UNEARTHLY TRANCE, RAMESSES & GALLHAMMER
Despite looking and behaving delicate and polite off stage Gallhammer exude a completely different persona on it. Many thought they would be the headliners tonight but they were pretty much playing to a full house and the second the opening bass strum of the night reverberated around the venue we knew we were in for something special. Everyone who has heard new album ‘Ill Innocence’ will attest to it being a bit of a revelation and it was great seeing the might of this monolithic doom and gloom opus being pulled off so stylistically here in front of us.
Bassist/vocalist Vivian Slaughter seemed at one with her instrument, in fact the bass was high in the mix and she contorted herself around its morose tones as they sluggishly invaded. Not everything was slow as the punk side shone through in both Mika’s Amebix shirt and the coruscating crust of numbers like ‘Blind My Eyes’. For anyone who was wondering, as I was, it is drummer Risa Reaper who provides the strange high yapping vocals on that particular number. Although I assumed that Vivian was the main singer there were times when Risa took over and boy what a hideous demonic gargle she unleashes. With that the facial contortions which had her looking either like she was about to burst into tears or that she was being possessed were like something out of a Japanese horror film; scary as hell. I think most of the new album was played but I was in pretty much a trance to it all once I had stopped taking pictures. Buy this album and if you get the chance catch them live, for once you really can believe the hype!
After a much needed breath of fresh (well actually very smoky air) outside the venue it was back in to catch Ramesses. They at first struck as somewhat uncouth and like they had thrown everything together. Slapdash drumming, fuzzy guitar and bass tones rang out but of course this was a display of electric wizardry of the highest order and numbers like ‘Master (Your Demons)’ were designed to either mong us out and destroy us in the process. Heads shuddered almost violently detached from shoulders, beards were stroked by those that could and we were rooted to the spot by this musical maelstrom which had given feet the weight of lead.
It was all getting very heavy man, who needs drugs with music like this, mind you a gallon or so off beer hadn’t done too much harm and I frankly felt like my brain was melting. The steel in my boots was vibrating as reverb hurled out from Adam Richardson’s craggy vocals and this gravity dropping display was close to turning Camden into a black hole as these ‘Lords Misruled’ the domain. As to why I found myself punching the speakers to an extent that my knuckles were virtually bleeding well I guess this lot sure know a thing or two about using music as a weapon.
The onslaught was not over yet and this really did turn out to be one of the heaviest mothertrucking gigs witnessed in a while as Unearthly Trance set out to finish us well and truly off. Forget genre tags, lets call them manly metal, this was a performance akin to a bloke watching a match in their armchair, scratching their butt and demanding more beer. Perhaps it was the beards and the tats, maybe it was the way the setlist had been scrawled without a care on a scraggy piece of cardboard. Maybe it was the muscular musical grooves contrastingly tight, thrown with a Godflesh meets Today Is The Day sort of intensity.
There was so much broken glass on the floor at the front of the stage a real masochist could have accentuated the performance by dancing bare footed on it. Trying to decipher the music was rather tricky and this wasn’t easy to pigeonhole in the slightest. Numbers like ‘Permanent Ice’ had shimmering guitar chords and cited a sort of Steve Albini side project or perhaps as they built things up, a sludgy mash up of Neurosis and Big Black. There were certainly moments of punk laden snarling going down amongst some mountains hoary riffage. Later I seem to have scrawled down Eyehategod and Discharge, well I said it was manly, but however the hell you want to describe Unearthly Trance they were pretty damn devastating. Watching everyone leave after this sonic dehibilitation was most amusing, it was as if we were all a bit disorientated and unable to walk straight and this wasn’t just caused by booze. My hearing is going to be screwed for a week.
Pete Woods
LONDON BARFLY 23/09/07