A long shower, some ibuprofen, a cup of coffee and a lemon poppy muffin later, I’m back on my way to feeling as human as I ever felt to start with, though the whole world still has that film over it that it gets when I haven’t slept. Like looking through wax paper at distorted colors. Would be psychedelic if it it wasn’t accompanied by such exhaustion.
I crashed last night harder than I’ve crashed in a long time. Even as I was riding up the Holiday Inn elevator to get to the room, I said to myself, “Just a little further.” After the last update, I fell asleep for a solid four hours and woke up feeling sick and miserable, barely able to move. At some point, I pulled a muscle in my left calf — I’m looking at you, Big Blue — and so there was a good deal of pain in addition to the fatigue. Writing that live review that went up yesterday took about three times as long as it normally would on account of having to constantly stop and put my head down. Even with the four-hour nap, I was out shortly after midnight. I put the Yankees radio broadcast on streaming and rolled over and that was it.
At about three in the morning, I was woken up by some weird interference noise and it turned out that The Patient Mrs. had called in on Skype and that was running the same time as the Yankees stream. I don’t know how it had answered, but I woke up for a couple minutes and spoke to her, which was good. This has already been a long trip, and it’s a long way from here to Monday afternoon when I catch my flight out.
Most of the night, I tossed and turned in various stages of discomfort, but I slept and that’s the important thing. Still, this morning it took me a solid half-hour to get out of bed and get myself together. When I finally did and finally figured out how to work the shower, I decided to head out and get some caffeine in me to get right. Could probably use another cup or two (or 10), but the muffin helped as well and I proceeded on to see if I could hit up the Music and Video Exchange, which I’ve visited a few times in years prior. Closed. What a shitter. Because just what this market stretch of tourist-hell Camden needs is another t-shirt shop. Bleh.
Resurrection Records, which wasn’t nearly as cool but which I’ve also been to, also seemed to be gone in favor of a shop selling shirts with pot leaves on them. So it goes.
Back to the hotel, then. I could’ve walked around some more, but honestly felt like I was about to keel over, and so I’ve been sitting in the air conditioning in this room trying to continue to regroup the best I can before the Desertfest pre-show tonight with 1000mods from Greece and Enos and Blasted. Would be nice to stay conscious through the whole thing, since it’s the start of the Desertfest coverage that’ll play out over the next three days as well.
A lot of really great stuff coming up. Time to get my head into it.
Posted in Reviews on April 24th, 2013 by JJ Koczan
The Black Heart is nestled into an alleyway that runs off a street behind The Underworld in Camden Town, London. I knew the place when I got there Monday night because it was one of the venues where Desertfest was held in 2012 and will be again this year, which made this kind of an unofficial pre-pre-show. Obviously I’ve only been a few times, but it seems to me like a hub of the London scene. I was early to the show and watching the people around me, it wasn’t long before so-and-so said hi to someone else, hey to this or that person, etc. There is a larger bar downstairs and the venue room upstairs (with another, smaller bar), so there’s plenty of room to mingle and shoot the shit if you’re so inclined.
I was introduced almost immediately to the cats from Serpent Venom, whose last album, Carnal Altar, I actually bought but didn’t open because I didn’t want to rough up the packaging; a CD housed in what looked like an old occult paperback. Still failed in that preservation, but I’d heard some stuff online in the interim and knew they were heavy trad doom of the sort in which England specializes, and that their singer, Gaz, was a madman on stage. That turned out to be true, but it was up in the air whether or not the show would even happen for a while, since Elder and Copenhagen heavy rock trio Pet the Preacher had been delayed at their ferry and forced to wait for the next one.
Ultimately, they arrived and the show started late, but it started. Having come from the Netherlands myself during the day, I knew it was a hell of a trip to make, and they were doing it by van and ferry while I rode on comfortable trains. In any case, a backline was secured and Serpent Venom played a five-song set comprised almost entirely of new material from an album that they’ll begin to record sometime over the next few months. Gaz was, as expected, feeling the riffs deep, headbanging, raising his arms, foot up on the monitor block at the front of the stage, but what I hadn’t realized was how much the rest of the band would follow suit. Guitarist Roland cut a few classic moves of his own, bassist Nick seemed to be in charge of thanking the crowd — which was considerable even for the first act — and even drummer Paul got in on the action with some great faces from behind the kit and a readiness at a moment’s notice to stand up and engage the audience.
They were a lot of fun to watch, and not that I anticipated they’d be boring, but I liked them more than I thought I would like them. They closed out with a cut from Carnal Altar(I want to say it was “Four Walls of Solitude,” but because of the feedback and rumble it was hard to hear Gaz between songs and I’m not 100 percent), and that was met with a duly riotous response — headbanging, fist-pumping, that thing doom dudes do where they put their hands over their heads to clap and sort of sway side to side in a stepping half-circle. Well earned on Serpent Venom‘s part. They were easily the doomliest band on the bill, but in their element nonetheless, and with the complex rhythms of some of their new riffs, starts and stops and off-time interplay between the drums and guitar, their next album will for sure capture some attention.
Camden was the 12th stop on Elder and Pet the Preacher‘s 15-date European tour, so getting to the venue aside, things were locked in for both bands. Pet the Preacher had played a set down the street from the 013 at Roadburn, but as I was committed elsewhere, I didn’t get to see it. All the more reason to get to The Black Heart and see the Danish threesome bust out their Euro bottom-end heavy stoner riffs. It was an immediate turn sonically from Serpent Venom, but the consistent factor was an underlying appreciation for the heavy, and Pet the Preacher had me asking at the end of the set if I could buy a CD. They too played some new stuff — three out of the four on their setlist (which was scribbled on a torn off piece of a Red Stripe box) don’t appear either on 2012’s The Banjo debut full-length or the preceding Meet the CreatureEP — and only “Into a Darken Night” appears on the first release.
