On thursday I was perusing New England's premier source of metal information and internet memes, Return to the Pit, and I noticed that there was a show going on that night and the following night! Being too lazy to drive to Worcester Massachusetts, the metal capital of New England, to go to Ralph's Diner for Metal Thursday I decided to wait until Friday and see what was happening in Dover, New Hampshire.
I made a mistake.
Let me explain, Metal Thursday at Ralph's is 100% real metal, meaning they simply do not book fake metal. This has been going on for years and years, so the crowd is also just about 100% real metal. But Ralph's Diner is not the venue I just left a few hours ago. . .
I went to see Thou, The Body, VAAST, and Condensed Flesh at Kaleo Coffee. I went to the Metal Archives to see what these bands were like and only found The Body and Thou. I thought to myself "O neat it will be interesting to see some sludge and drone." I was getting ready to attend the show by doing push ups and breathing in the air from a brown paper bag with a dead raven inside like Dead from Mayhem used to do. Mid-breath I got a text message on my really cool iPhone 6 from a complete maniac friend of mine. He was asking what I was up to and was clearly very bored. When I told him I was going to a show he asked "where do I sign up" even though he had no clue what metal was.
After speeding over to Dover on our motorcycles, my friend and I arrived at the venue and took off our pickelhaubes. This is what we were greeted with:
I am no photographer so let me describe the scene inside: gauged ears, "Be the change you want to see in the world", kids, Ulver patch, Baroness shirt, excessive piercings, trucker caps, thick rimmed glasses, Southern Lord shirt, skinny jeans, sleeve tattoos, and absolutely no one that could beat me in an arm wrestling contest. It was a weird mix between hardcore punk and hipster.
I turn to my friend and say "this is not the usual crowd for the shows I go to" as I was internally telling myself that I was not at Ralph's. We go in and at this point I am still optimistic, even though my friend says "lots of girls looking like men here. I don't like that." Naturally I was worried about him having a good time.
The first band starts, and I can not even tell you their name because we left to get some drinks. I came to listen to metal, not something that sounds like Converge but mixed with a ton of punk and sound like mud live. You might think that leaving to get drinks when you are in a coffeehouse means that I went out for a latte. Let me correct you:
So we come back for the second band, The Body, and they were pretty cool. Haling from Providence, Rhode Island, It was just a drummer and a guitar player/vocalist who was more audible than any other vocalist I heard that night. This was impressive because the guy did not use a microphone. They were kind of like Sunn O))), but more stripped down and really primal feeling. It was a great live experience but there was a long line for their merch and I am not super into drone so I did not pass anything on for Apteronotus to review. Still, I would recommend seeing this band live if you have nothing else going on.
After The Body played we got to hear Thou, which was the band I was most anticipating. Though their vocalist, Bryan Funck, was completely energetic fun, the band did not really sound great live. When he lost the microphone he kept going without it, but unlike The Body's vocalist, you could not hear this guy at all. I could tell my friend was getting bored at this point even though he was being a good sport and headbanging and moshing (remember this guy does not listen to metal, but is an awesome maniac) so we decided to back to the bars at home.
The lesson here is to do research before you blindly go to a show. Even though I kind of just wanted to get out of the house, I acted like live music was a commodity that I could easily substitute one venue over another when really I would have been more happy at Ralph's Diner. On the other hand, this evening I was exposed to Thou and The Body which are band I would have been unlikely to come across during my own searches to the decision is almost a wash. I say almost because I had to deal with pretentious hipster bullshit. Below I give two examples but there were way more that I failed to record.
Example 1: Hoity-toity high contrast black and white art in the bathroom
Example 2: I overhead the following asinine conversation (this is an accurate verbatim description)
Hipster 1 "Our Shortest song is like 30 seconds"
Hipster 2 "Yeah, we need one that's like 10 or 15"
It is perfectly fine that you refer to me as your friend that does not listen to metal and supposedly are acting as some kind of magnanimous father figure to me, but I do not think you gave Thou a fair shake. They sounded fine live and like I pointed out to you after the show, the drummer broke his kick drum, so that drumming at the end had nothing to do with how put together the band was.
ReplyDeleteI think that because I am going to more shows these days, I should do the live reviews and talk about the music. Your posts are getting less and less serious and no one wants to read inside jokes making fun of me for not moshing.
You are the joke. holding your head high above everyone else. let your friend write the reviews. and The Body and Sunn are nothing alike.
ReplyDelete