1. Thursday: Opeth at Monarch event center.  Monarch Event Center used to be a movie theater, it's not anywhere near Red River and 6th, it's in a strip mall off Airport Blvd.  Not only that, they hung plastic butterflies (get it? monarch?) on shiny strings from the ceiling at 4' intervals.  The string of metal kids queueing through the parking lot was all kinds of incongruous.
   • Baroness:  Your bog-standard post-metal band, longform crescendo dynamics.  At least they didn't take themselves too seriously, with the singer playing his guitar by beating it against his head, and grinning furiously through the entire set.
   • High on Fire:  Nobody takes themselves less seriously than Matt Pike, though.  The straightforward sweatyshirtlessmacho presence perfectly compliments their hard-hitting wall of sound and shouted anthems.
   • Opeth:  I'm an Opeth fanboi, I admit.  A couple of false starts on A Fair Judgement and Face of Melinda are the only complaints.  I love everything about their shows, the stage banter, the crowd that knows all the stops and starts of all the songs on all 8 albums.
2. Friday: Wolves in The Throne Room at Red 7.  I love the oddball pairings of shows between the patio and the main stage, and this was no exception, with the super-indie crowd outside and the black metal kids spilling outside to smoke.  In South America or Russia, this would probably have resulted in a riot, in Austin, I wasn't the only metal kid enjoying the blistering emocore:
   • Bridge and Tunnel: An accidental show, outside on the patio while smoking and waiting for the show inside.  I loved the two songs I heard from CYSTSFTS, but hadn't done anything about it, there's only so much music I can dig into in a year. Definitely digging into them now, though.  Their high-speed mid-90's emocore with 3 layered vocalists is great.
   • Nachtmystium: Their latest album, Assassins, lays bare their worship of Pink Floyd, from the Black Meddle subtitle, and the opening cover of One Of These Days (I'm going to cut you into pieces).   They're in a tough niche, though, going up against Enslaved, who incorporate more psychadelia in their black metal at every outing.  Nachtmystium has other tricks up their sleeves, though, pulling punk-ish shouted choruses into the mix, making their show an electric, fist-pumping shout-along, more so even than HoF the night before.  They encored with a Motorhead cover, and it's appropriate.  They retain the aggression of metal, despite their psychadelic experimentation.
   • WITTR: Their albums alternate between atmospheric pieces and pieces played so fast, and so sonically compressed, that they feel ambient, because they just wash over you.  Live, they have a similiar disconnect, but the effect is completely different.  Their frontman doesn't look very metal, his short haircut, beard,  and overly large glasses belie their eco-terrorist ethos.  At the start of the set, he removes the glasses, and performs with his eyes closed for the duration.  Live, the vocals are not buried in the mix, there's a man screaming his lungs out, completely entranced by his performance, and a brutal assault of insanely fast black metal that's too intense to participate in, even the band is headbanging at a quarter the speed of their riffs.
3. Sunday: Mucca Pazza at Maker Faire:  Maker Faire was all kinds of brilliant.  We saw robot wars, mentos/diet coke fountains, the world's largest mousetrap, and Mucca Pazza were the completely fitting end to it all.  I happened to arrive at the right moment, to be followed by the band as they danced/marched from the mousetrap to their sun drenched fire truck of a stage.  Their show is bungle-esque, this is the third time I've seen them (twice at Looptopia), and they're a blast every time.

Burst - Lazarus Bird

Burst has been moving slowly deeper into the genre, from what were crust/hardcore roots.  In Coveting Ways was their peak of layered, spacey, labyrinthine arrangements.  Origo should have cemented their leadership in the genre, but poorly arranged good cop/bad cop vocals and compressed production hurt its appeal.  Lazarus Bird fixes all that, it's their finest album yet.  The clean vocals now stand on their own, layered in their own right, and more tightly integrated than just a counterpoint to the heavier elements.  Linus' hardcore vocals have become more expressive as well, including growls, spoken passages, allowing the shouts to be more emotional, by not being so repetitive.  The songs from their myspace are still the standouts from the album, though Cripple God is enhanced by the end of Momentum - There are plenty of songs that waffle in abstract sounds for more than half their length before exploding back into metal territory.

