official US distribution, it’s $25 to import on Amazon, and it’s not on US iTunes (yet another reason for me to hate it). I think the majority of Kvelertak’s fans probably haven’t spent a dime on their listening pleasure. However, the band itself is pretty cool with that from what I’ve heard. They’re just jazzed that people dig it, which makes me like them even more.

Feast your eyes and ears on MJØD (which I think means beer, lemme check… close. Mead.) A little warning though, it might be not be quite safe for work or whatever.

It’s all like that. I hope you can agree that this is completely awesome.

Scott Walker – Scott 4

I’m going to review The Drift at some point. For now though, I’m starting to buy his older albums and feel the need to write about them, since they’re really just as worthy although so completely different from his later works. This one is considered to be his masterpiece of the early years by lots of people, and it really is pretty amazing.

It starts out with a track called The Seventh Seal, and it just so happens to be a poetic summary of the film by the same name, which I just recently wrote about here. To be honest I didn’t realize this until I looked at the lyrics, as I’m really bad at listening to the words of songs. Must be why I enjoy death metal so much. Anyway it’s a great track. Scott’s vocals are in top form and there’s some nice acoustic guitar work to go along with the cellos and whatnot. The next track is what appears to be a breakup song, a short down-tempo ballad that sounds nice but doesn’t have a lot to say. Still, he manages to squeeze in a line about dead dudes in subways. The World’s Strongest Man is in the same vein but a little more upbeat.

A little later, one of the standout tracks shows up. The surging violins, uplifting vocal lines, and reverb-heavy classical guitar picking help to make it a memorable song, and lines like “Extensions through dimensions, leave you feeling cold and lame, Boy Child mustn’t tremble, ‘cause he came without a name” both mystify me and please my nerdiness. It might be because this one was featured on the documentary “30 Century Man,” an excellent documentary on Scott’s history, which has contributed to its memorability for me, but I still just love listening to it.

I don’t think I’ll be going into any sort of depth on the rest of the tracks. There’s one about a crippled war hero, a song supposedly “Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime,” and a few other ones. All of them are pleasant listens without a hint of the jarring strangeness from Tilt and The Drift, but almost every song has a line or two that just doesn’t seem to fall in line with the carefree attitude of most pop songs. It’s the first of his solo albums not to contain any Jacques Brel covers though, so by comparison it’s the happiest of the bunch; strange that this one was the flop. It was such a sales failure in fact that it was deleted from the publisher’s catalogue almost immediately after its release. Scott’s audience at the time was mostly lonely housewives rather than musical aficionados like today, and the previous album’s predominantly 3/4 time signature made it difficult for them to dance to it, and so they gave up on him; at least that’s what Scott figures.

As a whole it’s a very well produced and poetic orchestral pop album. I don’t think it’s quite the level of genius that most other fans seem to make it out to be, but it’s still an easy listen and anything but shallow. Good stuff.

Concert Review: Devin Townsend Project at JAXX 2010-10-26

It was a hot, sweaty night of nerdery at Jaxx Nightclub yesterday. The line of the black-shirted went all the way to the gas station on the other end of the parking lot; I was surrounded by people who were talking about things I actually new things about, like Gene Hoglan’s middle name and the release date of Strapping Young Lad’s first album. It was a pretty glorious thing. Eventually I got inside and decided to once again try out the main floor instead of heading to the elevated rear, which might have been a mistake, again. I managed about 3rd or 4th row from the front, and had an intermittent view of the stage. Not too bad but not great.

Tetryl

So the first local band hit the stage pretty quickly, pounding out some kickin’ death metal with touches of Lykathea Aflame. It really was a very solid performance for such a young band, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The vocalist had both the look and the attitude down pretty well, and his vocal style reminded me a bit more of a grindcore mentality. All the musicians performed great and it was probably the heaviest showing of the night. I wouldn’t mind seeing these guys again.

