LiveDC: The Sword / Torche / Stinking Lizaveta

May 20, 2008 by Cale  Send to a Friend

It’s no secret, a number of BYT staff members have major crushes on Nihilitia’s Sara Hussain. I mean the bitch has a hair fan when she plays live. We were all too scared to go to this show so we sent her, plus we got some rad photos from Brandon Wu - check out his site at: http://www.bwuphoto.com/.
Thanx guys! -cale

If you consider yourself a heavy music fan and you missed last Thursday’s show at Rock and Roll Hotel, tell the next person you see to promptly deliver a swift kick to your bunchy junk.
It isn’t penance; it is just the only way to physically equate what you missed.

Rock and Roll Hotel is notorious for starting their shows promptly. For shameful messes like me who can’t seem to get anywhere before 10:45 pm, this sort of punctuality isn’t such a great thing.
On more than one occasion, I have missed the headliner at the Hotel.
This particular show was slated to start at the shockingly early hour of 8:30 pm, so naturally I was terrified we were going to miss Stinking Lizaveta’sset. Fortunately, there was some sort of delay and the show got pushed back with just enough time for me and Chris (Nihilitia guitarist) to grab a beer and park ourselves in front of the stage. Even though it was “early”, there were plenty of people downstairs already.
There was a fairly broad range of folks including old dudes with sleeveless shirts and goatees, NoVa heshers with bad hair, token hipsters with worse hair, semi-preppies, and there were even a bunch of girls!
The diversity was impressive and refreshing.
It just goes to show you that big metal shows candraw in DC – not just at Jaxx or Ottobar.

It is no secret that I am from Ohio and harbor a good deal of nostalgia for its music scene, notably the Emissions from the Monolith (r.i.p.?).
About six ago, it was at that festival that I first saw Stinking Lizaveta.
I remember thinking that the band definitely looked like they were stinking. They were probably the filthiest band at the festival, and that year’s lineup included the always lovably ripe Dixie Witch. I soon discovered there was indeed a stench lurking around Stinking Lizaveta; it was the stench of being completely and utterly epic. Currently signed to Crownsville, Maryland’s own At A Loss Recordings, the almost comical-looking three piece from Philadelphia has been touring steadily for over fifteen years and have four releases under their belt, two of which were recorded by Steve Albini.
Their music features no vocals, and instead focuses on awkward time signatures, unusual scale and key changes, and gaping maw riffage. (They have obviously been an influence on my band.)
Often described these days as “doom jazz,” I have also heard Stinking Liz referred to as a heavy metal jam band, and, of course, as a straight up stoner rock band. Whatever one might call them, they were undoubtedly the most musically unique of the night’s lineup. They played songs dating back to their earliest release, 1996’s Hopelessness and Shame along with a few choice selections from their most recent album, Scream of the Iconoclast. I made a complete ass out myself yelling song requests. As soon as “Soul Retrieval” ended I declared (a little too loudly) that if they played “Thirteenth Moon” next I was going to shit my pants. Guess what happened next? Shit city. Just kidding, but I definitely let out an embarrassingly loud squeal (shart? -Ed.) when they finally announced the song, much to the eye-rolling revulsion of the cool kids around me.
What always amazes me most about Stinking Lizaveta’s live shows is how the music can seem soaring and linear while being completely precise and locked in unison at the same time – like the band has a beating heart.
It was obvious from their jubilant but exhausting performance that the band was having a great time, and the audience definitely fed off that.
At one point during “LBJ,” Yanni actually took off his guitar and passed it into the crowd for people to play. Too bad for Chris, he had used that moment to get another beer. They are three amazing musicians and very curious to watch. May I also add that Cheshire, the drummer, is a rip-roaring badass.
The only downside to their set is that they didn’t play “Indomitable Will.”
Later on Alexi, the bassist, told me that they couldn’t hear shit from the stage (you never can) and they totally would have played it had they gotten a request. D’oh!! Next time I’ll pass up a note.

It was a mistake to step outside before Torche’s set, because by the time I got back the audience had gone from manageably crowded to virtually impenetrable
. I kicked myself for wearing flats. Without heels in that crowd, I was doomed to spend the evening staring at a sea of sweaty backs in black t-shirts.
Since I couldn’t see what was going on, I let the alcohol fill in the blanks. Torche played a solid set, but it failed to remedy the deflated boner in my pants leftover from Stinking Liz.
This isn’t to say that Torche isn’t a good band, but they just didn’t do a lot to excite me.
On their recent release, Meanderthal, Torche delivers an album of enjoyable but slightly uninspired tracks that fail to expand much upon the stonerrock basics - big-balls, all-tube, fuzzed out, thick drums, etc. Whereas Kylesa excels at holding up its own sheer girth while cranking out moody and pummeling songs, Torche never seem to deliver the same range of emotion without coming across weaker somehow. Likewise, Torche offers up plenty of giant riffs, but the overall songs lack a type of developmental complexity that, for example, Baroness has in spades.
Having said that, Torche does possess a type of accessibility that is not shared by its previously named contemporaries.
This made them an excellent choice to segue between the weirdness of Stinking Lizaveta to the Sword’s D&D wet dream, which was evident as the audience applauded their set with loud cheers and raised beers.

It was evident that most of the audience had come to kneel at the altar of The Sword.
By the time the Sword took the stage, the crowd was OOC/OTT as my friends would say (out of control, over the top). All the bodies downstairs had fused together to make one giant fist raised in the air, pumping along to every song. Once again, my lack of heels left me feeling like a hobbit rocking out with a bunch of Ents. With the audience’s feral energy propelling them along, the band soared through an intense set punctuated by songs from both albums. I really enjoyed hearing “How Heavy this Axe” live. It was also a special treat for the band to bust into “Ebethron” right before launching into a final encore.
Austin’s the Sword have been branded as loathsome “hipster metal” by some, and embraced as metal’s new hope by others.
I can’t concede to either of those, but I do think the band is not totally undeserving of the attention they have been getting since 2006’s Age of Winters. On their recent release, Gods of the Earth, the Sword proves that they are good at what they do.
However, those who take issue with the band point out that it is exactly what they are doing that is the problem, i.e. nothing new. That is something that I can agree with. I’ve heard it before – maybe not all in the same place, but it is definitely familiar.
By serving up melodic thrash moments with a little unicorn on the side, the Sword has found a home both in the hearts of old school metal fans who appreciate their craft, and people that are new to metal who find the band less intimidating than, less say, Skeletonwitch (who are undeniably better).
Whatever, man. I’m just glad people are listening to the heavy shit.

A couple closing remarks about the show. . .
+ I am very excited that Rob Curtis, formerly the main sound guy at Velvet Lounge, is now doing sound for Rock and Roll Hotel. The venue has a truly impressive board, but that isn’t much good if the dude behind it doesn’t know what he’s doing. Rob has the uncanny ability to make the most deafening rock bands sound like a kitten purring in your ear.
+ DJ Joshua did a fantastic job keeping my adrenaline going between sets with metal classics of days gone by.
+ Thanks to Steve Lambert for booking such a behemoth show, Fritz for the killer mind erasers, Jeff the door dude for helping me get a taxi in the rain, and BYT for sending me to review a show that I would have gladly paid to see.

More from Sara:

and
Renaissancing at the Gorgefest

 Send to a Friend