Catching sideways glances from the local creatures that always seem to be shuffling aimlessly through the disheveled heart of crime-stricken Pomona, crusty metal folk from near and far gathered outside of The Glass House for Scion’s second sponsored metal show in the area in as many years. Last year’s Scion Rock Fest dominated the landscape of downtown Pomona for an entire day, occupying both the Glass House, Fox Theatre, and two festival tents setup in a street temporarily off-limits to traffic. Say what you will about the premise of a car company putting on shows clashing with the average metal listener’s rapidity to decry bands/labels/people as having ‘sold out’, (and the weirdness of Scion giving away labeled business socks to last year’s attendees), but someone somewhere in Scion’s marketing department clearly has a finger on the pulse of niche extreme music… and if bending the knee for ‘the man’ means getting to see the likes of Agalloch, Dark Castle, Morbid Angel, Floor, Dispirit, and Yob for free in my college town? Fuck it.
Scion scaled back the festival a bit this year, choosing instead to place the spotlight on current niche metal ‘it’ label Profound Lore and a handful of their talented artists from across the US. Having received considerable praise for putting out consistently excellent releases across a broad spectrum of the metal soundscape, it was both gratifying and a bit surreal to see the one-man label put on a pedestal by a behemoth of a corporate entity, and witnessing the energy some of Profound Lore’s younger blood brought to the table alongside titans Yob and Loss was absolutely astounding.
Pallbearer began the afternoon’s show with some soulfully crafted throwback doom. The group’s debut full length Sorrow and Extinction has garnered a fair bit of well-deserved attention, being featured on NPR and receiving impressive reviews across the board. Finding the perfect blend of musical intricacy, crushing pace and soaring vocals, Pallbearer’s impressive forward-thinking-but-retro-tinged musicianship captivated the eager midday crowd. Speaking of the vocals, sweet christ do they kill. Singer Brett Campbell jumps from contemplative, almost timid wavering utterances to passionately majestic high notes with an absolutely heartfelt conviction – I’d say the various Dio and Rush comparisons being hurled towards the dude are more than apt, this is seriously stirring stuff. Pallbearer’s impassioned and strangely uplifting (for doom) music lends itself incredibly well to a live setting. If you have the chance to see these guys in the near future, you have no excuses.
A stark musical contrast to the Pallbearer’s gliding leads and harmonies, Wolvhammer stepped up the aggression and dissonance with a grotesque set of black, sludgey goodness. The Minnesota four piece excel at making furiously ugly black metal rife with noisy early 90’s influence that occasionally yields to pummeling chug-chug riffwork with all the grace of a bus flipping over on a highway. That’s a compliment. The vocals have a very early Abbath snarl about them that bleeds into the rest the track like a cancerous mist, tainting every unpleasant chord they touch with a venomous fuzz right before a step into sections of acid-washed psychadelia. Wolvhammer is a great example of the progressive genre blurring black metal slowly rearing its head in the States at the moment. If you dig Nachmystium but perhaps pine for more dynamic songwriting, give these guys a listen.
Though the set change betwixt Wolvhammer and Loss was plagued with technical difficulties, everyone in attendance waited patiently for the problem to be resolved, hoping that none of the colossal weight behind each earth-shattering progression was lost in the gaff. Our hopes were rewarded in kind. Loss plodded onward through their gut-wrenching set that featured two of my absolute favorites from 2011’s Despond. This is dark, evocative music that resonates with the most insecure and hopeless corners of the human mind, and with most songs hovering around the 7 or 8 minute mark, their 30 minute timeslot seemed woefully short. These dudes absolutely deserve a full-scale tour at some point in the future, as the aural plague they spread demands much more time to roil and take root live.
The Atlas Moth is an easy paced psych / sludge group from Chi-town that tends to wander off on rad atmospheric backgrounds that cloud around the introspective trudge of their songs. With the sage lit and the lights low the band began their wallow through mirky groove riffs and asskicking sludge drops, the bandmembers cloaked in the light multicolored star projector enshrouding the stage like a strange armor. I hadn’t sat down and given these guys a serious listen before seeing them live, but soon found myself swaying along underneath the weight of the more noise and guitar sliding sections of their songs. The Atlas Moth put on a fantastic live show, have a very unique sound that doesn’t bring any immediate comparisons to mind, and are good fun even if this wouldn’t normally be your thing.
Yob was, to put it simply, fucking incredible. This was my second time seeing Oregonian stoner gods and far surpassed my first experience with them. (I was a lot more coherent this time around.) Mike Scheidt is one of the most interesting and intense guitarists I’ve ever had the opportunity to catch live. There is an unseen force driving each and every chord and riff in Scheidt’s impressive aresenal; a force somewhere deep inside the man that leaves him doubled over, guitar fleeing his grasp, writhing around the stage, harshly contorting the lines of his face as it forces its way out, straight from the soul to the fretboard. There is something both crushingly primal and uniquely divine in Yob’s music, a deep connection forged between musician and audience that few bands project as capably as these folks do. As their set drew closed with the epic The Mental Tyrant, a deep trance settled on the crowd. We were tied into every movement of the fingers, every thunderous drum crash, every rumbling bass roar, and every emotion finding an auditory trajectory upon which to escape. So yeah, Yob fucking kills, but I shouldn’t have to tell you that.
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