Exist

As soon as the drummer and the bassist started setting up their stuff I could tell what their deal was. The drummer had a Cynic t-shirt and the bass was something like an 8-string fretless. This could only mean one thing: jazz metal. Jazz metal is something very few bands have been able to pin down right, and it’s still not something that can really be enjoyed. One of the more important points of metal is to be focused in its brutality and not to meander too much, which jazz is wont to do. These guys did bring on the heavy for some bits, but they only managed to play two songs because of the ridiculously long noodling-sessions in which the lead guitarist tried desperately to be Allan Holdsworth, and pretty much failed. I suppose it might have been more fun if I’d been high. They did play well I guess, aside from that. You can download their debut EP for free at http://www.existband.com.

TesseracT

I’ve been aware of TesseracT for I think about four years. I was first introduced to them in a forum thread about the possibility of the existence of something as awesome as Meshuggah’s “I” EP, which is pretty much impossible to top. However, there were some good recommendations, the best of which was TesseracT’s song Concealing Fate (Part 1), which at the time was just a few demos. Their demo sampler was listened to many times on my walks to and from class back at school. Theirs is a style similar to Meshuggah’s in the use of low-range palm-muted “chuggas", known nowadays by metal nerds as “djent.” They distinguish themselves from their Swedish masters by using more melodic non-growled vocals for the majority of their lyrics, and lots of chimey ambient guitars to give the music a more dynamic feel. They aren’t a unique band now, but they might have been back then if it weren’t for Textures. Still they’re distinct enough to be recognizable, and very enjoyable.

As for their performance, it was outstanding. They’ve gone through a number of vocalists, and I think they found a keeper in their current guy, who was an entertaining frontman and sang quite well considering the range of sounds he has to make. He does sound a little bit too much like the guy from Coheed and Cambria but it’s not so bad that it makes me sick. The instrumentalists of course were all spot-on; they’ve been playing the same small set of songs for about half a decade, it would be kind of amazing if they screwed up at all. A weird thing that happened during their set was a large dude in front of me passing out. The singer had to find a dry spot in the song and notify security, after which the limp body was swiftly carried away. He came back for Devin’s set though so I guess it all worked out.

I bought their Concealing Fate EP for $10, and there will probably be a review forthcoming.

Periphery

Periphery is another djent band who has gone through a ton of vocalists. Their current screamer joined the band only just recently, just in time to record vocals for their debut eponymous album. The widespread reaction to the CD was one of admiration for the music, but disgust for the vocals, an opinion I share. He’s supposedly improved his style recently (after releasing the album of course, good move there), going so far as to post a re-recorded version of one of the album tracks on his myspace page. I don’t really see it as much of an improvement. I was all psyched to see if he could do better in a live setting, but first his mic didn’t work for the first song and then it turned out he was sick and couldn’t handle the stress on his throat, so he left the stage half-way though the set. What little I did manage to hear of his voice sounded okay, but even after he got the working mic it wasn’t really mixed high enough for me to make any judgment. Compared to TesseracT they played a lot more intensely; the music was very dense and complicated. It was so loud though it kind of sounded like mush. After their travesty of an album I wasn’t expecting much, even after respecting their founder Misha Mansoor for quite a while.

Devin Townsend Project

Devin Townsend has been near to or at the top of my list of favorite musicians for a number of years now, and the only reason I bought a ticket, although noticing that TesseracT and Periphery were on the bill was a great surprise. I managed to catch him during the Between the Buried and Me tour earlier this year in Baltimore, but a 30 minute set is simply not enough Hevy Devy. His new positive outlook is a refreshing thing in metal, although I sure wouldn’t mind a few Strapping Young Lad songs. His set consisted largely of songs from Ziltoid, Addicted, and Infinity, with a couple from Ocean Machine and Terria. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t single Ki track, which was disappointing, and Earth Day was omitted as well. Sad. Still, Bad Devil was featured, which is pretty awesome because it was probably the first track that actually got me interested in his solo material.

