25-02-2013

Birds in Slow-Mo

Saturday show! Phew! That's like, 4 shows in a row. Pretty rad!
Sometimes I wish going to shows could be my profession. Like, someone would pay me to get drunk, watch bands, hang out with friends and dance like an idiot. That would be great. Interested companies can contact me at 0123 45 67 89! Call me (maybe)!

I biked all the way to Sint-Antonius Zoersel (which is not really that far away, I've just never been there before), and passed the venue (JH Joeniz) like 3 times unknowingly cause it's pretty hidden away from the street and the only indication is a road sign 500 meters away. But when I saw a light and what I thought could be a young dude into hardcore, I stopped and went to JH Joeniz. It's only the second show there, but it's cool that these guys are outting up shows. It's a nice little venue, rectangular, nicely sized, no stage, and beers for 1 euro (hellz yeah!). My favourite type of venue.

4 bands for the night, great line-up.
First band was GTTRS. Ever since I noticed you can pronounce it als GATETERS (butt eaters) I can't think of anything else, but it's supposed to be pronounce Gutters I think. Or just say g'tt'rs with glottal stops or something. Enough pronounciation issues, let's get into the music. Dark hardcore, somewhere between overdone melodic hardcore and Tragedy-esque hardcore punk. (And don't get me wrong, I fucking love overdone melodic hardcore.) I really enjoyed them, bought the tape, met the vocalist (whose name I can't remember, or maybe didn't ask) and he seemed like a nice guy, en plus his throat was amazing. I mean, what came out of his throat. That was also the first thing Nico from Ashes said after the show, and I whole-heartedly agreed.
I'm pretty excited about this band, they play Antwerp with Wolf Down and This Routine Is Hell in a few weeks so that'll be pretty cool.

Ashes continued the night. Probably the most 'hardcore' band of the line-up (in a stylistic sense). They got some people moshing even! Aw yeah! I did a two-step but if you've ever seen me two-step you can guess how ridiculous that looked. Anyway, Ashes is one of the coolest recent hardcore bands in Belgium, really catchy but really heavy hardcore with the most astonishing and terrifying vocals around. They're the nicest dudes and yet, when I watch them on stage (or on the floor in this case) they're all angry and pissed and stuff and I love that. That's the case with most hardcore bands, I guess. Anyway, Ashes killed it again, best set I've seen them play, they just get better every fucking time. Shit was way tight, drums were spot-on, bass was brilliant, guitar was awesome, vocals were amazing. That's 4 adjectives to say they sounded really well together. Sometimes I'm so redundant. That's something you can't say of Ashes. Ashes' repertoire has a 'no redundancy' policy. (That's polite language for 'no nonsense'/'no bullshit'.) Jealous Souls is my fucking jammmmmmmm. We trade the brightest days for the blackest nights.

On with the show with the Midnight Souls. It's been a while since I've seen them, I think since Ieperfest? So it was nice seeing them again. I didn't go apeshit because of reasons (I don't know why) but lots of kids did and that was cool. Their set was mixed up a bit, that was nice. They're still at the top of their game, a game full of desperation, anxiety and hopelessness. One of the coolest current live acts, they really put everything into their live performances and it shows. It's a simple equation, band's energy = audience's energy. (That's an idealized equation, but it worked on Saturday.) It's infectious. People sing along, people mosh along, suddenly Bert is playing bass on top of the bar, suddenly Donny is on the other end of the room, suddenly they're all where they weren't before, suddenly the music stops and everyone is like 'oh wow'. Closing with Malaise was definitely a good one, as well, and Donny crammed in a Touché Amoré line, which was pretty funny and I thought it was a cool thing to do. I was not born with a strong voice/It's never been one to boom/But I'll be damned to go out quiet/If it's to only trhing I lose. Pretty hard-hitting.
OH YEAH GREAT BAND OH YEAH WAKE UP YEAH

Birds In Row are from France and this was the second-to-last day on their tour. Couple of preliminary notions: the vocalist has lost a lot of his voice due to extensive and intense touring, and they're small people. The first notion alludes to the vocals not being awfully great, but it's hardcore, so whatevz. The second notion amounted to me being in the back and just seeing a head swing back and fro for a second once in a while, and a drum stick moving at full speed (which, because there was a red light spot right on that stick, looked like a laser sword, which was cool). Other than that I didn't see the band perform, but I did witness them. I was not familiar with any material outside of a few listens to the Collected LP (which is their first 2 LPs), but they were radical. They're one of the most interesting bands in hardcore I've heard in a while. And if you're an actual interesting hardcore band these days, that's quite a big deal! Lots of tempo changes, experimenting riffs, weird shit going on. They just don't give a damn about 4/4 measure, key of G, or any of the standard mess. They wanna freak the fuck out with their instruments, play hardcore and be really good at it. That's what they did. Props to you, Birds In Row. You're doing God's work.
The last song was A Kid Called Dreamer and it was amazing. They played a short set (probably due to notion #1), but it was an amazing set.

Then, High Hats afterparty = best kind of afterparty!
Matthieu suggested for me to do an MC Karel song for the afterparty but I wasn't sure that would've been appreciated by more than 4 people (if even), and how the fuck can I interrupt a High Hats afterparty? I don't have permission to interrupt a High Hats party!
I did sell a few MC Karel tapes, so that's pretty whack. Robby told me it has a high Atom & His Package vibe. That's really nice to say, and maybe it is similar, but it's just way worse than Atom & His Package.

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten