Contributors: Lord Mokrap, T, C, Danny Martin, and Yonder Tarr
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Live Review: Nile/Immolation/Krisiun/Dreaming Dead, 02.05.2010
Nile, Immolation, Krisiun. What a line-up! Needless to say, I was giddy with anticipation for this monster of a death metal show. I’m happy to report that it somehow managed to exceed my sky-high expectations.
(pictured: Krisiun)
The show started with a couple of forgettable performances from a local band and a deathcore group. However, the next group to play, Dreaming Dead, annihilated any lingering memories of the show’s unfortunate beginning. Dreaming Dead is fronted by a female, Elizabeth Elliot, who is quite easy on the eyes in addition to excelling at growling and guitar butchery. It was quite amusing to see some of the crusty metalheads in the audience swooning over Ms. Elliot as if they were teenage girls in the 1950s at an Elvis show. However, getting past the “hot female playing death metal” thing, which is catnip to many a grizzled metalhead dude (present company not excluded, i must admit), the real take-away from the performance is simply that Dreaming Dead delivered a commanding and fierce assault. Asses were bludgeoned.
Next up came Krisiun, the well-oiled Brazilian death machine. Frontman Alex Camargo emerged sporting a Sepultura Schizophrenia shirt, showing pride in the legendary early work of his nation’s metal titans. Krisiun, as always, delivered a tight and militant performance that whipped the crowd into a frenzy. I was pummelled mercilessly, and I enjoyed every second of it. Additionally, it is always a positive experience to be on the receiving end of Camargo’s stage banter. Without ever ceasing his death metal growl, he frequently voices appreciation to the crowd for making it possible for his band to create and perform the savage art from which we all draw strength. A man who knows the true meaning of being bonded by metal, that one.
Immolation was the band that I was most looking forward to seeing, having not had the chance to do so previously, and they were also the band that impressed me the most. Immolation are true and pure death metal, and yet they are totally one-of-a-kind. However, they don’t engage in any gimmicky bullshit to carve out their own niche. Their uniqueness comes from the subtleties of their songwriting. I was very hopeful that the power of their singular brand of death metal would translate well into the live setting, and it sure as shit did. Their undulating riffs and serpentine rhythms totally captured the crowd into their thrall. The audience alternated between a tumultuous moshing and a gyrating whipping of heads to the bizarre rhythms. The whole scenario resembled an esoteric communion of a sect that revels in death worship… and I suppose that’s just what it was.
After having already been chewed up and spit out several times by mighty dealers in death, the crowd was still wild and ravenous… and ready to be force fed a lethal slab of Egyptian-style punishment. Nile emerged after a long sound check with a crushing barrage that justified the wait. Dallas Toler-Wade’s freshly shorn skull has turned him into an even creepier visage than he has been in the past, and he led the attack, front and center, with Karl Sanders wreaking havoc at his right. Nile’s sound was massive as they unleashed a torrent of songs from throughout their career. George Kollias’s drumming evoked an army of charging elephants. I found “Execration Texts” to be the most satisfyingly vicious of the songs they played. They also played several songs from their stellar new record, Those Whom The Gods Detest, which translated excellently live… especially the unrelenting “Hittite Dung Incantation.”
The performances were unbelievable, but they were not the only high points of the night for me. Being immersed in a vital metal community, out in full force for the elite aural mayhem on display that night, was a moving experience in itself. It’s the little things that tug at the strings of this metal heart. It is the 50 year old venerable metal elder in a Kreator shirt giving me props for my Coroner Punishment for Decadence shirt. It is the precocious teenage metalheads who got so excited about the impending performance of Nile that they tried to start a pit during the soundcheck. The metal circle of life was on full display. It was one of those nights that really affirms your love of the music and your pride in being among the kindred, the select few who truly know. Long live the supreme metal of death!
-Yonder Tarr
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Katatonia: Brave Murder Day
I can’t divorce my views on “Brave Murder Day” from vivid memories of my high school years. This album was for the times when the tenuous nature of social connections loomed like a threatening shadow and drove me to seek obscurity. It was for the times when reflexive smiles, forced laughs, protocol, and little power struggles waged on the scorched earth of polite conversation became overwhelming. I would seek out my favorite spot by the pond in the local park, pop in the headphones, and with the strains of this record everything unnecessary would melt away. “Brave Murder Day” still serves this purpose for me. Eyes glaze, images and vague associations take over from the here and now. The clenched jaw slackens; the teeth cease their grinding. There is only the music and light filtering through water, demanding nothing but rewarding perception.
The album opens with a sunny riff, chugging along, fragile and complacent. Mikael Akerfeldt’s grizzled roar commences, but does not disturb the sunny disposition. The drums plow a steady march into what must come. Then suddenly, a bitterly weeping riff tears the curtain away, and melody gives way to dirge. Akerfeldt becomes a wounded beast in his death throes, mighty still in his last desperate moments. Such is the emotional range of “Brave Murder Day.”
Repeatedly, the album builds to crescendos of violent mourning. At times it revels in bereavement, and it seems to enshrine loss as a necessary part of the order of things. However, Katatonia does not choose dissonace and formlessness as a vehicle for such explorations. Pop structures and melody can be found throughout most of the album, making it a relatively easy pill to swallow if you can handle the shrieks. The sound is brilliantly layered, and yet the stark simplicity of each element shines through.
