Metal is one of those musical styles I liked in the past, kind of gave up on for over a decade and have only recently tried to reexamine. Growing up in the 80s in Texas, glam metal was my only exposure to metal until friends in middle school. It was through them that I discovered the joys of Thrash through bands like Anthrax, DRI, Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies. Bands that we never heard on the radio, only through duped and distributed tapes. We’d have to scour things like Thrasher Magazine and VHS team tapes for music. This eventually led to me discovering Punk and then Hardcore while moving away from Metal.
As I got older, songs about blood and death and Satan and darkness held less appeal to me. I can’t say why. It’s not like I was a happy child. It was probably the political aspects of Punk / Hardcore appealed to me, along with the can-do DIY attitude, where as Metal seemed more for mopers; focusing on despair and violence and anger without release or a target whereas punk had a million targets and could also hold more than one emotion in its three chord heart at a time.
Recently though, largely to meeting Ivan Khilko of Immanent Voiceless, I’ve had a bit of a rekindled interest as he says “oh man, you have GOT to check this out.” And while sometimes it may not be my thing, his Wikipedia-like knowledge and musical background have exposed me to a great deal of Metal I wouldn’t have even known existed.
One of those bands is Brooklyn’s own Bloody Panda, a doom metal outfit who recently finished a tour with a coming home show Friday night at Union Pool.
Union Pool in Brooklyn is a strange venue. It’s two rooms and a patio large enough to have its own taco truck permanently planted outside. One room is given over to a large bar and yuppies, who amazingly enough DO exist in Williamsburg, the other is a smaller live music section, with smallish stage, smaller bar, but crucially with places to sit. The sound quality was excellent the whole night, able to capture the lows of texture from the Doom Metal bands while also able to accurately produce the highs of the Black Metal guitar elements, and was never so loud for loudness sake that it was uncomfortable to endure. Aside from the taco truck, the weirdness comes from the herding of yuppies and Metal heads on the patio to produce a strange melding of personal styles melded with an interior style that would seem better suited to the suburbs and the name Senor Loco.
Battilus, a former instrumental Doom Metal band, was the first band we saw. Their set up was bassist, drummer, guitarist, and newly added vocalist. The vocalist was actually rather unique hiding his voice behind textured effects manipulated by a midi-controller triggering Ableton. The end result was muffled scratchy wails and shrieks attaining the same fuzzed-out tone as the guitar and bass. Battilus is fixated on atmosphere and sonic textures, but not to the degree of bands like Thrones. Their songs contain peaks and valleys, rather than flat plains and are post-apocalyptic train rides through the ruins of a once proud empire, the only accompaniment is the engine of each song and the wails of creatures straining to escape their bonds and feast upon each of us in the audience.
Battilus has two EPs that you can download from their website. They’re a bit older and do not include the vocals found in the current live show. However, they’re going on tour and will be back to perform in Brooklyn at the end of September so you can check them out yourself. If you’re a fan of fuzzed out noise, then definitely check do so.
Liturgy bills itself as Pure Transcendental Black Metal, in a genre known to splinter more than leftist groups it can be hard for outsiders to really gauge the difference between the various subgenres, but Liturgy’s self proclaimed genre is really an apt description. I became aware of Liturgy through Teeth Mountain, a Baltimore-based Afro Drone Noise Dance Band, and quickly picked up the first demo when it became available. With song names like “Everquest I” and “Everquest II” I honestly expected it to be a bit of a jokey take on Black Metal, but what was found was really anything buy Jokey.
Hunter Hunt-Hendrix recorded that first EP alone on a four track in his bedroom, but Friday, he had a full compliment of musicians there to help him push his vision through to the audience. I am not a good person for hearing lyrics in most extreme music. Either the howling screeches or full-throated roars are really nothing more to me than another instrument, and I can only really notice their tone and meter, so most lyrical content is largely ancillary. Reading interviews with Hunter, you can tell that he puts a lot of thought into lyrical structure and content, but unfortunately, I can’t make sense of what’s there, so intent is largely lost and I kind of have to go it alone. His guitar playing was so fast and intense that his right hand became a blur and his first three songs resulted in three broken strings. The first two, he stopped to fix, but the third he let hang for the rest of the set. The fingering and progression and the interplay between Hunter and Bernand Gann’s guitar at times took on a very stiff and formal You Go, I Go solo structure that wouldn’t be out of place in Hard Bop Jazz, while Tyler Dunesbury’s bass playing was never extremely fast, but along with Greg Fox’s so fast as to appear frictionless drums provided an excellent and complex rhythmic counter ballast to the two guitars tones.
There’s a balance in song length where a band can grove on a theme too long and rather than stretching the audience’s experience, it actually can take them out of that place. Some bands like Krallice unfortunately fall into that trap, seemingly enamored with structural creation leading to a sprawling sameness, whereas Liturgy does not. Liturgy’s sound charges from the speakers and envelops you as the keys and tempos change peak and pull you higher and higher, but rather than some catholic ceremony, the music of Liturgy tries to help you find out own place into the experience. It is, oddly, very protestant in many of the ways that it rejects the accepted norms within the genre.
Even with the breaks to wrestle new strings onto the guitar, this was an excellent, fast paced set that I found to be highly enjoyable though certainly not for everyone. I look forward to hearing their first full length, Renihiliation.
Bloody Panda faces a bit of an uphill challenge. I love listening to Doom Metal of all types, from classic Black Sabbath to Ahab, but live I have been bored to absolute death with almost every band I’ve seen perform. I think the issue is that I have trouble really plugging into the Doom Metal vibe of pain and oppression inevitability of death and suffering when I’m holding a $6 beer in my hand. Bloody Panda takes genres thematic staples of atmosphere and texture over face-melting and adds a visual element to it, with the band members performing in black hoods and robes, which is kind of disconcerting in practice, especially when the set opens with a young man screaming incomprehensibly into a microphone as riffs as thick as steel doors slam over you.
I don’t think that Union Pool was the best place to be introduced to this band, as the small stage had trouble fitting the six band members, considering the keyboardist had two full size keyboards and stand to accommodate. So there wasn’t a lot of movement and the claustrophobia didn’t quite translate for me. There was no really feeling of fear, but there was the persistent feeling that what I was watching was something kind of occult and forbidden. The music was very good structurally, but the arrangements did not really grab me, but I don’t know how much of this was due to the setting rather than to the music. Bloody Panda has a new album out, which I’ll listen to and re-evaluate the band, but at this time, I can’t really say that there was anything there for me.