Unquestionably, the highlight of the rest was set finale “What Now,” which featured the simple-but-speaking-volumes Q&A chorus, “What now/Fuck it,” atop a lumbering stoner riff that seemed out of the Euro heavy playbook but was still well placed and put to more than solid use. I could feel myself starting to pre-second-wind drag before they were done, but a shot of adrenaline from Elder was just the thing to revitalize.
Now, it had only been two days since I saw them tear a hole through a packed-out Het Patronaat at Roadburn, so yeah, I knew what was coming, but how awesome to watch Elder deliver the same kind of energy to 200 people in Camden as to 1,000 in Tilburg. The setlist was mostly the same — “Gemini,” “Release,” “Spires Burn,” “Dead Roots Stirring,” “Riddle of Steel,” and “The End” — but the real highlight was seeing how tight the band had become after 11 days on the road. They were in good spirits throughout, and their insistent, circular grooves were met with vigorous enthusiasm, bassist Jack Donovan‘s volume shaking the wooden floor of the place while guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo‘s lead notes cut through the tonal assault and drummer Matt Couto provided both sonic punctuation and the addition of his cymbals to the already consuming wash of glorious heavy psychedelic volume.
“The End,” which is a later track from 2011’s Dead Roots Stirring(review here), made for an especially righteous ending. I don’t think I’d pick it over “Dead Roots Stirring” or “Spires Burn” as the best thing they played, but DiSalvo’s leads and the Colour Haze-inspired apex of it was striking all the same, and when they kicked into the final progression, the rush of that riff, it clearly earned its place as the sendoff. Because they were late, their set had to be cut short to meet an 11PM curfew, and that was a bummer, but The Black Heart has neighbors and it was a Monday night, so it’s certainly understandable. When it came to seeing Elder, I think the audience was happy to get what they got. I know I certainly was.
Extra pics after the jump. Thanks to you for reading and to Reece Tee for making me feel at home a long way from it.
Looking up at the Cathedral at St Albans, it was pretty easy to understand why doom was invented here. The building, massive and begun about a millennium ago, is as ornate as it is elaborate as it is definitely-letting-you-know-who’s-in-charge-of-this-here. Mix something like that in with some inherited post-WWII trauma (I have a whole theory about how World War I was the end of the world; ask me about it sometime and then interrupt before I finish), driving blues rock, industrial/working class Birmingham malaise, twisted psychedelia, and you’re good to go. Every now and again something just clicks into place in my brain.
I got into St Albans on Tuesday night after the train to London. ChrisWest,drummer of Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight and now guitarist for Groan as well (both bands play Desertfest this weekend), was kind enough to meet me at the Kings Cross St Pancras station, which resulted in a few anxious minutes until we ran into each other — I had been outside, back in, downstairs, upstairs, whathaveyou looking for the statue where we were supposed to wind up, and we went into Camden to catch Elder, Pet the Preacher and Serpent Venom at The Black Heart. Review forthcoming on that, but afterwards, it was back to St Albans, where most of yesterday after sleeping late was dedicated to checking out the area and chatting in a variety of pubs.
The cathedral is a sight to see, old crypts dating back centuries and still basically saying, “Yeah, this guy was alright. We liked him well enough,” but even the pubs have more history to them than the country I call home. One had a sign up that it was rebuilt “After the flood of 1599.” Oh yeah.Thatflood.
A walk through Verulamium Park — which in the States would be a golf course not in the slightest dedicated to public use — had me run into a bird that looked like a hybrid pigeon and chicken that I not surprisingly dubbed the chicken-pigeon, finally giving me a reason for the distinction of saying pigeon pigeon twice, as I often do. So now it’s “‘Pigeon pigeon,’ as opposed to what?” “Well, as opposed to chicken-pigeons.” Those conversations, incidentally, never happen.
We hit a couple pubs and I sampled the local tap water whilst digging on the low ceilings and townie vibes, wood beams, dogs sharing benches with people, the whole thing. Chris happens to be an exceedingly good dude, and though I was kind of run down post-Roadburn, it was a great time to see the town and get a feel for something that wasn’t the big city in London. I ended up watching the whole first series of the tv show Big Train, which I can now safely recommend to anyone who enjoys the Python tradition and may not yet have seen it.
Early this afternoon, following a bangers and mash lunch that was just what I was looking for, I and Big Blue made our way to the St Albans city station and headed to Kings Cross St Pancras and then Camden Town, winding up on the Northern line of the Tube for the last of it after taking what I guess is the normal commuter train. It wasn’t an overly long trip, but I patted myself on the back for being able to do it without asking anyone where I was supposed to be. I walked from the Camden Tube station to the hotel here to basically catch up on writing and crash out for the rest of the day.
I may or may not see if I can head over to Music and Video Exchange, but probably not before a nap, given the fact that I’m currently typing with my eyes closed. I can hear the murmur of conversations and laughs coming up from the cafes below, and for just right now, that’s really all the reminder of the world outside that I’m looking for. Big things coming up over the next couple days — by the time I get to Heathrow on Monday, I will have seen Dozer, and by that I mean “life complete” — so it’s worth my time to regroup, and that’s just what I intend to do.