IntrOnaut - Prehistoricisms

IntrOnaut's follow up to their well received (a 10 on Blabbermouth) Void was also released this Tuesday.  Where their previous efforts played on the progressive polyrhythms of the likes of Meshuggah, the previous spacey elements have now exploded into longer fusion-jazz in a completely metal aesthetic.  Unlike Cynic, or other prog/fusion metal bands who mix jazz sounds into metal, IntrOnaut just plays fusion like it's metal, never letting up the heavy.

Kylesa/Pinback

I closed out the week by seeing Kylesa at Mohawk.  Kind of an odd show, they were opening for Pinback.  Nonetheless, the first few rows of the crowd were full of older, tattooed dudes, rocking out.  The sound was a bit muddy, as you would expect for a sludge band with 2 drummers, but as the set got tighter, so did the sound.

Pinback was plagued by a multitude of issues.  The last time I saw them, shortly after Offcell, their fastest and most electric EP, they played all their songs twice as fast.  This time, at least their tempo was more level.  I really shouldn't expect a band formed by a bunch of studio musicians to be able to translate their flawless albums to a great live show.  The overlayed vocal and guitar harmonies comes across as rich and beautiful on their albums, but seem too much too fast, live.

Mohawk has built a new concrete block wall, presumably to shield the new condos across the street from the brunt of the sound.  I can't imagine it's helping them much, since Pinback were assaulted by music from Club De Ville next door, and music from indoors at Mohawk.  For a band as understated as Pinback, that's a pretty major issue.  They were also plagued by a faulty slideshow, and a broken sampler, which weren't huge obstacles, except that they all seemed very awkward and frustrated by the setup.

By the end of the set, though, they started coming together.  Frenetic songs like Fortress and From Nothing to Nowhere go better with the live aesthetic.  They closed with AFK, my personal favorite, before the encore.  When they came back, Rob took over on keys, and their touring keyboardist took up the bass.  The result was a warmer, softer sound, that was better suited to most of their songs.

It's a funny name for a show, presumably playing on the testosterone orientation of the audience. Ironic, then, that the gender ratio of the audience was the closest to even of any metal show I've been to.  Perhaps that owed to the outdoor show, with most of the bands being local and having female members who brought friends. Or perhaps it's the rising popularity of post-metal like Mouth of the Architect.

Rise Thy Ruin opened, and they were possibly the best opening band I've seen. Their post-metal tends toward the zappa-prog end of things, with a solid groove. The singer appropriately shook what his momma gave him, in between spazzed out yells. Add in the light show, and it had me grinning ear to ear.

The best thing about Red 7 is that not only can you smoke on the patio, there's another entire show going on out there. I showed up to see 5 bands, and actually saw about 9. The first band, Unravel Mars, were a female-fronted hard rock band, who haven't quite gone completely goth yet, which meant I could still enjoy them for a smoke break.

Mouth of the Architect were probably the best attended act of the night. They stick the closest to the build-explode-repeat formula of post-metal, although they do it beautifully.  Behold... The Arctopus were kind of an odd fit. They're easily the wankiest prog-metal I've ever heard. It's great music, the kind I work well to, but live it's nothing short of hilarious.

IntrOnaut are definitely post-metal. All the elements are there: the spacey naval gazing, a la Cave In, the angular breakdowns, the muted vocals. But where MOTA and the rest play dark against light, IntrOnaut plays dark against darker. Their sound is almost impenetrable; monolithic and unyeilding, it just keeps going, building heavier and heavier all the way. They played almost exclusively from their forthcoming album, save for "Gleamer". By the end of their set, Brodeo seemed much more appropriate: the ratio had shifted towards heavily male, and there were no more polo shirts or sandals.

Wikipedia's article follows straight into the same failures, by depending more on the book, and record sales, than logicoriginal research, or on online articles from authors not trying to push more units, and actually interested in the groundswell.