As usual Devin was an extremely charismatic frontman, starting out with a joke about the amount of ball-sweat in the room and a rapid-fire story about taking a shit in the CVS across the street. His array of funny faces made him a joy to watch, and at one point he actually came out into the crowd and played a section of a song while all the sweaty nerds patted his shiny bald head. It was obvious that he was well-loved by everyone there. His vocal performance was pretty incredible, much better than most footage I’ve seen on youtube and all that. He seems to be really enjoying these tours, contrary to the time when he swore off ever touring again and promised to become a hermit in the Canadian mountains. I’m very glad he’s found his new life in music and hope he’ll continue to be his prolific self for many years to come.

Scott Walker - Tilt

Quite a while ago I wrote about The Drift in a very abbreviated post. That was back when I was even worse at music reviews so I couldn’t think of anything to say. Also, since that was my first exposure to Scott Walker, I didn’t know very much about his musical career or anything, and now I do, so I have a bit more to write about. Huzzah. I might give The Drift an expanded shot later, but more likely I’ll just end up talking about it here. We’ll see.

Noel Scott Engel started his career as an American teen/child idol on some TV show in the late 1950s. He also sang a bit at that point I think. After that, he joined a band called The Walker Brothers as their bass player and became Scott Walker. They played your basic pop songs, and became quite popular on the British charts, especially with their ballad The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, sung by Scott. He wasn’t the lead vocalist for most of his time in the band, but his deep baritone voice suited their sound well and he became a more prominent member in their later time together.

Eventually the band broke up and Scott started putting out solo albums in a style somewhat similar to his Walker Brothers material, but usually much darker in lyrical content and including more orchestral elements. His albums did quite well until his fourth venture, which failed to chart; he attributes this to his extensive use of 3/4 time on the previous album, Scott 3; I guess it’s harder to dance to waltzes. So anyway this failure kind of crushed him and he lost his spark for a while, putting out a string of uninspired junk for a few decades. Then in the 80s The Walker Brothers got back together and put out a few albums, the last of which started out with four Scott songs displaying a much different, darker, weird avant-garde sound that would signal the start of his descent into the realm of nightmare music.

The first of these was Climate of Hunter in 1984. It was the most similar to those four Walker Brothers tracks, not all that daring but still quite strange. It would then take another 11 years for him to put out another one, and finally we get to the real subject of this review. Tilt is an exceedingly dark kind of industrial dreamscape full of morbid tales sung in a sad crooning voice. The opening track, Farmer In The City, is based on a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini about an Italian draftee and deserter; its emotionally drenched refrain of "Do I hear 21, 21, 21...? I'll give you 21, 21, 21..." always gives me chills although I’m not entirely sure what it means. It’s on the second track that the industrial part really steps in with a sound like a sledgehammer on an anvil and a herd of rattlesnakes about to strike. Also featured are long distorted saxophone notes and disturbing ambience which make The Cockfighter probably the most rattling song on the album.

The rest of the songs are bit more reserved but still very strange. The title track includes awesome wavering pitch-shifted guitars in the background of an almost upbeat bassline and drum track, giving it an ominous sound a bit similar to the opening track on Scott 3 from 26 years before. The album closes with Rosary, a quiet but emotionally saturated track set apart by Walker’s “ooh-ah-oooh ah-ooh-ah-ooh,” which sounds a lot more impressive than it looks written here. There used to be a live recording of him performing the track live on youtube, but I’ve been unable to find it again unfortunately. It was quite powerful.

Although not nearly as creepy as his 2006 followup The Drift, Tilt is a formidable release and should not be taken lightly. If you’re not really into the whole darkness thing then I suggest starting out with Scott 3 or 4 in order to get some appreciation for his talent, and eventually you might be able to stomach what he considers to be what he wanted to make all along, the aural depiction of his constant nightmares.

