Having discovered Seattle's
I Rot
last year in support of
Finntroll,
I had been long been
looking foward to catching them again since the of addition second
guitarist Jeramee Green, curious
how the change would impact their sound. Unfortunately this summer,
broken bones, family vacations
and postponed tours had conspired to thwart me at every turn. Things
looked bleak last week when
the mighty
Zimmer's Hole were
forced to postpone their US tour, but despite this black turn of
events, the remaining bands on the bill stood determined to deliver the
goods to the hometown faithful.
First up this evening,
Duvall WA's
Burning of I [link]. I first heard
their act a few months ago
at this very venue, and was immediately impressed by the band's
seemingly
endless supply of high
quality riffs, and the patience to spend the time exploring them.
It was great to see them
once again in an
expanded set, their sound incorporating the
sprawling constructions of Mastodon, the groove of Clutch, with the
epic feel of an Amon Amarth,
combining these disparate styles into a unique, cohesive and
galvanizing whole.
Matt of Burning of I
The band worked through the 5
tracks of their current demo to excellent effect,
"Party Charge"
and
"Nougat"
rapidly becoming personal faves, before tearing into a couple of new
tracks. The first of the two
kicking off with a mellow spacey intro and clean
vocals from Jake, before slowly building to a huge
headbanging crescendo, leading
BJ of I
Rot to dub the song
simply as
"Fuck!".
This was followed
by the concisely crunching
"Spewnicorn",
which closed the set out in fine fashion.
Jacob of Burning of I
Now for something completely
different: Everett's
Sikend [link], their live vibe
reminding me of
what
Fear Factory might have
sounded like if they had been more influenced by hip hop than
industrial.
The band powered through a few early set technical difficulties before
they got down to rocking the
place in earnest, bludgeoning the sparce crowd with their dense 7
stringed mayhem.
A high point of the set was a
raging take on the tune
"Anger Displacement",
the band joined
on guest vocals by a friend who was celebrating his birthday, a cool
personal moment.
Then finally,
I Rot [link] took the stage, and
I'll be damned if it wasn't worth the wait. The band
opened with a pair of cuts from
Kill Everything,
new guitarist Jeramee joining Zach to provide
an even more intimidating platform for BJ to bellow his tales of human
pain, mayhem and murder.
BJ of I Rot
This, combined with Chad's
thundering bass and Aubrey's brutal drumwork resulted in a sound as
grimey and Haunted as ever, but with a ton of added bite and power.
Chad of I Rot
High points for me were punishing new track
"I Was Sent By God",
the scraping
"Whoregun
Grinder", and the always killer
"Death Merchant".
Aubrey of I Rot
Smoking versions of
"Kill
Everything" and recent neck-snapper
"Can You Tell?"
brought the
night to a crushing close. Well done, and suffice it to say that if I
had any sort of journalistic integrity
left regarding this band after featuring them twice on
The BoneBat Show, it was obliterated by the
much appreciated shout out.
Jeramee of I Rot, with his patented "Halo of Hatred"
In all, this was a great night of varied and heavy local metal. And
judging from
the attendence, I'm sorry
you missed it.
Don't let it happen again.
Zach of I Rot
