Links:
There
Ichabod

Headliners There paraded an unabashed love for the medium's earliest hours, blending Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd covers into their own homebrew of bombastic guitar anthems and seventies swagger. Derek Smalls might have just traded in his foil-wrapped zucchini for a macramé kit if he were there to witness all the grotesque grimacing and triumphant fist-raising that was an indispensable part of There's live performance. The hirsute power trio held nothing back in their furious ascent towards hard rock Valhalla. High on dirty riffs and even dirtier attitude, the refreshingly noisy Crash and Burn attacked the stage in a frenzy of shredded guitar strings and screeched vocals that would have made bad-to-the-bone forefathers Johnny Rotten and W. Axl Rose shed prideful tears. With a firm handle on his Gibson Explorer, Crash and Burn's lead guitarist delivered a fluent reading of Slash's whiskey-soaked leads on the band's cover of "Nightrain."

The lead singer of Huge wore his band's creed on his chest in the form of a sweat-soaked AC/DC Back In Black t-shirt, while his rollicking band mates--two in Al Jourgensen's favorite headwear--helped push subtlety out the back window of their bus to hell. Successfully tapping into the spirit of arena rock, the quintet thrived on an all-or-nothing live performance. Though lacking in originality, the naked, oversized heart of this band easily accounted for their presumptuous moniker.

Ichabod and Throttle--the first and third bands to hit the stage--set up camp at the opposite end of the hard rock spectrum, grinding and pounding out altogether different sounds that strode away from the classic metal, hard rock, and punk combinations of the other bands. Experimenting with odd timing patterns throughout their entire set, Throttle pushed the limits of their two-piece reality into new regions of rhythmic possibility. With mouths agape, onlookers stared in disbelief as the wildly inventive and insanely skilled drummer became the central focus of the performance. The singer/guitarist--who used a slide for about half the show--kept an unblinking eye on his percussionist partner, molding abrupt chord shocks and urgent slide phrases into the constant flow of beats and fills. This two-headed hydra ended their set with a mind-bending and bone-rattling start/stop number that recalled the various instrumentals of the much-heralded godfathers of stoner rock, Kyuss.

Easily the heaviest band of the night, Ichabod fused deafening bass lines, vicious drumming and fuzzed-out chords into a wall-blasting behemoth that fully supported their vocalist's harrowing onstage catharsis. The four-piece from Lowell, MA--a blue-collar town north of Boston that was home to some of the country's first textile mills--were impetuous representatives of the modern metal genre, displaying a facility with the technical aspects of their semi-industrial sound that enhanced their performance considerably. It simply would not have been a true 2001 Rock Odyssey without the inclusion of a band from one of the newer sub-genres that falls under hard rock's growing umbrella. Although the mere uttering of the title makes many rock purists cringe in abhorrence, there is a percentage of respectable bands from the world of modern metal that forge their music from the same primal, emotional elements that have sustained so many great hard rock bands through the decades. These elements were laid bare by all five bands at Saturday night's performance.

-Dan Cullity
[ top of page ]

Blöödhag/Hog Molly/The Ruby Doe
@
The Breakroom
January 27, 2001
Seattle, WA

Links:
Blöödhag
The Ruby Doe

There are two ways to take in Tad Doyle's new (new to me, at least) detuned noise outfit: from a neighboring city, where I guarantee you will still be able to adequately hear and feel the band's massively loud sound; or from right in front of the stage under the large shadow of Doyle himself, whose sheer size and tonnage standing in front of his guitar cabinet casts such a wide sound absorbing shadow that it is almost as good as a decent pair of ear plugs...almost. For some silly reason, I seemed to have forgotten my earplugs. But in retrospect I doubt it would have made the slightest difference. The band's sound is like standing directly behind a 747's turbines, wondering frantically if your heart is skipping so frenetically solely because of your excitement at seeing Doyle et al, or because the sheer volume itself is making your ticker beat twice as fast as it should be. In fact, the last band I recall playing that loud was Motörhead during their set on the Mainstage at Bumbershoot last Autumn, where old ladies from across town were calling in to complain of the volume level.

Tad spent the better part of the first song tuning his guitar--something I'm not quite sure he needed to do as I never saw him hit anything other than the bottom two strings, but hey...whatever makes you happy. I can't even quite recall all of what was played really (except for that NPR-like jazz ghosting through one of the guitar cabs), as the only thing I could hear after song two was the squealing of my ear drums. But damn, what a fine ferocious and snarl-toothed squealing it was! Watching Tad lumber two steps back to thrash his head about for a moment or two before lumbering forward again to scream bloody murder into the microphone is like taking a leak on an electrified fence: something you grimaced at during the moment, but something you'll always look back on with a giggle and a wry smile...maybe.

I knew everything was going splendidly when two fine young ladies approached the mighty-but-gentle giant with a beer. Tad's still got his mojo! And for some reason I sleep better at night knowing that.

Blöödhag headlined the evening's affairs, and I must say that these four get undying shout-outs for their approach to the whole death metal genre. They have such a twistedly intelligent take on the entire thing that they deserve to have their thick, geeky glasses bronzed as a monument to what it all should be about. the band refers to their sound and style as "edu-core," and their focus is solely on science fiction authors and their works. Each song is titled after an author of the genre and, dressed in the aforementioned thick glasses, spiffy white shirts and ties, they look like the proto-nerd. But when the music kicks in it's like getting smacked across the head with a two-by-four. Thick, distorted bass lines bolster heavy, crunch-laden guitar playing while Professor J.B. Stratton--who intermittently wiped his brow with book attached to a wallet chain--howls like Satan getting a good tug on the balls. You'll never think of Isaac Asimov quite the same way again.

