Sloth

Yes, yes, I’m late with this new weekly article and it’s only the second week. Look, I’ve had a very busy week, OK? Happily, a large chunk of it was taken up by some awesome live music.

Last Thursday, Ace Kinkaid (aka Shorty’s brother’s band) opened up for Jen Milita and What’s He Building In There? at the Starlight. Ace Kinkaid were awesome as always, but I suppose I’m not exactly unbiased. Still, I’d like to think I’d still be a fan even if I wasn’t related to them. But they certainly brought the awesome on Thursday – great, tight set that sounded fantastic in the Starlight, and the crowd was totally digging it. I think they’re supposed to be putting some live stuff from the night up on their Myspace page, so check it out. Jen Militia weren’t my thing – actually, they were pretty fucking terrible, but at least some of the crowd seemed to dig it, so what do I know? These kids with their music these days. Sheesh. But What’s He Building In There? completely blew me away – live, they sounded much much better than the album.

Then, off to Toronto on Monday to see MOTHERFUCKING BORIS, who predictably were MIGHTY ROCK GODS OF THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE ORDER. The opening act, Nachtmystium, trucked in a pretty speedy flavour of black metal, and I liked them well enough although the set could have used some pruning. Torche, the next act, were a cut above – apparently they have a pretty big hipster crossover audience, and I get the feeling that the doom-metal aspects of their sound may be at least partially tongue-in-cheek, but they were awesome nonetheless. Crazy loud detuned doom riffs played with a weirdly poppy sensibility, sorta like Dinosaur Jr. except more extreme. By the end of the set they had downtuned the bottom E’s to just pure noise, riffing on this massive doomy sludgeness. It sorta sounded like this: BOOOOOOWWWowowoWOWowowowoOWOWOWoOWOWOWOWMMMMmmmm CHUNK! CHUNK! In other words, awesome.

And then Boris. Oh, Boris. Words fail me. Here’s the thing: sometimes, when a band is setting up, what’s actually happening is that they are writing a bunch of checks onstage. So for example when you see a huge-ass gong behind the drum kit? That’s a check. Double-necked guitar and bass? That’s another check. FOUR Sunn O))) heads connected to two massive cabinets? Check number three. Well, I am here to tell you that they managed to cash every single on of those checks, and they were all made out to ROCK. In fact, they started the show with the gong, and at one point the drummer was using his drum stool as a gong mallet. Sweeeeeet. The Boris set was pretty heavy on the most recent two albums, Pink and Smile, but that’s fine with me as I love both of them. They moved deftly from crazy psychedelic freak-outs to almost new-wave style dance-rock to feedback-drenched shoegaze, culminating in a ridiculously drawn out redition of the final track off of Smile, “Untitled”, one of those patented Boris drone fests that starts off slowly and then mutates into the heaviest doom riffage this side of Dylan Carlson. Quite frankly, they could have just played that song all night long and I would have been more than happy.

In conclusion: SATAN!!!!!