Text & Photos: Charles Nickles
The whole damn city feels like a crotch freshly ripened from a country-wide hog mission.
Thick, dank and miserable.
And I know that talking about the weather is about as titillating as talking about politics or anxiety dreams, but this heat wave’s been so relentlessly goddamn oppressive, even Joseph, a Florida native, makes note of how difficult it is to breathe.
So, yeah. That’s the scene of this scene. Dense heat pressing on unencumbered for a week without any signs of relief and, though staggeringly unpleasant, it seems somehow appropriate for a Saturday night locked into a grind/doom/sludge spiral into the depths of BK wasted, because fun is for pussies and the great metal maw demands mass quantities of ill-tempered meat.
Lucid Terror
The AC is still evident so I hope my sentiment won’t seem shitty, but Lucid Terror reminds me of the band people aped when they used to make fun of me for saying that I listened to metal. Lye-choked throat gurgles. Blast beats. Stuttering chainsaw shreds. I’m not sure if they’re more Napalm Death or Extreme Noise Terror, but I guess it doesn’t matter. All reverent death sounds the same when you’re crushing beer cans on your face.
Hasj
Hasj = Hash. Did you know that? I wouldn’t until I slipped on my comfort skirt days later to write this. Makes sense though. There’s enough smoke in this room to choke the Old Man of the Mountain, and the dusky dirges emanating from the shadows on stage remind me of the deep, weird panic of my first oily brick high…and then the headache…and making out, slow and ugly, with a chubby rich girl with braces and bad hair…and then a horse. A FUCKING HORSE, MAN! I tried to dance with him. Where was I? New Jersey.
COUGH
It’s hot again. Too hot. Leather jackets and battle vests and its 11pm and still ninety-something degrees outside and the place is packed. Fucking PACKED. AC is a lie. Hydration’s a fallacy. The end should come quickly, now. Swollen and patient. The amplifiers rattle. The roof sweats. The black ardor swallows us all in a wet, woolen blanket and it doesn’t take long to know that there is no hope to be found in these grease-knuckled roars. All the same, I want to be present. I want to testify to the end. I ACCLAIM! I am delirious. My knees are shaky. I can barely see from the pitch and the steam, and so I stumble away from the stage, lesser but living, content in knowing that there’s still a place in these United States that fosters a beast so pointedly unforgiving.