Here’s “Farmer in the City”

Die Antwoord - $O$

These South African weirdos came into focus early this year when Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing posted their videos for Zef Side [Beat Boy] and Enter the Ninja. Before that, they had been through a number of groups, none of which garnered any sort of international recognition. Die Antwoord itself had been around for a year or two before February. The name means “The Answer” in Afrikaans, a language pretty specific to South Africa that has its roots in colonial Dutch and a smattering of native languages. The group uses this and several other languages in their lyrics, which I view as a benefit to their package.

$O$ was first streaming free on their website, but then after the BoingBoing push they soon got a record deal with Interscope and replaced the songs on their website with instrumental versions. The CD came out a few weeks ago with a different tracklist and new cover art, seen above. It’s really quite fantastic how quickly they became a hit and kept the momentum going with great music videos and tours.

The main performer of the group, who goes by Ninja, has created a great character to help sell the music; that coupled with his pretty considerable rap skills make the music quite enjoyable. Yolandi Vi$$er performs backup vocals and some leads as well. She’s one of the stranger elements of the group’s image, putting forth a very sexualized persona while wearing an odd hairstyle that makes a lot of people very confused. DJ Hi-Tek isn’t really seen much, but he provides the “next-level sounds” on his “PC computer” to great effect.

The music itself is very sharp hip-hop with lyrics about genitalia, social classes, haters, ninjas, annoying girlfriends, transsexuals, and a lot of other stuff that I don’t understand because it’s not in English. There’s lots of bass and techno-influenced beats which makes it very fun to play in my car. There are quite a bunch of references to pop-culture and possibly less popular culture as well, such as South Park, District 9 and Zelda; the chorus of Enter the Ninja is apparently ripped from some trance song that I’ve never heard. Almost every song is humorous, which makes the self-promotion stuff bearable to me. Most other hip-hop that I’ve heard using that element has just annoyed me. Be warned though, the parental advisory on the cover is not to be ignored. If you don’t want to hear F-bombs then you probably won’t be able to listen to a single track, and if you can understand Afrikaans then you’ll probably be even more aghast.

It’s a ton of fun. There are plans to release at least four more albums, which makes me very happy. This CD is only $10 on Amazon, so if it sounds appealing then go for it.

Portal - Swarth

I think it was a few years ago I was browsing the Meshuggah forums, and happened upon a thread about this band. It seemed everybody there couldn’t get enough of their sound. The most touted album at the time was Outre’, so I checked that out. I was underwhelmed. The production seemed lousy and it all just sounded like a big muddy mess; not what I was looking for at the time. So that album just hung around in my library for a while, mostly ignored. Then a few months ago, I heard about a new album from the band called Swarth; I got ahold of it and this time it clicked. Loudly and sharply.

Portal’s sound can be pretty accurately described as a whirlwind of angry bees being pummeled by an avalanche of rhinoceroses, with an occasional high-tension wire snapping through the maelstrom. If that doesn’t sound appealing to you then I wouldn’t be surprised. This sound is pretty consistent through their catalog so far, but Swarth somehow separates itself from the rest with a slightly snappier production and I think a bit more energy. It’s best listened to at very high volume and low light. Their lyrics are supposedly inspired by Lovecraft and other such things, but of course only the most careful of listeners will be able to make anything out. Reading the CD’s insert, all I gathered was that they like to use big words and Latin phrases that probably don’t really mean anything when put together. I’m fine with that.

Aside from the sound, Portal is known for their very strange stage presence. Everyone aside from the vocalist wears executioner’s masks and dingy business suits, while his outfit changes for each album release (so far). First he wore a large wizard’s hat that fell over his face, then a pope’s hat in conjunction with the robes and a black cloth, and now it’s a weird clock/radio-thing. I really want to see these guys live sometime.

Check out “Glumurphonel” if you wish.

