Addendum

As promised, I return! My girlfriend and I missed the start of the Black Angels' set, which started at the unreasonably early time of 9pm, so what follows is not a complete account. The show was also ear-shatteringly loud, so loud that we could hear the band playing as we walked down Granville street. We entered to the strains of a patented Black Angels' death song, which worked itself into a steamy lather as we visited the merch table and then found a suitable vantage point. The Commodore is a wonderful old room if you get there early enough to secure one, and a creaky death trap if you are forced to settle for a partial view from behind the ancient wooden pillars that hold the place up. Someday it's going to burn down and kill everyone inside, a la Great White. Ah, but I digress. The show.

The Angels quickly launched into a vicious rendition of Passover favourite "Hellhounds on my Trail," complete with slide guitar and culminating in an explosive noise freakout. The band was bathed in psychedelic light throughout the show, fluorescent greens and oranges often giving way to spirals of blue and deep red. Previously, the Black Angels have been known to project Vietnam-era stock footage on the stage during performances, but none was to be seen on this night. The warped 'summer of '68'-style jangle-pop of "Yellow Elevator #2" and the tribal pounding and arching feedback of "The Sniper At The Gates of Heaven" provided other early highlights to the set. The sound was punishingly loud, but the instruments were all clear and the band was powerful. Throughout the ensemble's playing was tight and varied, with members switching up instruments and songs frequently being stretched out to treat the audience to a particularly tasty groove or mind-expanding improvisational section. Depending on your opinion of jamming, this kind of thing can be anathema, but none of these digressions ever lasted too long, they were simply embellishments which re-interpreted old and new material in a free-form live context. The songs were all still very much recognizable as such, but it was not a rote recital of the recorded versions. Christian's voice was clear and powerful throughout, and his energetic hollers and whoops in mid-song lent a spontaneity and energy to the performances. Stage banter was almost non-existent, not really a bad thing for a band of the Angel's talents.

The set list was well-chosen and varied, hitting the necessary high points of all three of their albums without focusing too much on any of them. The band's second and weakest album, Directions To See a Ghost was represented by only a handful of its very best songs. Among these were "Mission District" which boasts a tasty buildup and a riff as crushing as anything in the catalog, and "Science Killer," a classic death march which rides a snaky groove through the murk and is spiced up with some maracas. At a psychedelic rock show, where the line between transcendent and monotonous can easily become blurred depending on your own preferences or even quantity of drugs taken, it is important to craft a set which maximizes the dynamics of the performance. This is especially crucial for a band like the Angels, whose mandate dictates that they play droning Velvet Underground-inspired trance rock which strips the listener's senses and scrubs the mind of all earthly perception through sheer volume and repetition. Although there was a bit of a lull mid-set, the band did pull off the difficult feat of balancing these conflicting ideals.

The band continued to go from strength to strength over the course of an almost 90 minute set, as excellent cuts from 2010's Phosphene Dream album such as "Entrance Song," "The Sniper" and the title track were given powerful and exciting live renditions. The album is easily the band's most dynamic and song-oriented to date, and the material was equally vibrant and hard-hitting from on stage. These poppier numbers were alternated with vintage Angels mind-melters like the propulsive anti-war anthem "The Second Vietnam War" and the corrosive fuzz-bass stomper "Black Grease."

The set was brought to a powerful conclusion by a hammering one-two punch. First, the garage pop of "Telephone" was stretched far longer than the album's 1 minute and 59 second runtime and turned the band's poppiest and most memorable song to date into a methanphetamine-laced White Light, White Heat jam far more in line with the band's murky aesthetic. That is a compliment. Finally, the band closed its set with their best ever song, the incredible "Young Man Dead." The first half of the song was a little bit more up-tempo than the recorded version, which did not particularly suit the song at all. Fortunately, it was a bait-and switch, because the song's tripped out false collapse halfway through soon exploded into an absolutely massive half-time riff which brought down the house. All in all a very good performance from a great rock band, and one that will hopefully win them some new fans from among the sea of hipsters and beardos which populate Vancouver's concert halls.

Black Mountain took the stage to a triumphant reception some time later, but since I didn't stay for the whole show I won't review it here. Suffice it to say, the Mountain is a titanic force live, but on this particular night they were merely ground-shaking instead of earth-shattering. A glut of mediocre material from the disappointing new album is to blame. Amber Webber's warbly vibratto-obsessed vocals, which have previously detracted from what have been some of the greatest rock shows I've ever been to, were slightly less irritating than they have been in the past.

