So last night Justin, Shannon and I attended a black metal show at the 2 Bit Saloon in Ballard. It was fuckin awesome. I rocked out like I haven't in a long time.
The lineup was Blood Etchings, Gravenloch, Funeral Age, Scorched Earth, and Ceremonial Castings.
Funeral Age was the coolest. Justin and I got physical with a couple of them. We didn't start it! The bassist did! He grabbed my arm, pushed me back into the crowd, making his war face, carrying his bass the whole time, chest puffed out, head high, just before they played their first song. Thus the evening's tone was set.
It was brutal. I was waving my hair and making fists all over the place. The music was perfect--black metal. Fast. Crazy. Madness- and middle finger-inspiring. There were plenty of other metal people around there making lots of metal hand shapes, like the devil horn, the middle finger, the holding-a-ball-of-fire hand, the come-on-come-on-come-on finger wavings, and who can forget the standard fist in the air. I was getting tossed around, but I held my ground, didn't fight back, much, stood there and let myself get tossed around. Never fell, but came close a few times.
After that first song Justin and I took our coats off, along with the bassist (who happened to be a fill-in), and put them up on a bar-bench thing on the side of the stage, and proceeded to spend the rest of the set butting heads into chests and other heads, shaking my hair around wildly, getting some of it caught and ripped between spikes and guitars or something, busting metal moves, high kicks and somersaults, not really, and basically keeping the metal flow going from band to audience and back and forth.
It was most fun getting my jaw poked by the headstock of the frontman's guitar, and generally all the physical interacting. It was pure metal love. The three guitarists set up on the floor in front of the stage, letting the drummer fill up most of the tiny stage with his massive badass kit. Band was free to mingle with crowd. Having them walk out into the crowd to get a little rowdy while playing their crazy metal. It was always welcome. Fun stuff. Really macho, sort of. Really cathartic.
Haven't had that fun a time at a show, or anywhere, in a good few months. Years, even. I want to go back to the 2 Bit for a metal show again sometime soon.
Gravenloch was super sweet. Fast as hell. They appear to have lost a singer--I checked their MySpace and a live video shows them playing live with one. I like them better sans the vocalist, as I saw them last night. The rhythm guitar player was singing, sweating bullets, soaked in it, beard and long hair and all, with his octupus-painted guitar, playing fucking solos and rhythms really fast and doing sweet, low ass death metal doom growls.
Lots of times, all three guitarists would be doing death metal growls at once. It was a HUGE sound, combined with the two guitars, bass and drums.
I'm so glad I brought earplugs.
Incidentally, the vocalist has a shaved head--losing him make Gravenloch a long-hair-only band.
Justin and I may have recruited a few people to do bass or drums for Born Without Blood. We handed out flyers, sold ourselves to people we thought kicked ass and whom we wanted all for ourselves. To devour. I mean, to induct them into BWB.
The evening began with
Blood Etchings. They were totally into the theater aspect of black metal. Blood splattered everywhere. Corpse paint. Fucking skulls, candles, ornaments, blood-soaked ornaments, blood-soaked bone necklaces, a tall guy in a robe playing both keys and bass guitar, Wolves in the Throne Room-type long passages of cool dreamy-ish black metal.