Crazy Heart

The Big Lebowski is one of my very favorite movies. If it wasn’t for that I very likely would’ve had no interest in seeing this one, which of course stars The Dude (Jeff Bridges) as “Bad” Blake. It did win Best Original Song and Best Actor Oscars last year, which I suppose might’ve gotten it on my radar, but I’m not the biggest fan of country music; I don’t mind a bit southern twang but country itself is just one of those things that I wasn’t indoctrinated to love. Still, this movie might have just endeared the style to me a bit more.

It’s the story of an old musician whose career has passed the downturn and is currently wallowing in booze. This is a pretty common tale, I’m led to believe, but it’s still a good enough base to make a semi-tragic romance out of if you’ve got good actors and all that stuff, which this movie does. You’ve got the aforementioned Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and a bunch of other great character actors all giving outstanding performances. Gyllenhaal plays the love interest as a hopeful reporter who interviews Bad Blake; Blake has very little interest in the interview though, and it seems she doesn’t care all that much either because the romance bit starts off almost too easy. It all goes past the one-night stand routine and then the alcohol starts screwing everything up. Eventually it becomes a story of attempted redemption and acceptance. It’s not a feelgood movie really, but it’s not a total tragedy either, which makes it more than okay in my book.

It’s a pretty beautiful movie both visually and sonically. There’s a fair amount of driving in Texas / New Mexico landscapes, and nicely atmospheric musical sections featuring well-written country songs performed by talented musicians. Frequent song breaks don’t always work for me, as was recently evident in the HBO show Treme; I got bored with most of that pretty quickly. Here though they’re a bit more abbreviated and at least to me they seem more necessary. They play a major part in the story of Blake’s decline to patheticness. My one complaint is that the music sections are always about twice as loud as the rest of the movie; I ended up just keeping the volume down and turning on the subtitles.

Possibly the best part of the movie for me though was the first scene with dialogue; it’s in a bowling alley. Those who’ve seen the film I mentioned in the first paragraph will know of the significance. This time The Dude is wearing the cowboy hat though, and he’s definitely not abiding.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (film)

The first thing you should read in this post is the tag list at the bottom, because I normally just use them for categorization of the primary medium used in the thing I’m writing about, but for this movie, I felt it an injustice not to include the other tags; without those media this film would be a much lesser thing.

I first heard of Scott Pilgrim shortly after I finally read Watchmen and was looking around for more awesome comics to read. I put it in my mental list and tried other stuff for a while. Then a friend nagged me into reading it a couple or so years ago. It didn’t really impress me that much, mostly because of the absence of color for the majority of the run, and the very stylized manga-ish look of the characters. It also bored me a bit for some reason, can’t remember why. Maybe it was because I was actually one of the few kids of my generation denied video games until I could pay for them myself. Still, it had a lot of cool elements, like the slightly comedic “stats” boxes that would show up next to characters from time to time, and the surreal nature of their lives in this multimedia universe.

I can’t remember when I heard about a movie being made; it might have been after I finished the second-to-last volume, maybe in the middle somewhere. Anyway, I immediately realized that this was a completely awesome idea. It could work so much better as a movie with crazy CG special affects and whatnot; also the fact that Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) was directing was a huge plus. One of the biggest reasons though is the prevalence of music alongside the video game aspects of the comic; there are several moments where music is shown as being extremely powerful and impactful, and the only way that can be done in comics is with imagery, which is normally not how the power of music is realized. Bryan Lee O’Malley did a good job with it, but still I really wanted to hear what these characters were so awed by.

So now we get the movie itself. From the very first minute to the last, my head was stretched wide with grins. Everything that had been missing in the comic was present in the movie, along with every great aspect that showed up on those black and white pages. It’s an amalgam of all the media that have been molding my generation for the last 20-30 years in a very pleasantly surreal romantic action-comedy. Pretty much every character on the screen is exactly how I imagined them while reading the book, even the one-dimensional Evil Exes. The jokes are 5 times funnier, the onomatopoeia 3 times more effective even when entirely unnecessary in the presence of sound, and the chicks are way hotter with normal sized eyes. Michael Cera’s role is being lauded as a perfect representation, and while I don’t 100% agree with that, I think he did an excellent job that transcends his previous work.