I'm bringing this up, because I went to the Dethklok show last night.  Dethklok's album, released last year, was the highest charting death metal album (#19) to date¹  But after suffering through Chimaira's set, it's clear that unless we pay more attention to Pitchfork²  than wikipedia, NWOAHM is going to follow "new metal" right into the terrible rhythm-based non-music of nu-metal.  Chimaira's songs actually include "choruses" (gang vocals/shouting) like "I HATE EVERYONE". It's godsmack/disturbed/mudvayne all over again.

That anyone could think of referring to them as "groove metal" having seen Soilent Green's death/grind performance 15 minutes beforehand, is absurd.  Soilent Green has intense tempo shifts in their songs, that would actually make you shake your ass, if you weren't so busy throwing horns and/or invisible oranges.  And they have the decency to not to take themselves so seriously.  The singer referenced their 'old stuff', only to remind himself by polling the audience that very few in the audience had ever seen them before.  It was a great show, although I do much prefer their latest album to their older stuff

Dethklok was exactly as amazing as I imagined.  The show did start with a commercial for the new battlefield game, which would have been pretty annoying, if we weren't about to watch a cartoon.  The show leads off with a bit about turning fans into mutants in an attempt to subvert their economic influence.  When the band took the stage, it was at first easy to pay attention to Mike Keneally and Brendan Small trading solos, and the live band just generally being awesome.  After a few relatively narrative song-isodes on screen, the cartoon turned towards performance based, and it was easy to forget that there was a live band onstage.  Mike Keneally did a fantastic job, despite having gone gray since the last time I saw him (Wood + Smoke tour, at Martyr's).  I do wonder, though, if the animated interludes between every other song were as much for the band to rest as for the amusement of the audience.  My only gripe with the show was that Austin Music Hall's A/C could not even come close to dealing with thr crowd.  Despite being here for SXSW, and having seen a couple of outdoor shows here, this was the hottest show I've been to since Lollapalooza day 2.

1. Since then, albums by Opeth and Children of Bodom have followed closely (#23 & #21 respectively), which speaks to a real groundswell for extreme metal. (back ↩)
2. When I think of the recent upturn in metal, I think of bands like Mastodon, ISIS, Sunn O), who have garnered indie-rock followings right alongside metal followings.  That following has spilled over into other metal bands, generally reviving the genre as worthy of mainstream attention.  Metalcore bands like Chimaira, Trivium, et al, fail to attract anyone who's not interested in being part of "the scene". (back ↩)

Saturday was the first metal show I've been to here.  The show was outside at Mohawk, which is great, I love being able to smoke at shows, especially metal shows that I can't convice the wifest to attend with me.

Clouds opened up, and they were actually the band that drew me to the show.  I saw that at SXSW, and they were fantastic there.  The new album (We Are Above You) just came out, and they just put on way too good a show to not go see them again.  There's something about their swagger that very few of the "stoner metal" bands do well.  I also really love the 3 lead vocalists.  I wouldn't say any of them are exceptional in their own right, but it's fantastic hearing them play off each other, and trade leads and harmonies.

Clouds - Slow DayTorche's Meanderthal album is a strong contender for the best metal album this year, it's full of great pop hooks, catchy songs, all wrapped in a fuzzed out metal package.  I'd been warned that their live show isn't so great, though.  The first song, from one of their earlier EP's, was definitely worth a warning.  The vocals were pretty much absent, and any sense of song was obliterated in a haze of badly mixed, overly loud wall of fuzz.  As they moved on to songs from the new albums, I got a little more used to picking the vocals out of the mix, and the stronger songs punched through the din.  I can certainly see why these guys don't make friends with their live show.  The singer has a shit-eating grin on the entire time, almost like he's unaware of the fact that people can't tell how fun the songs are.  It was a great set, though, and still worth seeing, if you like the album.

Boris came on last.  I'll have to admit that I really only see Boris as an amusement.  None of their songs grab me, and their noise is to up-front to just put on and immerse in, the way you can with, say, Sunn O))).  They led off with songs from smile, which were enjoyable enough, but I got bored quickly.