19th June 2010

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The Melvins/Isis/Totimoshi at Webster Hall

I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Melvins and Isis in New York for months, especially once I found out Isis was breaking up and it would almost definitely be my last and only chance to see them ever, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Melvins perform for years. Last night, shit finally went down.

If you’re not familiar with these groups, just know that they’re two of the most legitimate heavy groups ever. As soon as I walked in, I started seeing heavy metal shirts, and I wondered how many I would have to recognize before I passed the limit of cool and went into nerd territory.  I don’t know what that threshold is, but I definitely passed it after the tenth Baroness shirt I noticed from about twenty feet away.  If you follow me on Twitter, you will have noticed several tweets from this show, which you’ll find updated versions of here.  Sorry about the self-advertisements, but since the total number of times I’ll have made this joke now is about to skyrocket, I figured I needed to disclose everything in order to be honest with you and myself.

Normally, I’d feel like a hack about making fun of metal fans for loving Cheetos, funyons, and Dungeons and Dragons, but when the headlining guitarist looks like an anime character and the bassist dresses like fucking Aragorn, not to mention the Legion of Doom behind the dual drum sets, there’s not really that much of a choice, is there?

Anyway, here’s how the show went down.  First, the opener, Totimoshi performed.  They were a solid stoner metal group but … nothing really interesting happened.  In general, I’d say they were a tight act, but then again, some parts of the performance were a bit muddy, so I’m not really sure what to think.  Did I hear an accurate representation of the group, or not? It’s hard to say.  Definitely some riffs and potential for heavy power, but I don’t know. Something seemed … missing.

After Totimoshi, the Melvins hit the stage! I was expecting Isis to be next, as they were always billed as the support act, and, honestly, the Melvins are just more important. But, I’m guessing the groups are alternating for the stint they’re doing together, which I guess makes sense, especially since, as mentioned before, Isis is breaking up. For an hour and ten minutes, the Melvins fucking jammed. They hit my favorite cuts from their two most recent records, and sampled from all over their back catalog. In general, I think having two drummers doing more or less the same thing is a dumb idea, but the Melvins knocked that idea right out of my head. Even after the immediate cool-factor of them performing these complex pieces in mirror image of each other, one being a lefty and one being a righty, they both add their own unique punch to the ensemble. Both sonically and visually, it’s a nasty combination, and I feel everyone in the room is a better person for having witnessed the performance. I could go on and on about how amazing the Melvins played last night, but why do that when I can complain?

Once the Melvins finished up their set, Isis took the stage.  I was looking forward to some heavy sludge, and I was … really disappointed.  I don’t blame the group for this whatsoever; the past two weeks I’ve spent listening to their discography in preparation for this gig have reminded me that these dudes know how to play.  The issue, really, was the mixing.  Whoever was running sound last night really seemed concerned only with one thing: the bass drum.  Now, I feel I would be one of the last people to complain about drums being too loud, having spent the last seven or eight months playing drums and being told to quiet down, but goddamn, I thought my skull was going to cave in every time the kick drum sounded. And, if you know anything about Isis, you know that’s a frequent sound.  Maybe I was a bit too rocked out from the Melvins, but I honestly think that this was horrible sound engineering, and, I’m sad to report that I left after ten or fifteen minutes of unfortunate sound. What the hell, Webster Hall?

In all, I’m still more than glad I saw the show; the Melvins rocked the fucking universe. Too bad Isis, on what may have been their second to last performance in New York, wasn’t given the same opportunity.

Tagged: cheetosfunyonsdarkness and also there is metaldndwizardsbetter living through chemistrygetting into a serious thingtaking drugs to make music to take drugs tokick out the jams motherfucker!

14th June 2010

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Quintron & Miss Pussycat / JEFF the Brotherhood / Ava Luna at Santos Party House

I was expecting some weird stuff at last night’s show, but I don’t think I really guessed a saucy puppet show would’ve been a part of it.  If I’d known a bit more about Miss Pussycat, perhaps I would’ve.

The show went down at the Andrew WK-owned Santos Party House, which I suppose was an okay spot, with its Santa Claus/astronaut mannequin suspended from the ceiling and whatnot, but the smoke machine smells like crap, and the sound mixing could have been a bit better. The lyrics of “Swamp Buggy Badass” deserve more clarity.

Opening up for the night was Ava Luna, a seven-piece group operating out of Brooklyn. They’re attempting to meld doo-wop lady vocals and hipster disco in something that sounds like it could be interesting, but that ended up sounding sloppy and overall not very tight.  The singer, however, was quite entertaining in an epileptic tweaker kind of way. The bassist had a head like a pachycephalosaurus.

The mid-card was JEFF the Brotherhood. The songs found on their MySpace didn’t have me too excited, but something seems to have happened between the time those were recorded and last night, because they rocked the fucking house. The guitarist walked across the bar to serenade some girl sitting in the corner playing with her phone, and it was awesome. She had no idea what to do in that situation, and was therefore completely owned. The two-piece blasted out a nasty wall of sound, and at some point, a wig went flying and I’m still not sure where it came from. The best part of the set, perhaps, came at the end, when the clearly stoned guitarist told everyone the merch tables were “like … a really awesome record store.”

Quintron and Miss Pussycat then set up their whole piece, puppet show theater, vintage automobile/keyboard, drum buddy, and all that stuff, and kicked things off with a puppet show about drugs or something. Secret pizza? Killing cops? It was all there, and I don’t know if I really followed it, but I’m glad I saw it. Following the bit of theater, they proceeded to knock out jam after jam and they were still going by the time I left. “It all gets worse from here,” Quintron assured the crowd, so I feel as though, in my fatigue, I made the right choice, but it still would have been fun to hang around for more organ/drum machine/yelling.

Tagged: gotta love mei'm the baby!

12th June 2010

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Whoopie Pie OV Life at The Stone

Last time I was at The Stone, it was a considerably different crowd than that which attended last night’s performance. Then, it was hipster dudes, and a bunch of cute Bjorks, but the turnout for Whoopie Pie OV Life, a melding of experimental-jazz-metal groups Whoopie Pie and Angel OV Death, was a bit … hairier … plus, there were heavy metal t-shirts.

I’ll get this out of the way right now: Whoopie Pie OV Life — made up of Jamie Saft on keys, Mike Pride on drums, Bill McHenry on tenor sax, and Andrew d’Angelo on alto sax and bass clarinet — is a lumbering, powerful beast of sound, an unstoppable war machine powered by black powder and constructed on a frame made of heavy, heavy metal.

The Stone still has that same comfortable feel of your friend’s basement, rigged up last minute for a concert thrown for classmates and neighbors, yet still with enough know-how that everything works out alright, despite the “is this really cool that we’re doing this?” vibe.  And the bathroom still has convenient right-behind-the-band location, which I still find baffling. There’s no riser for the performers, but that’s part of what makes it cool; they’re there with you. In fact, before the show, when the awkward beardos were all sitting around silently, Bill McHenry invited us to “feel free to talk amongst yourselves.” Nice sentiment and everything, but not with this crowd, bud. Not until someone steps up to be dungeon master.

The show began when the performers wandered out of the back stage area, and, with no great fanfare or even signal to anyone that the performance might begin, just started going at it. Saft’s keys had the sound of a vintage, b-movie organ soundtrack, setting the mood for much of the set in a dark, atmospheric tone. He provided much of the bed from which the other performers would spring off and rest upon. Pride’s brush-work in the earlier moments of the set were the scratches and slaps of a tweaker, almost schizophrenic rhythmically and visually. For the first several minutes of the piece, d’Angelo took the lead, and the feel of it all was like Dracula’s worst trip. Eventually, d’Angelo sunk further back into the group, eventually ending up behind the drum set, letting McHenry pick things up for a while, occasionally jumping in for some tag action.

Soon, things became more and more aggressive, and Pride dropped the brushes and pulled out the sticks.  Throughout the set, he would occasionally return to the brushes, and at one point used a pair of mallets, but from here on out, it was pretty much all punch.  His frenetic style was impressive, and that made it all the more effective when it was time to drop the spazz fills a bit and fall into a groove. He held it down while still having his way with time.

McHenry and d’Angelo spent much of the set in the lead, d’Angelo lurching forward to positively squeal, bursting with energy, screaming like a demonic eagle before running all around the other musicians, really exploring the space, as Bruce Dickinson would have wanted, before leaving to rest off in a corner, letting McHenry or Saft do his thing. Saft’s solos were volcanic, heavy and unstoppable liquid rock. McHenry’s work was a bit more melodic than the others’, and his tone was deep.

During a moment of duet between Saft and Pride, d’Angelo dropped his alto and picked up a bass clarinet before strolling back into the mix to make the clarinet whine, squeak, and growl. Pretty soon, things went back into full force for some heavy dirge. At this point, the group really sounded like they were taking flight, a black airship cruising through the sky for several moments, only in preparation to rocket out into space. The set was full of moments like this, one moment, just chilling on a space trip, the next, combat between alien birds and out of control machines, their earsplitting digital screams piercing through the cosmic mud.

In all, it was a fantastic performance, but I was a bit disappointed that, when d’Angelo went into the bathroom to wipe the sweat from his forehead that he didn’t also blast out a solo while taking a leak. But I guess you can’t get everything you want.

Check out Whoopie Pie, Angel OV Death, and everything else on Veal Records.

Tagged: getting into a serious thinghonkers and squeakers