Hey ye faithful! So I thought I'd start posting my articles from my day job here. Might make the wait between interviews with Pulitzer Prize winners more interesting. Especially because such an interview will probably never happen again. Get brutal!
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Like the Black Death, Made of Metal returns once again to sow esoteric references and bouts of painful death among you all! This week's edition may be an account of a nearly two-week-old concert, but blame the University's erratic vacation schedule if you must. Pretend that you have just dug up a dusty old tome (tomes are very metal), an account of an ancient battle unearthed from the age of like, two weeks ago. Did that put you in the mood? Good. Let's get brutal.
Now before I can calmly and accurately recount the Feb. 12 massacre at the Palladium's upstairs club venue, I have a message for the lanky kid with the long hair, gray shirt (not very metal at all), braces and squeaky voice: You smell terrible. I've had to stand next to many offensive odors in my metal journey and you were by far the worst. You smelled like a trashcan full of used baby diapers dipped in a deep fryer. You smelled so bad you made me want to give up my killer spot in the front row. To semi-quote my favorite publication: if you don't hate your own smell, you hate no smell. You were also very annoying. You annoyed me. You annoyed the people around you and you annoyed the bands. Please don't come to any more shows. Some people are trying to enjoy their lives. On to the music.
Swallow the Sun, Finland's most depressing band ever (Finland being the most depressing country ever) and my main reason for attending the concert, was up first. In preparation for STS's first North American tour, every tree in New England went bare, and the temperature dropped to nearly zero as frozen matter fell from the sky (this could also be the effect of the phenomenon humans call "winter," but I don't believe in coincidences).
The sextet's brand of lurching doom-death seemed a little out of place on a bill boasting mostly whirlwind thrash bands, but they proved more invigorating in the live arena than I had expected. Despite expressions ranging from stoic to downright grim, Swallow the Sun played like champs for the 20 or so people who had streamed into the club early. Opening up with the appropriately titled "Descending Winters," STS touched on each of their albums, even whipping out, much to my delight, two tracks from their first demo, "Out of This Gloomy Light" and the crushing "Swallow." The sound man even managed to keep that fickle ol' "suck" knob on the sound board dialed down to zero, allowing the more delicate atmospheric touches to shine through with melodies that could squeeze tears from a stone. If you haven't checked these dudes out yet, do yourself a favor.
Next up was California's Warbringer, a band whose faux-retro thrash wares I've railed on at least once before in the pages of this mysterious tome. But while I still couldn't care less for this regurgitated, one-dimensional garbage, I'm willing to divorce my aesthetic tastes from my desire to have fun in the live arena. I can't tell you the names of any songs because they are generally identical three- to four-minute blasts of Bay area-derived classic thrash metal, but I can tell you that it makes for a heck of a live show. All this does not, however, excuse them for helping to resurrect the most one-dimensional sound in the history of metal.
The final act for the night was Sweden's hyper-technical/progressive/death-thrash veterans Darkane. Though I only own one of their albums, Layers of Lies, I thought I knew enough of their other "hits" to maintain a generally solid grasp of the set. My degree of preparation turned out to be completely irrelevant, though, because somehow the sound man lost control of that devilish "suck" knob. That thing must have been set to the power of 10 because I'm pretty sure that the guitars and lead mic weren't even on when the playing started. After a song or two, this situation was somewhat rectified with a nondescript buzzing heard from the amps. At one point, master shredder Klas Ideberg yelled a slew of profanities at the soundman, prompting him to turn said nondescript buzz way up. This made for a killer live mix consisting of really loud drums and a massive buzzing noise. Fortunately, through some divine miracle the sound was almost perfect for my favorite Darkane thrashterpiece, "Secondary Effects."
I left the Palladium partially deaf, heavily bruised, aching and greedily clutching Darkane guitarist Christofer Malmstrom's pick. A night of true brutality.
Originally published in Just Arts.
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