AIDS Wolf at Corral Room and Suffocation at The Loft
AIDS Wolf, hiding their devious danceability behind sweaters.
AIDS Wolf at Corral Room
The barbaric noise-rock of Montreal’s AIDS Wolf should not be danceable. Off-tempo blitzkriegs and scattershot drumming aren’t usually met with the kind of maniacal dance-a-thon that was granted to AW at the Corral Room on Friday night. Amazingly, the Madison crowd didn’t find the foursome’s primal screech to be any less accessible than say, Kelly Clarkson. Then again, neither did Decider. After local groups Drunjus and Absinthe Minds kicked the show off with a collaborative set of haunting psychedelic improv, Minneapolis’ Gay Beast took the floor with a set of spastic math-rock that proved admirably tight, despite how it was deliberately disjointed.
As Gay Beast opened with with “Xerox Paper,” keyboardist-saxophonist-vocalist Daniel Luedtke punched his rumbling synth-lines into the fractured drumming of Angela Gerend, and Isaac Rotto’s jerky guitar work danced over the top. At times, Luedtke would use one hand to fire notes from his saxophone into Rotto’s bizarre guitar lines, while using the other hand to hold down the low end with one of his two synthesizers. The trio’s set consisted largely of new tunes from an as-of-yet untitled album due out this summer. After Gay Beast closed its set with a song literally titled “EEEXXXPPPAAANNNDDDIIINNNGGG,” it was time for AIDS Wolf to steal the evening.
As vocalist Chloe Lum hit the stage dressed like a grungy druidess (with a neon green shawl draped over her arms), her three bandmates followed her out wearing ratty beige worksuits, looking like homeless Ghostbusters. The band wasted no time dishing out tinnitus with set opener “Chinese Roulette,” a sloppy dose of polyrhythmic chaos, as the deafening atonal riffs of Myles Broscoe and Andre Guerette wobbled over drummer Yannick Desranleau's pummeling anti-rhythms. When Lum wasn’t groaning incoherently into the microphone (which was lodged in her mouth for most of the set), she would stumble in and out of the audience, beat on her chest, and scream in the faces of a few lucky concert-goers. Lum’s animalistic performance added a surreal dimension to AW’s set, which pulled primarily from 2008’s Cities Of Glass.
While the harsh racket between tunes made it difficult to hear where AW’s songs began and ended, the entire room went apeshit when they recognized the slippery sludge of “Cities Of Glass.” When the final shriek of set-closer “Down Holy Ground” rang out, Decider removed its earplugs and followed the other sweaty mammals outside for fresh air, wondering how 40 minutes of hookless sonic abuse ended up being so infectious.
Suffocation at The Loft
While The Loft, a youth center and venue on the near-East Side, tends to serve as a haven for trendy teens to watch their favorite Christian-rock or emo bands, the place certainly has its merits. It keeps kids off the streets on weekend nights, the stage and sound are set up really well, and it’s essentially the only venue in Madison that risks bringing big-budget extreme metal shows to all-ages crowds. While Decider may have scoffed at the idea of a cutesy pop-punk venue bringing legendary death-metal band Suffocation to the tikes on Saturday, it was a much bigger success than expected, despite the venue's 90-decibel volume limit and a few cuts and bruises.
The first band Decider caught was Santa Cruz tech-metal outfit Decrepit Birth. From the moment drummer KC Howard’s unleashed the blast-beats of “Prelude To The Apocalypse,” dread-headed vocalist Bill Robinson dominated the audience, channeling the explosive energy of classic hardcore in each of his guttural growls. Guitarists Matt Sotelo and Dan Eggers collided with aggressive blasts of harmonized speed picking, occasionally throwing in a solo or conventional melody. Despite the band’s relentless brutality, Robinson used his time between songs to speak out against racism and promote love. The quintet’s performance yanked from 2003’s And Time Begins and 2008’s Diminishing Between Worlds. DB also included a slightly more melodic, if scorching, number entitled “Symbiosis,” from its upcoming record Polarity.
After Decrepit Birth closed its set with the machine-gun bursts of “The Infestation,” Knoxville, Tennessee’s Whitechapel took the stage with a set of forgettable deathcore that somehow turned every teenaged audience member with a white belt and skinny jeans into a crew of shadowboxing and stage-diving goons, ultimately leading to fights between these meat-headed pit-ninjas and the frustrated onlookers that kept getting hit in the face by stray punches and kicks. Worse yet, almost every song in Whitechapel's set was formulaically loaded with boring chug-a-lug breakdowns, which vocalist Phil Bozeman would usually lead into with a cheesy Slipknot-styled count-off.
After Whitechapel finally closed its set, Suffocation came out racing the clock (because it was an all-ages show, they had to finish by 11 p.m.) with an onslaught of classic savagery that won over both metalcore and death-metal fans. Hitting the amber-lit stage, Suffocation ripped straight into “Liege Of Inveracity,” a brutal masterpiece from its 1991 debut album, Effigy Of The Forgotten. Drummer Mike Smith, who has been credited by some for inventing the blast-beat, hammered away at his drums as if each of his limbs had an answer for every note of Terrance Hobbs’ and Guy Marchais’ sledgehammer guitar riffs. Giant vocalist Frank Mullen hurled his deep growls over the well-organized chaos. “This next song is about killing people, which is something that I like to do,” Mullen declared before the band blasted into a new song entitled “Mental Hemorrhage.” Between songs, a smiling Mullen playfully made fun of the neighborhood-enforced decibel limit, shook hands with fans, talked about the long history of Suffocation, and dissected organized religion (his loathing of which was apparently the inspiration for one of the group's best-known tunes, “Pierced From Within”).
Before set closer “Bind Torture Kill,” which turned the entire floor of The Loft into a sea of chaos, Mullen graphically explained how the song is about brutally taking revenge upon anyone who hurts your family: "I'd bind 'em up real good. I'll keep someone alive for 25 years if I have to." After the band finished the nine-song set, they stayed around and signed autographs for a bunch of young kids. Here's hoping they consider trading in their As I Lay Dying CDs for a copy of Suffocation's Pierced From Within.
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