Scion Metal/Tee Pee In-Store
Stubb’s/Encore Records Video & Apparel, Thursday, March 13Production delays and black Iron Maiden T’s still wrapping around the block at Stubb’s meant barely 20 inaugural minutes for Bergen, Norway, quintet Enslaved, whose game Scandinavian glower translated into drainage-ditch vocals and superfluous synth. UK institution Napalm Death cop to their cartoon cacophony, frontman “Barney” Greenway remarking to the slowly trickling hangover death set, “Some of you are looking bemused.” The grindcore quartet’s cover of the Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” proved the perfect walk-off. Oakland, trio High on Fire managed a full 40 minutes of typically molten lash, Matt Pike’s lightning riffs barreling in tandem with his rhythm section’s runaway train. Title track to latest Death Is This Communion left no survivors. Count Motörhead’s Lemmy in that body count, the headlining frontman skulking across the stage during High on Fire looking like Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner.” Instead, up north in Austin’s metal headquarters, Encore, L.A.’s Ancestors indulged in epic undulation. New York indie Tee Pee Records beamed proudly as new favorites Graveyard leavened early Sabbath from their infectious, self-titled label debut with bluesy soulfulness, these 30 minutes among the Swedish quartet’s first on U.S. soil. J. Mascis’ Witch disappeared to another gig after three songs of wicked stone drone before San Diego instrumentalists Earthless‘ 30-minute jam roared like the tsunami section of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed & Confused.”
This article appears in March 14 • 2008.