As mentioned, the music is a very important part of the story, and pretty much every moment involving music is pure magic. Artists like Broken Social Scene, The Black Keys and Beck were brought on board to make the sounds described visually in the comic into a reality. While music is always subjective, I think with the combination of the visuals it could not have been done much better.

This is the kind of comic-book adaptation that I’m hoping The Walking Dead turns out to be. An improvement rather than an attempt at an homage.

Concert Review: Rain at Wolftrap 2010-06-26

I like The Beatles. I used to not like them very much, but now I do, so it was pretty cool to get to see the supposed best Beatles cover band in the world. They’ve been playing since around or before 1986, so they know what the heck they’re doing.

It’s a really neat show. They start out dressed in black suits like Brian Epstein made them wear when they first got out of obscurity, playing their hits from that era. Then they moved on to Sergeant Pepper outfits as seen in the picture, and all the other eras as well. Wigs and fake mustaches were worn, but I don’t think that took away from the authenticity of the performance; pretty much everyone’s voice was spot on (George was a bit off), and the playing was perfect. They had a guy playing keyboards and stuff for the later material so they wouldn’t have to rely on backing tracks.

The multimedia/video part that played on the big screen in the back and two on the side was pretty cool too; most of it was famous Beatles photos with the Rain members inserted into the same poses, and they were done admirably well. Some of the guys really looked the part. Between eras the curtain would go down, and clips from 60s commercials or hippie conventions would be shown with famous non-Beatles tracks like All Along the Watchtower in the background.

They played pretty much hits only, which is to be expected. I don’t think there was anything from the White album. Still it was a good representation of their discography, and the last encore was Hey Jude, which is a ton of fun with an audience of a few thousand people. I enjoyed it.

Triptykon – Eparistera Daimones

It’s time for a music review! YAAAAY!

This album is the first of a trilogy (ergo Triptykon) headed by Tom Gabriel “Warrior” Fischer of the now permanently defunct Celtic Frost. CF died after their wondrous return in the form of Monotheist, which I might write about someday. There were some major interpersonal problems that led to the complete dissolution of the name. Still, this band has the same exact sound as CF did on their last album, as Tom has stated is the point. You could say Tom is Celtic Frost.

Tom also says that the lyrics in this metal masterwork largely deal with his anger over the problems leading up to the breakup, although that’s really hard to tell; it’s a lot of metaphorical religion hating stuff that I can’t really be bothered to analyze a lot. I did take a glance at the liner notes, and Tom has added commentary for each track explaining what it’s about. I’ll probably read that stuff later.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard Tom’s music before, it’s a very heavy sludgy metal with black, death, doom, and thrash metal influences. Tom’s voice is very distinctive, with few other vocalists that sound like him. The guy in Secrets of the Moon kinda does, which is one of the reasons I like them a lot. There’s also a pretty distinctive guitar sound that I can’t really think of the words to describe. I love it though. I think H. R. Giger’s original album cover art might be a good visual descriptor of the sound. Mostly it’s just really angry.

This is what you get when a guy with a clear vision holds to that vision throughout his career. Good music.

Shining - Blackjazz

I just got this in the mail so it’s time to review it, since it’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve heard since the intro to Merriweather Post Pavilion. Make no mistake though, this is nothing like Animal Collective. No sir.

This Shining should not be confused with all the other Shinings. There are a bunch. The most prominent (in my world) are the Swedish band, who play a very depressive sort of black metal. Their album V – Halmstad is amazing. These guys, however, are from Norway, and play pretty spastically complex genre mishmashes primarily composed of metal and jazz, leaning toward the blacker end of the metal spectrum. They’ve put out four albums before this one that I haven’t really paid any attention to because they’re just a bit too eclectic to be entertaining. For this, their fifth full-length, they’ve opted for a much more distilled version of their sound, giving in almost entirely to their metal side. The vocals are more prominent and the riffs are angular and abrasive. Once in a while you’ll hear a saxophone doing completely inhumane things alongside some schizophrenic synthesizers.

