Who in their right mind drives four freaking hours to go to a show with four bands they’ve never listened to before???? Oh…. yeah. Me. I’m that person. Let me tell you though, it was worth every minute to watch one of the best shows I’ve seen from start to finish. I’d heard of two of the bands through the reviews we’d put out here on First Angel Media, but I hadn’t taken the time to delve into them. In return for my blasé attitude, The Destruct Principle., Our Frankenstein, Seven Factor, and Psyclon Nine decided to not only give me the best visual representation of themselves, their music grabbed me and fully immersed me in a catalogue of sound that pulled my very soul to them. Playing at the great venue of Lovedraft’s Brewing Co. , this is something you don’t come back from. You can’t return to them being names on marquees, or typed reviews. You become a fan, a follower, and the experiences you are left with play in your mind for days following.
Let’s start at the beginning shall we? The Destruct Principle. took the stage to start the show, bathed in blood red lights, summoning ancient ritualistic sounds, and the crowd stood transfixed. My job is to watch carefully, grabbing the images as they happen, but this was so powerful that I took a moment to close my eyes and bathe in this tribal feeling in my core. Fire, sigils, the haunting voices and drum beats that filled the air with something more than music; a call to the netherworld, a cry to the vapors surrounding us all. The beings that stood before me were powerful, proud, unashamed of what they were, showing their souls to the world, creating their own plane of existence in this small corner of Earth. I felt moved, and at ease, each harmonic vocal telling me that I too am powerful. Each echoing drum reminding me that I am human, but human is animal, and animals hunt. I felt tied to something larger than myself, and when their set ended, I felt at once energetically renewed and sorrowful that this was over.
Almost in stark contrast came Our Frankenstein. The mellow energy of the night was completely erased as this, astonishingly two person, act took stage. From the calm river of earlier, we were now in a rush of rapids, being brought to highs that allowed us to see the sky, only to be tumbled back down into this monstrous sound. A silver mask in the darkness, his silhouette drowned out by the blue lights that burst forth like a supernova. Ruling with confidence and charisma without ever showing his face. David Copperfield would have been jealous of the magic that flowed during this set. The feeling of a full band with only the powerful drums and voice taking full reign of our senses. This was a sense of theater in a setting it wasn’t expected.
Seven Factor came next with industrial beats, metal, growling vocals, dark and yet melodic. There was a type of deep feel here, like we’d cleared the rapids but now found ourselves in a swell of deep churning waters pulling us down. A voice at times whispering, at others demanding, calling from the depths as the music had its way with us. This was the perfect in between of some of my favorite sounds. I’m a huge NIN fan and felt a root running there, but also felt as f they’d taken some of my favorite sounds of bands that have remained through the years, making them their own and twisting them as they pleased in the most intense ways. Having already met them before the show I got that wonderful feeling of watching humans becoming demigods. Bringing out another side, something that we may all have inside of us, but many of us can’t tap into.
And now we have reached the finale, but my gods the finale was incredible.
I don’t know what I expected of Psyclon Nine. I had traveled here with three members of my FAM crew, heads of department, managers, and two of them were huge fans of this band. I had never seen them so excited, happy and amazingly nervous. I knew they had to be something special. Before the show we had the opportunity to interview Nero (look for the interview by Anthony L. McDonough later this month) and I was impressed with Nero as a person during that. Intelligent, with a unique outlook, open minded and completely unjudgmental. with an interesting back story and to die for fashion, by the time the interview was over I started to feel that same excitement as to what type of musical creation was coming. I wasn’t ready. If we had been in deep waters before, this was like falling over Niagara Falls. Music blasting from all directions, a wall of sound that filled every crevice, something darkly erotic reaching out from the darkness to take hold. The demigods had opened the gates for the titans. The ritual performed at the beginning had now brought forth those who would rule, the light-bearers of our path. From drums to bass, guitars to vocals, they blended into a scream for all to lay eyes upon and give hearts to those who would wake us from our dead slumber. Outside lightning crashed and rain fell in torrents, and for a moment it felt like a reckoning. If the end of the world had a soundtrack, it would be Psyclon Nine, giving us a list of the wrongs in the world, how we could have changed it all…. and yet…. if this was the end, we would have gone to our end writhing in pleasure, moshing with evil grins, and happily falling to our knees for what was to come.
