With the Salem Board of Health's COVID precautions in place, Koto seems to be ramping up their booking of metal shows again! I'm looking forward to becoming familiar with more and more of the bands in the area, my night was pleasantly ear-splitting.
Starting things off was SEXLESS MARRIAGE, this was the only band I had a chance to check out prior, and their live set met the fairly high expectations I formed after hearing their album. They have a crossover appeal, referring to not the actual genre but the fact that they fit in fine opening for a thrashy band while their sound is more along the lines of metallic hardcore/punk. They bounce between straight-up heavy punk, d-beat, and the occasional blast beat break - check out their track "Dirt Noose" for the best example of this, it also happens to be one of my favs of theirs, along with "Nameless Wave." Anyway, these guys would be right at home at a New Brunswick basement show, check 'em out. I bought the tape.
Here's a short clip I recorded:
The tape I purchased and some goodies that came with it! Available at Deathwish Inc HERE
Next up was ARCTIC HORROR, which also highly impressed. Their sound from what I've heard has some definite parts which are very evocative of classic thrash metal, but on the other hand they'll do some Euro blast-beat and vocal parts that are more reminiscent of crust punk bands. I paid particular attention to the drummer, who played one blistering song after the other adding a lot of creativity to the fills! Some of his playing reminded me of drumming I like to really try to do. They seem like good dudes with a sense of humor, and my favorite track is the very first one they've currently got on their bandcamp, Cheetoh Goblin! I'm definitely coming out to see these guys the next time they play out and I need to find where to get their physical albums, they packed it up by the time I was in merch-buying mode.
VILANVS closed out the night adding even more variety to it... Between the guitar sound, their breaks, & vocals, I'd say they were the more "hardcore" leaning of the three. Definitely a bit more of a modern sound than the other two, that fits in well with a lot of bands I covered on the blog in the 2010s. Even though these guys seemed a fair bit younger then me I'd say it's likely they like Botch more than a little, or at least some newer bands that Botch influenced. I noticed in particular that the drummer had a very clean Moeller technique going on, something I'd like to master at some point, its not something you see your average hardcore drummer doing. I had a chat with the vocalist Nick towards the end of the night, again seemed like a really nice guy, apparently their band members are spread out pretty widely across the state and in NH. You've got to respect their ability to keep going with such an inconvenient distance between them. Check out "Gorgon!"
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