Eerie (New Hampshire)
Eerie is a doomy slower band, with a very nice wide sound. By this I mean the music felt like it was enveloping me with a blanket of notes ranging from high to low. Eerie's wide chord heavy sound stands in stark contrast to the approach of some drone influenced bands that sometimes harp on single notes. Alternating between drawn out chords and more melodic riffing while using that switch to slowly build energy, Eerie also supplied a compelling progression of volume. In pulling back a bit with this style for another song, the band showed more of its compositional range with a soft two chord intro, ripe with delay effects. Adding layers of droney chords between, the band's sound reminded me of the richness of Earth's "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull" yet sounding noticeably darker. Eerie at one point used a recurring bimodal A-B song structure where the musical development occurred through layering and melodic alterations, creating a dynamic sound without loosing the overall atmosphere. The frequent pentatonic fills created a familiarity in the music while the wide chords served for the requisite heaviness. Intensity swelled and diminished tidally.
I picked up Eerie's demo "Amplifier Theosophy" and will likely post a review of it here. For now, it suffices to say that I recommend you try to buy a copy. The correct ordering information appears to be here: http://opalsoundstudio.com/about
You can listen to Eeire here: Eerie's Reverb Nation page
Inverticrux (New Hampshire)
What immediately jumps out about this band is how the singer absorbs himself in the music. His entire body was shaking as he gesticulated toward the audience, cane in one hand, inverted cross microphone in the other, and all the while with an enormous grimace on his face. The music is a crunchy and heavy mix of enough influences to make it fairly unique and difficult to pigeonhole, but the black metal and Kind Diamond influences are clear.
Inverticrux opened up one of their songs bluntly telling the audience "I have a cautionary tale to tell you, and you're not going to like it, but you're gonna listen." Briefly ignoring the vocals, the cadence of the tremolo and the heavier riffs reminded me a bit of the post-Panzerfaust Darkthrone but, to reiterate, the influences are certainly varied and the band did not end up sounding too similar to anything else but had a macabre and spooky vibe. The vocals came through in what was often a baritone range, but frequently soaring above it in what to me sounded like the clearest Kind Diamond influence. However, Inverticrux also shared Kind Diamond's proclivity toward narrative type songs. Instrument wise, a few lightening fast solos acted more for purposes of energy than their melody, and the bass player was not at all afraid to walk the notes around freely. Dual guitars helped the bass become independent while also maintaining the rhythm against which the solos could contrast. The drumming was tactful and apt for music's mood.
I decline to spoil all of the stage antics I saw so that others may still be surprised. I will leave you with this visual though: at one point the singer was riding on those toy horse things that are just a horse's head on a stick (kind of creepy now that I think about it, check this out: Vikings also used to put severed horse's heads on poles. Pretty Metal: The Nithing Pole)
Suicide Dream (Connecticut/Massachusetts)
Suicide Dream had a female singer with a surprisingly husky voice, high gain guitars, and martial drumming. Traditional metal influences abound, but the lead guitar lines repeatedly went into a very smooth sound. Utilizing a technique known as tapping, this created a drastic switch when the music turned to a faster thrash sound. As the first song sounded through the venue I again noticed rather sonorous ascending lead melodies. Synthesizers reinforced the song structures and along with the guitars, created a consonance that battled with the grittier vocals. When higher pitched vocals stormed into the music, they blended in more so than the primary vocal style. These higher vocals were also more powerful. Suicide Dream then followed up with a Maiden cover, and it was here that the band illustrated how tight they were, particularly with the sharp clean drumming fills. Suicide Dream's guitar player clearly loves tapping solos and using legato slide technique. Next was a Type O Negative cover, and Suicide Dream successfully captured TON's heaviness while still incorporating their own sound into the song.
You can listen to Suicide Dream here: Suicide Dream's Website, with MP3s
Dark Passenger (Massachusetts)
Dissonant, diminished, and crushingly heavy. Dark Passenger's dual vocals simultaneously attacked with low gutturals and high screeching in a way that immediately grabs attention. Uncanny and almost soft melodic grooves alternated with rhythmic diminished flourishes creating a forward momentum complemented by furious and pummeling double-bass drumming. Surprisingly, the band even mixed in some clean vocals. Genre wise, the band was on the technical side somewhere along the hazy line between black and death metal. The black metal influence was very clear when the band quickly broke into a straight black metal outro for one of the songs. For each song, the riffs flowed into one another in a rather linear, as opposed to repetitive, fashion. Dark Passenger's dual approach to vocals was also echoed by their guitar work which was often polyphonic (more than one melody at once). Perhaps it is just my own ignorance of music but at one point I heard Dissection type melodies but without that Gothenburg style harmonization. Once again during this evening there was a band with a wide range of influences as far as genres go. Dark Passenger often reminded me of another local band, December Wolves, which is unsurprising as I believe one of the members of that band is involved with Dark Passenger.
You can listen to Dark Passenger here: Dark Passenger's Facebook page, (scroll down a bit for youtube video link)
thanks for the positive feed back. you clearly know your way around Metal.
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