Perhaps the greatest strength of “Brave Murder Day” is that it is not all gloom, doom, puffy cheeks, black lipstick, and pouting lips. One not accustomed to the more harsh and overbearing conventions of the death/doom genre may be too distracted to pick up on this, but, as noted before, the album paints with a wide range of emotional hues, from melancholy to visceral woe to an ephemeral yet potent happiness. Life is bittersweet. It is a horrible, beautiful mess. “Brave Murder Day” taps into that dynamic, and in doing so it rings true. Its beauty is in its truth.
-Yonder Tarr
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Demilich: Nespithe
Listening to “Nespithe” evokes in one’s mind the experience of being kidnapped by a gaggle of grotesquely deformed hillfolk, shoved into the windowless back of a van, force fed hallucinogens, and released into a pitch black labyrinth to grope aimlessly along dampened walls while being tormented by otherworldly visions conjured in an addled brain. We all know what that feels like, am I right folks?
“Nespithe” is a maze of twisting, winding, curling riffs punctuated by crisp skin bashing and held aloft by a fat and buoyant pulse of basswork. The frequent time changes are at first disorienting, but eventually they draw the worthy disciple into a trance, thus buttering the subject up to be indoctrinated by the bizarre gurgling and croaking of one of the most unique vocalists to ever spew forth bile.
Demilich, that wretched fowl, emerged only once from the bowels of obscurity to lay this putrid egg. After the hatching of monstrous “Nespithe,” the ghastly mother-bird absconded back into some Finnish void. Most took no notice of this brief event in the annals of metal, but those worthy few who have slipped into the thrall of “Nespithe” can at least take comfort in the ascent of Gigan, Portal, Ulcerate, and other distant cousins of Demilich who continue to plumb the depths of avant-death.
-Yonder Tarr
Robin Trower: Bridge of Sighs
“Bridge of Sighs” is considered by many to be Mr. Trower’s magnum opus, and it is a monster of a riff-infested, blues-injected 1970s rock album. Trower’s guitar white-knuckles the helm of this ship and steers it back and forth between mournful depths and more sunny and uplifting climes. His guitar sound is lean and muscular, delivering massive crunch just as readily as atmospheric texture. The most powerful aspect of Trower’s string-fingering is his propensity for letting his notes breath, thus giving the listener ample time to savor the flame of each lingering lick.
The ringing voice of “Bridge of Sighs” is embodied in Scotsman James Dewar. Dewar’s vocals ooze soul. They are rich, dynamic, and dexterous. At the drop of a hat he swings from mellifluous crooning to rasped cries of anguish or jubilation, as the case may be. As if such vocal prowess were not enough, the man’s basswork is thunderous and always on-point. Coupled with the excellent drumming of Reg Isidore, Dewar’s throbbing groove lays a perfect foundation for this agile beast of a trio.
Ironically, the zenith of the album can be found in its scouring of the lowest of emotional pits. The title track is like a woeful plunge into a deep wash of blue, and the seamless transition into “In This Place” grounds you in a desolate, melancholic calm. When Dewar laments that “Cold wind blows, The gods look down in anger, On this poor child,” you feel that shit. The more upbeat moments of the album are superb in their own right, but Trower and Dewar seem most in their element with the poignant expression of sorrow and pain.
In an era when many were falling all over themselves to innovate, or at least to be more ostentatious, virtuosic, or epic than the next guy, Robin Trower’s band worked within parameters that never led them far from a well-worn path of bluesy, overdriven hard rock. However, they made succinct, powerful statements within those parameters. As a music consumer, this reviewer angles most often towards the discordant, subversive, and strange. Nevertheless, I can’t help but be completely enamored by this brilliantly crafted slab of straight-forward rock n roll glory.
-Yonder Tarr
Rwake: Voices of Omens
Seek this album out with a painful urgency. Play the album. Close your eyes and allow yourself to be completely subjugated by the potent morass seeping from your speakers. Follow the lead of your restless mind. A grizzled, hoary prophet in tattered robes wanders the backwoods of Arkansas. With a feral gleam in his eyes he screeches dire diatribes on the certain doom wrought by the folly of man. Distant fires dot the landscape. Leaves crunch beneath frantic feet. The odor of brimstone greets quivering nostrils. You are enveloped by the oppressive cloud of atmospheric sludge that is “Voices of Omens.”
One might reasonably wonder what type of git-pickin, skin-beatin, and holler-yollerin could conjure such morbidly florid ruminations. The sum of “Voices of Omens” is certainly greater than the individual parts, and the relationship between the ingredients holds the key to the bitter kick of this murky concoction. The album is driven by a fat and dirty bottom end, against which the often-ethereal riffing is positioned brilliantly. Like cobwebs on the branches of a gnarled old tree, riffs of varied textures and densities suspend nimbly from the massive anchor of meandering bass. Searing through the thick layers of instrumental gloom are vocals that range from the harried speech of a condemned man to the shrill shrieks of a fellow being burnt at the stake. The skeleton supporting this slithering beast of an album is the fluid drumming. Frequent-yet-moderate shifts between slow and mid pacing keep the listener keenly engaged, and the liberal use of cymbals adds an eerily shimmering air to the broader soundscape.
“Voices of Omens” may well be the single greatest sludge album released on this side of the millennium. It took a meat-and-potatoes genre and injected a bevy of subtle and varied layers, creating a final product that marries grooving crunch to an atmospheric complexity rarely found outside of black metal circles. However, putting aside attempts to bottle lightning with perennially inadequate genre designations, it should suffice to say that “Voices of Omens” provides a transcendent experience… and it packs one hell of a punch. Seek this album out with a painful urgency!
-Yonder Tarr
