Weds 24th Feb.
Head of Steam, Newcastle
Drone metal is quite the niche. It's not really a genre which is listed on many of our friends' Facebook profiles. In fact, it's probably down there with skiffle and South African psytrance. Hell you may have even stopped reading when you saw that this is about drone metal. Sticking up for these genre-specific underground metal bands is a standpoint I usually find hard to justify to those who aren't involved in it, unlike any scenario where I am the elaboratee- looking on doe-eyed and habitually intrigued about how preposterously varied this metal world actually is.
If I didn't know the Foot Hair vocalist personally, sporting his pig-head shaped black leather gimp mask, I'd probably have been a smidge scared as he peered from behind the eyeholes around the eager crowd in the characteristic cubby-hole of a venue, growling the lyrics to my new favourite of theirs- 'Casual Rape'. I'm not justifying it very well, I told you.
The feral and ritualistic nature of each individual instrument flows together and evolves through gnarly effects, making you aware of becoming slightly entranced as each song progresses. This five-piece will draw you in with their lack of boundaries and in any way traditional song structure.
Headlining the night was U.S. Girls hailing from Philadelphia, being not remotely plural. She rips and tears apart those old sickly sweet American pop songs and reconstructs them into her own DIY gritty renditions- meaning the potentially awkward stage set of just Megan Remy and her machines (and our two newly acquainted and unrestrained friends after catching an unavoidable glimpse down her baggy top). The vast contrast between grainy noise and pop ditties seems to fuse together using her suprisingly sweet voice as the glue. You could call it a political standpoint, a post-modern take on the stagnant American Dream. But I think it's like having an ice cream named after fish food with little chocolate fish. Why not? It seems wrong, but it just works.
