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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 June 26
2024 8:00PM doors -- music at 8:30PM ••• 21 AND OVER $20 in advance / $22 at the door Sumac facebook.com/SUMACBAND drone experimental metal White Boy Scream facebook.com/wbscream electronic noise opera punk rap Grave Infestation facebook.com/graveinfestation old school death metal Sumac -from Vancouver, BC and Washington, USA -Formed in 2014, SUMAC is the powerhouse trio of Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom,Mamiffer), Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists), and Brian Cook (Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes). SUMAC invests in the recursive exercises of chaos and control, and the results are a testament to the tour-honed collective intuition and technical skills of these veteran players. White Boy Scream -from Los Angeles, CA -The desert stretches for miles behind the San Gabriel mountains where vocalist and composer Micaela Tobin was raised. Warmth and beauty are beset by vulnerability and harshness. A similar dichotomy plays out within the music of White Boy Scream, a conduit for Micaela’s visceral storytelling. Her operatically-trained voice is resonant, large like the peaks over her Los Angeles home, her electronic compositions as bleak and bright as the open expanses beyond. As The New Yorker observed, “She demands to be seen and heard for who she is:” ritualistic, communal, reverent, familial, singular. Empowered. The patriarchal confines of both the opera and noise worlds were quickly apparent during her prestigious training; if Micaela was to have a place in music, she’d need to carve it herself. This is most actualized with her fourth release, Bakunawa (Deathbomb Arc, 2020), on which she not only intentionally combines her seductive incantations with biting industrial extremities, but pointedly incorporates a deep-dive into her heritage. Musically, Micaela carries a lineage started by the likes of Diamanda Galas and Scott Walker; compositionally, a deeper through-line is continued with her Filipino ancestors, from whom she received the album’s mythological and romantic themes. As her label explains: “Her voice is so unique that she’s defining for listeners what it means to create the sound of these ideas.” The experimentation paid off: White Boy Scream received rave accolades, gaining a place on The Wire’s top albums of 2020 list, upholding the attention of her previous album, Remains (Crystalline Morphologies, 2018), also on The Wire’s top industrial/noise list for 2018. The “cataclysmic splendour” placed her on a Best of Bandcamp list, asserting, “Tobin’s voice is astonishing…The whole thing is unlike anything I’ve heard this year,” a sentiment repeated by critics and fans alike. The album’s strength garnered a film adaptation commission from REDCAT, shared bills with Zola Jesus and Dreamcrusher, and a coveted spot on Roadburn Festival’s 2023 line-up. Micaela created an oasis for herself amid an arid social environment. The future for White Boy Scream holds the release of Apolaki, of which Mike Giegerich from Passion of the Weiss proclaims: “The work from Apolaki that Tobin has debuted live has been a brilliant showcase in the evolution of her art. At times more beautiful, at times more abrasive, it pushes her alchemized sound to its absolute limits [and] deepened her artistic reverence for ancestry and familial bonds. It’s the type of intellectual investigation that makes her catalog so spellbinding and the promise of Apolaki so great.” Grave Infestation -from Vancouver, BC -Formed in 2018, GRAVE INFESTATION wasted no time in making their presence in the underground felt far and wide. Recorded as a power-trio, the band's debut demo, Infesticide, was originally self-released in late 2018 and then picked up for wider release by INVICTUS. On evidence of that opening 23-minute salvo, it's not difficult to understand why: GRAVE INFESTATION wielded a gutsfucking sound that near-effortlessly synthesized every slice of darkness of death metal's pivotal late '80s era. Death metal diehards took notice, and then the second demo, Infestation of Rotting Death, consolidated that enviable standing, now revealing the band as a quartet. Alas, as doom enveloped the earth, GRAVE INFESTATION was lurking in wait, brewing their full-length debut. And it arrives with the force of a nuclear payload in the form of Persecution of the Living. Reprising a couple re-recorded songs from the preceding demo, the presciently titled Persecution of the Living wastes no fucking time in getting in and absolutely flaying the listener alive. The foundation remains much the same - from the malignant tendrils Morbid Angel cast across the Tampa scene to the buzzsaw bulldoze of the contemporaneous Swedish scene, the ancient foundation of Necrovore, Repulsion, and Sadistic Intent to Carcass' godly first two albums - but GRAVE INFESTATION exhibit a frightening clarity in their jackhammering attack. Some could call it a "clean(er)" iteration of their strident sound; others might view that cauldron with focus and finesse, as eerie melodies occasionally bubble up from the muck; but whatever tag you put on it, Persecution of the Living represents a professional-yet- powerful statement to the wider metal world. Darkness, death, DOOM: herald the grand arrival of GRAVE INFESTATION! |
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