Year Of Shit IV, featuring Weedeater, KEN Mode, Lo-Pan, Rosetta, Sinister Haze
Thursday, August 8 at Strange Matter
Year Of Shit IV started out on a bit of down note; arriving at Strange Matter at the scheduled start time of 5 PM, I found a note informing me that three of the bands originally scheduled to play (Ancient VVisdom, Saint James Society, and Bloody Hammers) had dropped off the bill. This was a bummer because I'd been looking forward to seeing them, Ancient VVisdom in particular; however, the fact that instead of coming straight from work, I got to take a few hours to chill and get some dinner before the show started was a relief. Eight-hour shows, no matter how many great bands are playing them, can be an endurance test. Five bands in five hours is much more manageable.
When I got back to Strange Matter at 8, Sinister Haze was just starting their set. This doom metal group combines members from several other local bands (Fire Faithful, Cough, Dry Spell, Balaclava), but dispenses a more pure, old-school style of doom than any of the members' respective other bands. Avoiding the uptempo hardcore riffs of Balaclava or Dry Spell and the crushing slow parts of Cough, the band stuck with a slow, bluesy groove throughout their set, at times hinting at Eyehategod-style riffage but more often making me think of bands like Pentagram and Saint Vitus. Guitarist Brandon Marcey contributed a decent amount of vocals, and his screaming style had more of a modern sound, but main vocalist Brandon Malone kept it clean and melodic. A lot of the bands on this show had at least some doom/stoner aspects, but Sinister Haze played the purest example of the style out of anyone on the bill. It was a little too downbeat to count as fun, but they've definitely tapped into a good sound. Plus, with all that hair flying around, Brandon Marcey's headbanging was truly impressive.
Philadelphia's Rosetta were next, and they had some trouble getting started. A quartet with only one guitarist, they nonetheless had overloaded the Strange Matter power grid with a ton of powerful amps and a lighting rig, and their first two attempts to start their set blew circuit breakers. Finally, after some tinkering, they were able to keep the power on long enough to play their set. Though I'd been thinking as I watched them blow circuits that the huge wall of amps was overkill, once they got going and I heard them in all their glory, it became clear that the volume and power helped create the proper effect. Playing material from their brand new album, The Anaesthete (http://theanaesthete.bandcamp.com/) (which had just come out that day), Rosetta leveled the place with an epic post-metal style that drew from obvious touchstones like Isis and Pelican, but also reminded me at times of metalcore groups like The End and Burnt By The Sun, as well as recent shoegaze-influenced metal bands like Deafheaven or Alcest. Even the quiet parts of the set had a dramatic intensity to them (and really, with that wall of amps, the quiet parts weren't even that quiet), but the best moments were the climactic crescendos, of which there were quite a few. The band's drummer was all over his kit, playing complex rhythms that meshed well with the group's avoidance of ordinary time signatures. Really, the whole band worked incredibly well as a unit, and I found their entire set to be excellent.
Next were Lo-Pan, a group of big men playing rock-solid riffs in the stoner-rock tradition. They set up in a style I'd never seen before--the drummer's kit was front and center, with the guitarist and bass player on either side of him, and the singer all the way in the back where the drummer usually is. I'm not sure what led them to this sort of onstage configuration, but it certainly caught my attention. Once they got going, they kept my attention with a succession of rockin' grooves that made me think of prime-era Kyuss. The vocalist had a bit of a higher voice than Kyuss's John Garcia, but his melodic style was otherwise pretty similar, and the bass-heavy sound the musicians generated to back him up fit right in. Lo-Pan's songs were all structured pretty similarly, so they started to blur together after a while, but it was a pleasant blur that kept heads nodding throughout the set. The guitarist's use of an old Ampeg full stack from the 70s left him with a thick and indistinct sound that made it hard to distinguish his parts from the bass lines, but that wasn't a crippling issue by any means, and Lo-Pan still rocked the Strange Matter crowd quite well.
KEN Mode, from Winnipeg, Canada, hit the stage next. Out of the bands still left on the lineup, these guys were the ones I was most excited about, and they delivered on all of my hopes for their set. As soon as they started playing, their raging intensity was overwhelming. Singer/guitarist Jesse Matthewson stared bugeyed at the crowd as if he really would like to Kill Everyone Now (which is what the first half of their name stands for). KEN Mode's midtempo riffs are more like an intimidating brick wall than a groove, and they proceeded to smack the crowd in the face with one after another. Between Jesse's terrifying countenance and bassist Andrew LaCour's frenzied headbanging and bass-flinging, these guys looked just as instense as they sounded, and the overall effect reminded me of Today Is The Day and other 90s noise-rock bands (Helmet, Unsane, etc). There were definite elements drawn from the metallic hardcore of the late 90s as well--Deadguy vocalist Tim Singer and Botch/Narrows vocalist Dave Verellen both guested on KEN Mode's latest album, Entrench, and you could hear the influences of those bands and others from that era in KEN Mode's sound. At one point in the set, Jesse traded his guitar for a second bass, and the band played a brutal version of "Your Heartwarming Story Makes Me Sick," from Entrench--it was the most devastating moment of an entirely crushing set. KEN Mode were worth the price of admission all by themselves.
But then, so were Weedeater. Fronted by North Carolina wildman Dixie Dave, formerly of Bongzilla and legendary local maniacs Buzzoven, Weedeater have a significant cult following here in Richmond, and they tend to play here to delighted crowds at least twice a year or so. Nonetheless, I'd never managed to see them play, so I didn't know quite what I was in for. I soon learned exactly the reason why a lot of Richmonders never miss Weedeater no matter how often they play here. The band's rollicking Southern-tinged swamp-blues sludge/doom riffs are nothing groundbreaking--if you've heard Eyehategod or Grief, you've heard their like before. What sets Weedeater apart is the joyful irreverence that Dixie Dave and company bring to the style. Dave's like a redneck version of Lemmy--bouncing around the stage making goofy faces and kicking his feet into the air, he made a colorful and engaging bandleader. Drummer Travis Owen, who only recently joined the band, added his own fun elements to the performance. A friend of mine was telling me before the show how great Travis was at drums, and it was certainly true. The thing about playing Weedeater's style of stoner sludge doom metal, though, is that you don't really need to be great at your instrument in order to pull it off. Nonetheless, Travis found a way to demonstrate his skills through entertaining tricks. Stick twirls were just the beginning; by the end of the set, he was bouncing his drumsticks off the floor and catching them just in time to hit the snare, or leaning over at dramatic moments and kicking the underside of his hi-hat cymbals in lieu of a more ordinary crash. You could call it showboating, and in some bands it might be, but antics like this fit right in during a Weedeater set.
My favorite part of their delightful set came towards the end, when Dixie Dave announced "an old song." Since I don't have any Weedeater records, I didn't try to recognize what they were playing, but by the second verse, one of my friends turned to me and said, "Dude, isn't this Lynyrd Skynyrd? 'Gimme Back My Bullets'?" As soon as he said it, I realized it was true--Weedeater were covering one of my favorite Skynyrd songs, and it sounded so much like their other material, I hadn't even noticed. But once I knew, it was unmistakable, and I got a big kick out of singing along for the rest of the tune. After the cover, Weedeater wrapped up with a couple more of their own songs. Then Dixie Dave raised his glass of whiskey to the crowd and said, "Thanks everybody, hope we did OK. Let's get fucked up, shall we?" Everyone roared and headed for the bar. As sorry as I was to miss Ancient VVisdom, I was glad the show had lasted less time than was originally planned. If it had been longer, by the time Weedeater hit the stage I might have been too tired to enjoy them. And that would have been a damn shame.