This blog comes with an accompaniment in the form of a documentary video that Dead Mothers Collective and I collaborated on. Watch it here:
I arrived at The Hive early, at least earlier than usual, equipped with the same camcorder that was used to document my Christmases and kindergarten graduation. I butted in on every pre-show tradition as they happened. Toothache sat on the (now utterly broken) couch on wrote out their setlist as tokillafly ate their dinner. You can see how invasive it was in the video. Side note--since I was recording, I don't have any notes for this show so I'm writing this pretty blind and mostly on memory... sorry. Also, I could find no pictures from the night at all, so I'm going to use stills from the footage I took.
tokillafly was on first, their drooping and noise-gripped opener Walk Off shattering the room with Dazey's screeching. It paired ever-so-perfectly with the rambunctious hammering of Rio's energetic drumming. Having sat in on their recording sessions and practices, tokillafly has become one of my top bands in the Flagstaff scene. Their songs are as inventive as they are devastatingly heavy--taking advantage of both the rising expertise of Kaden's spiderweb of riffs and Bryce's rambling energy and directional control.
Through the Mud boasts probably my favorite intro of all time. Hearing that little bass riff usher in the rest of the band is an unmatched experience, and one that crunches your face into nasty submission. While Dazey and Bryce are gone until December, there is still so much to look forward to from Flagstaff's noisy and daring metal monger. Stream bedlum.
Dear Toothache, what is there left to say? With you on the bill it is certain that attendance will double--relatively so young yet with so much to offer, so much that has been offered, and such magnetic energy both in person and online thanks to the release of your debut EP. Brighton's vocals are smooth, energetic, and loud, and each carefully constructed lyric is presented with riotous unification. Kiva's drums are tight and uniquely unwavering--her style stripped down to heavy yet minimal poundings driven by every tom hit. Cheyenne's guitar is a creamy liquid that slithers through the air of every venue with tinny delight and a deliberate force of sound.
Although I was in a perfect position to catch the entire set, upon looking back I did find that the majority of Toothache's songs were distorted and sadly unusable. Luckily someone else was recording, but I'm still very sad that I wasn't able to capture them in their complete essence. What a Pity saw them at their heaviest, Kiva putting on display her most versatile drumming in their slowly-inflating discography. Stream Nowhere to Spill.
Every pore from every audience member oozed sweat--so much so that every surface was wet and stinking with the scent of bodies in motion. Walking outside between sets, I could feel the savory water evaporating from my arms as each cooler breeze passed over--a million times cooler than the body-oven that The Hive becomes in the dead of Summer.
Final in the triple array of Ts, Taciturn sucked all oxygen from the room with egregious noise, melting between each song like the flow of a river wrought with the aches of sonic decay. The core of their set, meaning the few traditional songs they did play, were some of my all-time Taciturn favorites. The combination of Nyle's scraping and dizzyingly bombastic riffs, his yearning and retired screams, and Nate's perfectly syncopated tom poundings holding hands with Natasha's beating, abusive bass sound, make Scant a personal favorite.
The highlight of the set and night had to be the distribution of Nate's homegrown arugula during Nyle and Natasha's smattering of noise--everyone in the audience grabbing handfuls from his plastic bag. By the end of their set, the ground was smeared with the remains of every dropped leaf of arugula or spinach. Stream Roach.
Monette ended the night, reliable in their aural power and enormity. Sadly, I spent most of their set crouched in the hallway to the bathroom smacking my camcorder because it had stopped working just seconds before they began playing. Still, beneath the echoes of their psychopathic grinding and the crowd's furious and unexalted motion, I could hear every iconic riff bursting into the air with the same passion and familiarity I knew so well.
Bremer's vocals are the epitome of the squashed inner dialogue of a younger generation reserved to accept their fate under boot, matched with an energy and indescribable will to shred any compositional expectations of audiences via Bryce's complex and splattering drum ballads, and Adi's mega-thick bass tone. Together, each of them bring a magnetic and indescribable energy to the stage that live performers can only ever aspire to. Stream Scraps.
Obviously this blog couldn't capture everything without my notes, but I hope what I could remember and put into words does the night justice--at least alongside the video. Thanks for continuing to read, go to shows, support local music, and be good people. If you aren't doing any of those things now, then start.
- Foster
Check out tokillafly's debut EP, bedlum on all streaming services now. I got to sit in on the recording of the guitar for this project, and it is an absolute gem, I strongly recommend listening to it immediately.
See Toothache with Washed and Halloween at The Hive on November 6th.
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