Also, for what it's worth, I picked up my own copy of Passover on vinyl from the merch table. Now I own all three on wax, and I can tell you that the Black Angels and Light in The Attic records do a fantastic job with the packaging of their products, putting everything on extremely high-quality 180 gram vinyl and providing lyrics and artwork in all their albums. I feel this extra effort is worth mentioning, and I wish more record companies shared this commitment to superior quality.

Entertainment

Dropout Boogie tour tonight! Black Angels & Black Mountain at the Commodore. It's gonna be one dark evening. Setlist and analysis to follow.

Glance

Just checking in. I'm at the busiest time of year for school right now. A couple weeks and I'll be on vacation.

The new Kylesa album, Spiral Shadow is ruling my world right now, these guys have just gotten better with each release. It's their fifth platter, and my favourite. The title track just destroys. "Don't Look Back" is catchy like herpes. Crazy eastern guitar leads on "Crowded Road." Giant fucking riffs and huge hardcore shoutalongs. Anthemic, huge, awesome. Look for it on some year-end lists.

Gonna see some shows this week! Quest For Fire and Thee Oh Sees this week for some heavy psych and crazy rock n' roll, then see Bison and Kylesa melt some faces in a couple weeks. It's looking like a heavy winter.

THE BEARD IS BACK. By which I mean, my good friend Noah from Calgary says he's brought me a copy of former Blue Cheer guitarist Randy Holden's 1970 solo album, Population II. Have a taste.

Remembrance

Motörhead's "1916" is a simple, touching tribute to the fallen. I can think of no better song which captures the futility of war. Wear a poppy and hug a veteran today, if you can still find one.

16 years old when I went to war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side,and a gun in my hand,
Counting my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died & I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time, That a year in the line,
Is a long enough life for a soldier,

We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history's pages,
And we fought and we brawled
And we whored 'til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,

A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun,
And that's What you are when you're soldiers,
I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees,coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother'

And I fell by his side,
And that's how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,

And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn't my fault
And I wasn't to blame,
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain,and now
There's nobody remembers our names
And that's how it is for a soldier.

Extraneous

Today is a happy day in British Columbia. Ladies and gentlemen, our Premier, mister Gordon Campbell, has resigned.



I promised myself I wouldn't cry when it happened. And I'm not.

I know this has nothing to do with music, but I'm so happy I just want to stand on the roof and shout out to the world. So... here's a song I guess.

Oh yeah, and Electric Wizard have a new album out, Black Masses, and it probably canes harder than anything since Dopethrone. Just so you know, they are the Heaviest Band in the Universe. I held a cage match once to find out. Anyways, I'm gonna go listen to it. See ya.

Unholy

So I'm tearing myself away from Hammer horror films and homework to do a quick and dirty Hallowe'en playlist to share with y'all. Unsurprisingly, it's heavy (no pun intended) on the doom metal. When the Zombie apocalypse comes, we'll all be jammin' out to these tunes.

Music to creep to:
Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
Mercyful Fate - Into The Coven
Witchfinder General - Burning Sinner
The Misfits - Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?
Bad Brains - Fearless Vampire Killers
Awesome Color - Zombie
Ramesses - Baptism Of The Walking Dead
KISS - Unholy
Candlemass - Under The Oak
Death - Zombie Ritual
Cathedral - Serpent Eve
Warlord - Mrs. Victoria
Saint Vitus - Zombie Hunter
Blue Öyster Cult - Tattoo Vampire
Mayhem - Funeral Fog
Warlock - Burning The Witches
The Ramones - I Don't Wanna Go Down Into The Basement
Iron Maiden - Dance Of Death
Morbid Angel - Chapel Of Ghouls
Ozzy Osbourne - Bark At The Moon
The Melvins - At The Stake
Possessed - The Exorcist
Judas Priest - Evil Fantasies
Exciter - Black Witch
Electric Wizard - We Live
Pentagram - When The Screams Come
AC/DC - Night Prowler
Trouble - The Skull
Angel Witch - White Witch
Venom - Witching Hour
Sunn 0))) - Big Church
Helloween - Halloween

Happy Halloween all you witches and warlocks!

Reccomendation

If you are ever looking for a place to buy wax in Vancouver, Neptoon Records is the place to go. Their selection of early 70's rock n' roll is unsurpassed in the city. Props to Ben for ordering in all that crazy stuff, including plenty of obscure Japanese psych and long out of print British hard rock. Great used section too, everything is in good shape and reasonably-priced. Would that I had way more money to spend on records, I'd be in here every day.