This album is a very new beast. I’ve never heard anything like it really; from the first note on my first listen I had a huge smile on my face. This kind of structured discord is really what makes me happy in music; that and the vibrant sound that just makes my ears ring. Some points of interest that might drag the more skeptical into it are a small tribute to Muse in the track “Exit Sun,” and an excellent (in my opinion) cover of “21st Century Schizoid Man” by the legendary King Crimson. I keep reading other people’s thoughts on that cover and few of them seem to like it, but I think it’s a great closer to the album.

Here’s a live performance of “Fisheye”

Concert Review: BtBaM/Cynic/DTP/StS at Sonar, 2010-02-01

Last night I drove for about an hour and a half to Baltimore to see my all-time favorite musician, Devin Townsend, perform for thirty minutes on a Monday night. It was worth it I think. There were some other bands too, I guess.

Scale the Summit

StS is a young band playing very technical progressive metal, with no vocals. They sound at times like Cynic, Atheist, Pelican, and maybe a little Dream Theater. I hadn't heard any of their stuff before the concert and I most likely won't be pursuing any music of theirs now, but it was an enjoyable set. Like most of the other music performed that night the style was pretty uplifting. The bassist had the busiest fingers I think I've ever seen live, and I've seen John Myung of Dream Theater play three or four times.

Devin Townsend Project

This is of course why I bought the ticket. I first heard Devin's music I think in 2004, my first year of college. At that time I was still an avid Dream Theater fan and not much else, so it took me a while before I started to recognize the genius in there. He's been one of those artists that I have to see before I die, and now the list is one act shorter. A few years ago he said he was never going to perform live again, but he's always running his mouth like that. Unfortunately he's just easing back into it now and only played for about half an hour. Still, it was an half hour of AWESOME. The set started with Disruptr played way heavier than on the record, and proceeded with a few tracks from Terria and I think Infinity, and ended with By Your Command from Ziltoid. The crowd was nuts for the whole set. Devin of course was hilarious, throwing out genitalia jokes left and right and just being generally charismatic.

Cynic

This band is a legendary act in the progressive metal scene, as they were one of, if not the first, prog death bands. Labeling them at all death metal is quite a stretch though, as the only feature from that genre that they incorporate is a little supportive screech/growling to offset the higher pitched robot-vocals. Other than that their music quite uplifting, dealing with very zen-like themes. Half way through their set, Paul Masvidal led the audience in a short yoga session. Seriously. It was an enjoyable show.

Between the Buried and Me

I've always had a love/hate relationship with BtBaM. I don't like their early stuff much because it's too hardcore, their latest material is too proggy, and their middlin' bits are still plagued by what I consider sub-par growls. I did enjoy Colors for a while but I wore it out pretty quickly. So, as soon as Cynic's set ended I headed for the back of the room. This was partially because I new the mosh pit would be the worst while they played. As expected I enjoyed some bits and was bored for other bits. I left before their last song ended because it was a long trip home and I wanted to beat the rush from the parking lot.

Altogether it was a pretty cool show. I brought my new etymotic earplugs, which I wore for most of Cynic and all of BtBaM's set, so my ears weren't too badly damaged. Sonar is an okay venue; the stage is a bit elevated so most of the time I could see the performers' heads at least, and there was water available in the back which was nice. Parking was free too, which is apparently not very common in Baltimore. It was cool to see the Metal Injection guys there too. I think they’ll be uploading some video footage of the show sometime soon.

