“Warmed up corpse” – The Locust, The Blood Brothers, the me me me

“Making you feel just like a warmed up corpse.”
The Locust

That’s the view from the kitchen of massacre mansion. I sure will miss it when I move, even if it’s just one floor down.

I have just watched a new video of THE LOCUST. It’s for “AOTKPTA” of the ‘New Erections’ album. It’s downloadable as .mov, here’s the link.. It’s a sci-fi dystopia that vaguely reminded me of a FAINT clip… I can’t put my finger on the song title right now. The one with the “drones work hard before they die” lyrics. Not really because it looks similar but simply cause there aren’t so many dystopian video clips, I guess. This LOCUST video picks up the album artwork and is aesthetically reminiscent of old school sci-fi like the black/white FLASH GORDON series or METROPOLIS, and the thing that sucks them in looks like one of THE TRIPODS while the bands’ appearance reminds a bit of TRON for the suits and the paleness of the faces. It would be awesome if they made clips for the whole album resulting in a dark antipode to DAFT PUNK’s ‘Interstellar 5555’.

I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned that I love the new album. I bet I have. I liked ‘Safety Second Bodies Last’ a lot cause it seemed to set up a scene change for the band but somehow the quiet/loud contrast sounded like they could do it with a bit more tension if they try. ‘New Erections’ does that and it also is much darker and more aggressive than ‘Plague Soundscapes’. The earlier LOCUST stuff with its playful synthgrind and the vocal domination of high-pitched Pearson screams has always seemed gender-free for me. The disindividualsing insect costumes of course added to that impression. Now growling, clearly male vocals and the doomier heavyness of parts of the new album make them sound a bit more on the masculine side. It fits them well so far.

I don’t know why I sometimes think music in gender. And I don’t mean sex as there also are male artists whose music sounds more feminine than I like it to be and the other way around. It’s not about lyrics and it’s not about how the artist looks. It’s between the lines of all of that. I guess it’s just a random and totally subjective thing but talking about aggressive music I find that the more ‘masculine’ it gets, the less accessible it is for me, although I’m not a very ‘feminine’ person at all. For example I instantly liked lots of the PATTON stuff, DAUGHTERS, IN/HUMANITY and GUYANA PUNCH LINE, DAS OATH, SONG OF ZARATHUSTRA, CUTTING PINK WITH KNIVES to name but a few. With many of the most allegedly ‘brutal sounding’ bands… it’s like there’s a fence between me and that music. Or a window pane. I don’t warm up with music that is aggressive or complex just for the sake of being totally extreme but has nothing to express. Or rather: if the only thing it expresses is ‘hey, man, look at me, i’m like tooootally extreme”. I think from now on I’ll call it ‘Fisherman’s Friend Core’. (In Germany FF have the slogan: “If they are too strong, you’re not strong enough.”) If there’s no content backing that up it mostly isn’t extreme at all. I might like some of it but it doesn’t really touch me. I want that kind of music to rip my heart out. At a good live show there are those moments when you stand in the midst of a total noise attack of music that contains and compresses all the shit in the world and suddenly you feel totally calm and at peace for a moment. Like cleansed off all the bad things in the world and lost in that sound. Like you can breathe free for a moment. I think one of the first shows that gave me such a moment was NEUROSIS back in … oh my, I don’t remember when. And of course MINISTRY. Later also SONG OF ZARATHUSTRA.. oh, and definitely when SOME GIRLS played “Deathface” live. Ach, anyway: I can’t wait for THE LOCUST show we put on end of August and it’s great that they bring OCRILIM with them because I loved ORTHRELM live and I doubt OCRILIM will be any less intense.

* _ *

“When my eyes are full of feeling
I forget my personality”
Luscious Jackson

I was a bit quiet lately, first because there was too much going on and I didn’t really find the time to write, then cause I felt a bit empty. Somehow I had stumbled into one of those moods… sometimes it feels like things are passing faster than I’m able to digest and then it takes me some time to get back to produce anything, a good conversation, music, text. As banally as it might sound cleaning the backstage after the BLOOD BROTHERS show while listening to LUSCIOUS JACKSON’s ‘Natural Ingredients’ album four times in a row was really relaxing and helped catching up with myself again. Yes, I listened to it four times. I only had that one CD with me cause the tray of the other CD I had brought – TED LEO & THE PHARMACISTS’ ‘Shake The Sheets’ – was empty. I had given it to the soundguy and now it is still stuck in the PA cd player godknowswhere. The only thing that consoles me over the loss is the missionary hope that somewhere at some really really bad shows the soundguy will at least play some good music before and between the bands. Guess it’s a sign for me to go buy the vinyl now. It’s always just half a pleasure to get promo cds as it makes you feel like buying the vinyl would be a luxury as you already have the album. ‘Natural Ingredients’ by the way is one of those timeless albums I rediscover at least once a year. It’s like meeting a distant friend you had almost forgotten about but whom you instantly feel familiar with again.

Anyway.. I had a couple of great nights and will go chronologically backwards telling you about it. The ELEKTRONISCH ROCKEN night last Friday was great. I really had planned on going home a bit earlier than usually but it didn’t work as PALUKA82 and JOOL and MARTIN HIP slammed such a banger of a dj set. I think I’ve never heard them play such a in-your-face-set before. “Higher State Of Consciousness”, uh? The decoration was awesome too – hundreds of acid smilies all over the place, even yellow smilie balloons. The stuff nightmares are made from. 😉

Two days before that we’ve had THE BLOOD BROTHERS and KAMIKATZE and DIE! DIE! DIE! playing. It was a nightliner tour so they arrived in the morning and Melinda and me prepared a yummy breakfast buffet in the Zentralcafé. We hadn’t a nightliner band in a while so I had totally forgotten about the mother instinct sleepy yawny musicians toddling their way to the feeding site can stir even in someone like me. Oh, and while I’m in that emotional mood: There were so many people of the Musikverein involved in that show, like coming over in their spare time to carry PA stuff, get food, hanging posters for the next shows, get change from the bank, help the band load in, chat a little, wash towels, etc. – … How can you express how much you appreciate this community without sounding like an overemotional cliche?

Back to the show: KAMIKATZE played first. It was straight and rude hardcore punk from Sweden and part of the audience stood back a bit not knowing how to deal with that. Not hip enough for the hipsters, not complex enough for the artsters. The sudden appearance of an emo circle pit didn’t help easing their confusion but gave me a big smile. After already having sold 150 tickets in advance we didn’t really worry about getting the 300 people turn out we needed to finance the show in our bigger room. As the evening proceeded though we had to realise we’ll only have 285 guests. At least it was the tour record and a good day. DIE! DIE! DIE! played next and I was a bit disappointed. Their cd on S.A.F. Records is a rough little jewel of a noise punk record but the live they sounded like just another indie band. A good indie band but lacking the edges that make the record stand out. I didn’t see all of THE BLOOD BROTHERS show but what I saw was good and played with more guts and charm than the show I had seen earlier that year in Munich. After the show there was chatting and drinking until late and even then I wasn’t tired when I got home so I watched BLADE until the sun set.

There are more pictures of the show in the www.evemassacre.org photo section. Sebastian W. took most of them with my crappy digicam and I secretly think it sucks that even with such a poor device you instantly see that he’s a photographer and I’m a snapshooter. More tales tomorrow.