Unsane, with Plaque Marks and Vaults – December 7th, 2017
The Cobalt, Vancouver, BC
These are seriously my favourite shows. The ones you almost forget about, ditch your shift at work for last minute, and then wonder how you even considered not attending.
Vaults kicked this thing off like nobody’s business. Second show ever and vicious as fuck. That’s a hell of a way to get the party started.
I was completely unfamiliar with Plaque Marks, but there definitely was a reason they were the direct support to Unsane. On a certain level, I truly appreciate going into a show with only vague expectations and letting the live performance speak for itself. If anyone’s wondering about the bagel-related banter between songs, it’s because apparently one of the Unsane guys had to fly home to grab his passport in order to get into Canada, and smuggled in some authentic NYC bagels for these guys. I’d be pretty ecstatic myself.
How to introduce Unsane? Clearly, they require no introduction. As progenitors of heavy music that doesn’t fit within a mould, their influence goes so far that one can feasibly listen to them in countless other artists that one has become more familiar with, without knowing where it came from. Hearing the inflections of a sound they basically spearheaded in a significant amount of what I listen to today is testament to this assertion, and actually witnessing these guys do it themselves, as a live unit in the flesh, finally, was something truly special.
VAULTS
PLAQUE MARKS
UNSANE