Concert Review: Evangelia Amerika at JAXX 2010-01-08

I’m not the biggest Behemoth fan in the world or anything, but when I saw them listed on Jaxx’s website along with depressive black-metallers Shining, I marked down the date. Unfortunately Shining couldn’t make it to the states due to some kind of problem with their work visas, which totally sucks. I still went though, since Behemoth is pretty dang awesome, and the other headliner, SepticFlesh, also seemed quite enjoyable; so I got in line at the gathering of the black shirts and had my ear drums flattened.

Union Street

As usual the show opened with a few local acts. The first one was a very young punk band who admitted straight off the bat that they were nothing like any of the other bands. They spoke the truth. They kinda sucked. They played a few covers and probably some originals, but I don’t really know punk. The front-man-child came into the crowd at one point and incited a small mosh which forced me away from where I wanted to be in the crowd. I didn’t make it to the front of the line this time so I was somewhere in the middle, not front-row. This would plague me throughout the night.

Blood Mountain

So finally the kiddy-punkers, after playing the Power Rangers theme song for their exit, left the stage and were replaced by another young group that was a bit more fun. The guitarist looked like Michael Cera and the bassist/vocalist looked like a guy I work with. It might even have been him; I don’t know him well at all. The drummer’s kit was about two feet tall it seemed; I couldn’t see it over the people in front of me. They broke out with a Mastodon cover from Leviathan, which I thought was very cool but didn’t seem to catch with the crowd very well. Most other their other songs were Mastodon covers as well, with two originals. The bass guy introduced them as The Worst Day Ever and The Best Day Ever, with the first one having a second title of Whispering Eye, which got a lot of laughs. He was quite funny throughout their set actually. A very fun performance.

Apothys

I wasn’t sure if these guys were local or not when they got onto the stage; they sounded very professional. I guess they’ve been around a while. They played a solid slightly-blackened death metal, unfortunately without very much distinguishing them from the hordes of similar bands out there. The frontman looked a bit like Barney from Napalm Death, but they didn’t sound anything like that.

Lightning Swords of Death

The replacements for Shining hail from California instead of Sweden, but also play a sort of black metal, though not really of a comparable style. The guitar sound was really gnarly in a good way, and the vocalist (far left in the photo), while he looked like some sort of skinhead biker, let out a pretty awesome scream. Their name is pretty stupid though. Also I would have preferred Shining.

SepticFlesh

Apparently this is one of those bands that took a long hiatus and then got back together to be more awesome. I’ve only heard their latest effort, Communion, so I don’t really know how the eras compare. From what I gather, like Lykathea Aflame and Nile, they play music with Egyptian/Sumerian themes, which is pretty cool. As far as style goes they’re basically progressive death metal I think. They were very well received by the audience and rocked pretty darn hard, but at this point of the show I was very close to the stage-left speaker; I could physically feel my right ear-drum vibrate. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring ear plugs. Most of the music just sounded like a constant explosion. At one point the frontman told the crowd to divide into two halves, and then run into the center; this is called the wall of death. It really sucks for the guys in the middle, and I was pretty close. I didn’t suffer too much though.

Behemoth

There aren’t a whole lot of live bands out there nowadays that still use corpse-paint. Behemoth are one of the few that really use it well. Unfortunately for most of the set I could barely see them, even though I was only a few feet from the stage. Being short sucks. As for the music, until the encore I was still two feet away from the massive speaker to the right of me. I could barely make out any notes. Still I recognized a few songs and the crowd was extremely into all of it; some of the guys near the front looked like they were in the presence of gods. About 3/4ths of the way through the set the band left the stage and came back with fake blood leaking from their mouths; brutal. Who knew Poland could produce a band this ridiculous. I moved toward the back before the encore so I could get to the merch table easily afterwards, and I think I should have gone for the back at the start of the show. There’s a raised section with tables and a railing in the back of the venue, and the sound was way better there. Also no moshing. I know what I’m doing next time.

So now my neck hurts a little and I can hear almost nothing in my right ear. Hopefully it won’t last too long.

EDIT: Here’s a taste of what the Behemoth performance was like, originally posted at the DC Heavy Metal blog.