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Listings are
in the opposite order of appearance: headliner is listed at the top,
next is the support band(s),
and the last band listed is the opener.
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Wednesday
August 27 2014 8:30PM doors -- music at 9:00PM ••• 21 AND OVER $8 Fortress friendsoffortress.com heavy metal thunder Hafner hafner.bandcamp.com Noise and Post-Punk Pale Ape --------------Asthma canceled paleape.bandcamp.com/ asthma-sf.bandcamp.com grunge post hardcore post-punk punk lo-fi Fortress colin del rossi - drums/vocals michael griffin - rhythm guitar nate wanzek - bass guitar/vocals tobias wettstein - lead guitar -from SF -Fortress are ancient battle sorcerers, who, for one thousand sun cycles, have cheated death and dealt blistering heavy metal thunder upon the known and unknown worlds. They are also nerds. "We were pretty much already sold before hearing a single note from this new Bay Area metal horde, based almost entirely on the record cover, a super bad ass D&D style drawing of a compliment of orcs (we presume, nerds feel free to correct us), wielding axes, shrunken heads on pikes, weird bird dragon things, not to mention a hot naked human female, no doubt the spoils of whatever metal war these guys were waging, and they're called Fortress, the band logo like some stone hewn castle, and of course there's the description of the band on their website: "Fortress are ancient battle sorcerers, who, for one thousand sun cycles, have cheated death and dealt blistering heavy metal thunder upon the known and unknown worlds. They are also nerds." Both of which are true, they most certainly do rain down heavy metal thunder, the sounds classic metal riffery, harmonized guitar leads, the sound epic and supremely majestic! And they are also most definitely nerds, check out the song titles: "Goblin III", "Rad Racer", "Kevin Bacon", "Huxtability Verified" and of course opener "Jumanji", complete with the bellowed chorus: "Robin Williams, you're full of shit!". So yeah, already you can tell, these guys have tongue firmly in cheek, but their metal is no joke. With a slightly different cast these guys could find themselves sonically aligned with Slough Feg instead of Hot Fog, but hell, we digging this, inside jokes and all. The vocals might be the one thing that keep Fortress from being true metal masters, unlike the majestic metal croon of someone like Slough Feg's Mike Scalzi, the vocals in Fortress are more of a raspy punk rock bellow, which had us thinking of bands like Karp or Godheadsilo, but for folks who dig both classic metal and metallic punk, these guys definitely kill it, lacing their sonic epicry with the appropriate sound effects (thunder, rain, etc.), and mood music, and interludes, and even with the punkish bellow, and some straight up joke tracks, the second their sound soars into some majestic metal moments, all fist pumping, head banging, harmony guitars, or power metallized pummel, your metal heart would have to be dead for you not to dig it. 180 gram black vinyl with blood red splatter, the aforementioned killer cover art, and includes a digital download too!" Hafner -from SF -Hafner draws influence from Noise and Post-Punk acts like Cheater Slicks, The Melvins, Flipper and The Jesus Lizard while maintaining a consonance much more in the vein of Husker Du or Bad Brains. Songs about esoteric baseball players, idiocy and self-embarrassment regularly on tap. Pale Ape Brian "HickSmokey" Wyckliff: Bass, vox Gabriel Ro-Jo: Guitar, vox, samples Matt Butler: Drums -from Oakland -Is there such thing as Progressive-Post-Punk Rock? If so, I think Pale Ape are it. Drawing from the influences of Rock-n-Roll, Punk Rock, Hard Rock, Post Rock, Southern Rock, Indie, Industrial, Grunge and Metal (to name a few) Pale Ape play what feels right and have a great time doing it. |
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