Speaking of getting a solid head check, in Blöödhag's case you very well might get thwacked on the noggin', as the band has a penchant for throwing out sci-fi literature during their songs. And I do mean throw! I narrowly avoided several pulp fiction missiles during the course of their set. Further proving that the band's message is indeed reaching the masses, some nutter at the gig showed up with his own bag of books, which he merrily lobbed back towards the stage. Things started getting crazier when Blöödhag refused to play further until at least three people in the audience held up their library cards. The whole thing had such a surreal quality to it that I'm convinced Blöödhag will someday soon be shaking hands and doing a photo-op with George W. "Monkey Boy" Bush as he congratulates the boys on helping end illiteracy. Definitely make a point of checking these guys out, just be sure to be up on your reading beforehand!

My biological party clock is still set to New York time, which meant that I didn't make it to the Breakroom until 11pm, completely missing the opening band, Medulla Piñata, and catching only the last few songs of The Ruby Doe, whose tight and heavy noise rock sound whetted my appetite as I berated myself for not showing up on time. Twisting bass lines that wrapped around scattered guitar chords, this three-piece sculpted dense sounds that subtly switched both time changes and moods several times during the course of one song. It's a place and sound that Fugazi might have found themselves in had they set their music compasses towards heavy instead of towards avant jazz--and that's certainly meant as no disrespect to the mighty 'Gazi. From my brief encounter with the band, The Ruby Doe are something I'm going to keep my ears peeled towards, as well should you.

-Craig Young
[ top of page ]

Links:
Mudhoney
The Catheters

Taking to the stage, singer Mark Arm, sporting dyed red hair, commented on how the sizable crowd made him nervous, hoping the band's set would live up to their expectations. "I guess that's why the first song is called 'Suck.'" Mudhoney then proceeded to rip into "Suck You Dry" from their '92 album, Piece of Cake, while the crowd went completely nuts. Arm added swirling psychedelic guitar distortion against Steve Turner's own overdrived axe playing while drummer Dan Peters pummeled away at the back, head low, hair hanging over his face. And Lukin...well, he just smiled like the madman he is, adding various non-linear, rambling comments between songs. The band was in excellent form, giving up righteous versions of, among others, "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More," "Into Your Shtik," "Beneath the Valley of the Underdog," "A Thousand Forms of Mind" and "When Tomorrow Hits." You couldn't ask for a better homecoming and tonight was one of the only times I've been in the middle of a full house at Graceland and felt both unbothered by the tight press of bodies and completely exhilarated by their unending enthusiasm. When it came time to give up the seminal "Touch Me I'm Sick," it took three go arounds before the band locked it down; funny when you consider it's Mudhoney's most well-known song, touching when you consider what kind of impact and influence this underrated band has had on music over the past ten-plus years.

Mudhoney encored with "Grace" and "Hate the Police," with Mark Arm stating, "I believe the word is 'finished,'" before leaving the stage for good. Lukin, as you would expect, uttered some unintelligible words into a dead microphone before stumbling off and that closed the night for Seattle's greatest band. Mudhoney, minus Lukin, are off for some dates in South America with a stand-in bass player. If all things go well, they just may very well be playing again around Seattle on a regular basis. Let's hope so. No one deserves to have the tax man making decisions for them.

Alta Nova opened the night. A three-piece, their sound is best described as: Seattle, circa 1993. Heavy, riff-happy distortion, I'm still deciding whether or not that date stamp description fits them in a positive or negative manner. They were followed by The Catheters, a five-piece of rosy-cheeked young punkers playing a glam punk "what if Stiv Bators fronted the Stooges" sound. Definitely worth your attention.

-Craig Young
[ top of page ]

Well, everything sounded great, but maybe the volume could have been turned up a few notches. And the band looked to be going through the motions. I think singer Satz and the guitar player, whose name escapes me and one of three guitarists to play with them over the years, were the only original members. All the parts of their great hits were played to perfection, not leaving anything out but the screams of Olga de Volga in "Dressed in Black" from the American Wino LP. I was glad to have finally heard their music live after so many years of listening to them on vinyl.

The huge draw for this night was Portland's Poison Idea, coming out to throw their weight around some more. The advert in the local paper said that the line up included Pig, Jerry A., and Mondo, but I do not believe that Pig Champion made it out unless he was on that Subway sandwich diet and I did not recognize him. Poison Idea came on to a round of screams from the nearly packed crowd. Even though most of the original band were not here, everything still came across great. Jerry A. wasted no time getting the crowd slamming, and torching the fans with their nihilistic fatalistic hardcore anthems--crunching through song after blistering song.

Sometimes going to see those bands from yesteryear can be a hit-or-miss proposition, but that was not the case tonight. For a band that has not played around town for some time, Poison Idea still sounds raw and full of energy. Kudos for The Lewd for letting some of us finally see them live and to Poison Idea for showing some of the younger crowd what hardcore is all about!

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]