Two days after being at the same venue to see Huun Huur Tu, we were back again for this show. Gone were the tables and the wide ranging demographic of Thursday night. Instead, we got the blank floor and much more uniform crowd of mostly 20 and 30-somethings, almost all dressed in black, except for a few exceptions, like the tall guy wearing the gray “Pleasanton” shirt. Odd. I often think of Jello Biafra’s comment about how no army could make a group of people dress more alike than heavy metal fans do. Sure, the bands on tonight’s bill aren’t strictly heavy metal, but they appeal to the same fan base.
This was the first night of two sold out Neurosis shows. Most of my friends had snoozed on getting tickets for the Saturday show, which sold out much more quickly than the Sunday one due to the fact, I’m told, that Yob was on the bill. I hadn’t heard Yob before, and my only exposure to openers U.S. Christmas was from the Hawkwind tribute release out on the Neurosis label, Neurot Recordings. In fact, other than members of Neurosis, the only familiar person we ran into was Umlaut, who had also snoozed on tickets, but managed to get a Saturday ticket through the power of his blog.
Being unfamiliar with both opening bands, when U.S. Christmas played, I thought they were Yob. Umlaut set me straight.
U.S. Christmas
The most striking thing about U.S. Christmas is that not only do they have two drummers, but an additional percussionist playing hand drums, tambourine, and other percussion instruments. They also have an electric violinist. At first, it was hard to hear the violin, but eventually they got the mix sorted out and the sound came through more clearly. The music was heavy psych rock, with the added oomph of having two drummers pounding away in unison. The raw, straining vocals reminded me of the singer of Vagtazo Hallottkemek (aka Galloping Coroners) who coincidentally also have a release on Neurot recordings. Occasionally the orgy of percussion made it sound like there was a drum circle going on center stage. Good stuff.
Yob
Yob was next. They launched into an incredibly heavy groove, with both guitarist/vocalist and bassist throwing their whole bodies into the rhythm. The trio was rounded out by the drummer, who out of sight from my vantage point in the middle of the room, pounded away in sympathy. Between songs, the guitarist mentioned that he was getting over a bad illness, and that they’d only play two more songs. Despite only playing a total of three songs, their set was over half an hour long. I never would have known that the guitarist wasn’t feeling up to snuff, because he never stopped moving. The sound was so heavy that it was almost subsonic, and it could be felt though the floor. Too bad they didn’t play longer. I’m definitely a convert.
Neurosis
Then it was time for Neurosis. It has been a number of years since I saw them last at one of the Beyond the Pale festivals they curated, and it has been nearly a quarter of a century since I saw them for the first time, at a pizza place in Emeryville – Own’s Pizza, if I remember right. I’ve probably seen them close to 20 times, mostly in small venues during the late eighties and early nineties. Their music, imagery, and lyrics have always struck a deep chord within me, and their live shows have never been short of intense, so I was more than excited to see them again.
Neurosis
Picking out individual songs would be futile. The set unfolded like a single, monolithic piece broken into discrete movements, with the video projection (created by silent sixth member Josh Graham) bombarding us with iconic images of grim reapers, volcanoes, wolves, masses of antlered skulls, subliminal flashes of faces (reminding me of some of the subliminal images from The Exorcist), fire, water, lightning, earth, and more. It sounds almost trite when I try to describe it, but it was so in sync with the music, and so well done, that it reminded me of an old review that called Neurosis “the soundtrack to the apocalypse”. And what a soundtrack it is! The music surged and ebbed like tidal waves and built tension like grinding tectonic plates. All of the elements were in place. As always, Steve, Scott, and Dave shared vocal duties, with Dave’s voice rumbling along underneath the higher voices of Steve and Scott. Noah wrenched sounds out of the keyboards, sometimes looking like he was trying to smash them. Jason pounded his kit, sometimes in unison with Scott and Steve attacking drums on either side of him. The audience surged back and forth like a single, protoplasmic organism.
It had me thinking about the Huun Huur Tu show two nights before. Huun Huur Tu’s music was written by primitive nomads living in harmony with their surroundings, and is filled with reverence for the cycles of nature. Neurosis share that reverence, but their music is the product of the modern age, and voices an agonized yearning to once again return to the way things once were, or at least that’s how I interpret it. It howls into the prevailing winds with such force that one can almost imagine the winds changing course. The air inside the club crackled with energy and violence, but it was a clean, cathartic violence – the violence out of which new things are born. In fact, the feeling of catharsis was quite profound, and it makes me wish Neurosis played more often than they do. It also makes me think that a collaboration between Neurosis and Huun Huur Tu would be an interesting thing to hear.
In short, even though it is only January, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being one of my favorite shows of the year.
For those of you who want to know, here’s the setlist, thanks to Umlaut:
Night #1 setlist (inc 2 new songs):
Through Silver And Blood
At The End Of The Road
The Doorway
new song
...Given To The Rising
new song
Locust Star
Water Is Not Enough
Distill
Stones From The Sky
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