Wednesday night at Mac's Bar was packed with good beer, bands and people. The line-up was enough for me to drive an hour up to Lansing to see these bands. Apparently I missed the memo that bands and fans alike were supposed to wear either camo pants or shorts because I was one of the few not decked in it.
Dark Empyre started off the night and as one of the bystanders said, you "have to look past the front man, but they are good." The front man/lead vocals, Lord Pyrosis (according to the band's Myspace) had his face painted all white with the eyes surrounded in black and branching off in different directions, and huge platform boots on. The singer goes with the music, however, because the other band members don't do the same thing it's kind of like he's trying to hard to sell the band as "hardcore." His voice is also a little whiny, like it shakes when he screams-sounding like the exorcist chick, but if you don't watch him then it's all good. During the set the band and fans kept yelling "Hail Satan," as does the band's t-shirts. At one point Lord Pyrosis said, "Hope there aren't any Christians," and the guitarist replied, "who else are wee gonna piss off." The band pulls through on their claim to being black/death/thrash metal with explosive bass, intricate drums, and guitarist's hands that just seem like a blur.
To top off the night of black metal, Mac's was (like always) playing some B-rate horror movie, but this one wasn't as good as Cannibal Holocaust. To draw my attention away from the movie it took Serpent Crown with it's three guitarists, but man did it work.
One thing that I found amusing was that every time somebody yelled the name of the band, or when the band introduced itself, it sounded like they were saying "Serpico." When I got over that little joke and the music started I soon forgot about everything else. The members of the band are a bit older than most of the bands around but the adage of "if it's too loud then you're too old" does NOT hold true for this group. Two of the members are also in Genocya which makes their job a lot harder- one of them was discussing how they need to start working out because the back-to-back gigs were hittin' em hard. Wednesday was also Serpent Crown's last show because the two members of Genocya were leaving SC so they could focus on Genocya. There song "Illusions of Sanity" is THE perfect pit song. It's fast, heart-pounding, finger-tapping, head-banging, rage out song.
The night only got better with each band performing. Nest up was Genocya, and even though their bassist and singer were recovering from Serpent Crown's set, they didn't let off one bit. "Frozen in Fear" was the perfect start off point. Thrash metal with a great Chug section where the bassist just killed it. The song got a nice pit going for a pretty packed bar, and by the way the pit formed and kept going you would've expected a bigger name band to be on the stage. If I were drag racing a 68' Camaro SS or about to get in a sweet fight scene from fight club, I would want this band playing. "Hatred in the Flesh" was one of my favorite songs of the night. The solo sounding guitar throughout the entire song gave it the classic Testament-era metal sound to it, and the bass drums are propelling the song and the chugging bassist is just making it feel like a train is coming right at you but you'll put a hand out and derail it. Another highlight of Genocya's set was their black metal cover of "Strutter." It was amazing. Not only was it a good cover of a classic song, but the faster pace of the metal version made the song even better.
GOATWHORE. Need I say more? the answer should be no, but for the people who don't know them or need to know more, I will say more. The pit alone represented exactly how the band plays music. A good amount of people jumped into the pit and were going hard, pushing people across the room, almost taking out the amps on stage, and were running full force into people. It's honestly hard to write about this band and their songs and do it justice because all I wrote in my notes for "In the Narrow Confines of Defilement" was "AHHHH! awesome." Having trouble finding the words to describe them, I played the songs for my friend Amanda who spends her time listening to Aerial Pink and Best Coast. She was thrashing around and said that she "wanted to throw up... but in the good way, like a metal way." That may be the best way to describe this song. Amanda also commented that "if you slow down Lady GaGa it sounds like GOATWHORE, like super satanic."
"Carving Out the Eyes of God," which was the single off their 2009 CD by the same name. Looking at the lyrics for this song makes the band even more impressive in my mind. The words they use are bigger than most of the words people use in English papers, and on top of that they can get these words out in a scream and a short amount of time. I urge everyone to look up these lyrics. The singer, Ben Falgoust II (who is also the singer of Solient Green) gave everyone permission to rip off the song from someone who has it, to put it on your computer and steal it, and to spend your money on some of the other bands that were playing." GOATWHORE also played a song from their first album, which is always a good move by any band because most fans always go to shows hoping that they "play their old shit." Their last song was "Apocalyptic Havoc." All I can say about that, is that it was SICK.
Another band played after GOATWHORE, but after their set I didn't want to hear anything else. I wanted that sound to be what was stuck in my head for the next few days. I feel bad missing them, Saviours, because they are playing this year's Ozzfest which is a pretty good indicator that they would have put on a great show.
This night was amazing, and I got to make my brother jealous because I was 10 feet away from GOATWHORE. And the next night I had floor tickets to see Slayer, Megadeth, and Testament. So I got two nights of great music.
No comments:
Post a Comment