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 attendance,
you were probably at home on your
computer
looking up
QR code software,
giving your
search engine a
workout. Best of luck with the whole
create QR code
images thing...
but you missed out.
Don't let it happen again.
Zach of I Rot
