Text & Photos: Charles Nickles
So I’ve been a bit of a weirdo lately what with the swelling and the sloughing from whatever in the sweet fuck followed me back from the woods of Maryland. I haven’t seen my friends. I haven’t exercised. I missed Have a Nice Life and Wolves in the Throne Room and least a dozen other reasons to get drunk and kicked in the head but I’d be damned if I missed the opportunity to soak in the bleak bliss of this Boston banger even though that city and I have never seen eye to glass eye, GLASS EYE!
(Apologies to Syndromes for foolishly thinking this gig would be running on punk time)
Wormwood
I’ve been blasting to a lot of Cavity lately, trying to get my girlfriend to embrace the sludge. That’s been more or less no dice, which is fine because I love her and kinda feel like Supercollider is a record best enjoyed alone stumbling, sweat-soaked and alone anyway – and that really doesn’t have much to do with Wormwood, does it? Sorry guys. Though I enjoyed the shit out of your teeth-quaking crush, I was a bit distracted (bordering on whiskey panic) by being out and about for the first time in a month. But in the week since your gig, I’ve visited your brief canon more than a few times and see you’re ripe fruit from an ash tree, coughing and soaring with weathered aplomb, which makes sense given your pedigree. I’d definitely see you again and maybe then I’ll have my shit together enough to make present sense of your racket and buy a goddamn t-shirt.
All Pigs Must Die
I really thought I was going to get shit beat at this gig, and though I am totally glad that I didn’t (though there were a couple of potential crowd killers but their yen got snuffed pretty quick), I’m almost a little disappointed. ALMOST. I mean, it’s been a good while since I’ve been beat up and nothing shakes a man from the preciousness of his “depression” like violence.
That is not to say, by any means, that All Pigs Must Die fomented a safe space. The band played their rage with calculitic abandon, hate-fucking the gap between hardcore and green hell like it was going out of style. They prowled and hoofed and brayed. They threw flaming shit to the wind and celebrated the anarchy of masculinity with a black-blooded assurance that would’ve been disarming if it wasn’t proffered with such talent and glee.
Perhaps “glee” is a bit of a stretch, but for a band that reads as bleak as APMD, a few sly grins is enough to elevate their horrors from bland hate to savage elation.
