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Live Review: Deville, Ichabod, Bedroom Rehab Corporation and Four Speed Fury in MA, 06.12.14

Posted in Reviews on June 13th, 2014 by JJ Koczan

Swedish four-piece Deville had played in Boston on Tuesday night, but having such a favorable impression of Ralph’s Rock Diner in Worcester from this year’s Eye of the Stoned Goat fest, I decided to see them there instead. An extra 40 minutes or so on the road, but they were playing with Ichabod and Connecticut’s Bedroom Rehab Corporation, so I was up for it. Ralph’s runs what it calls “Metal Thursdays” that, from what I’ve seen and been told, are usually way more metal, and some of the crowd at this show had that look. I figured them for Thursday night regulars, playing the safe bet they’d get to show up and see something heavy. Fair enough.

It was a four-act bill, with Hanson-based (which is a town I know because it’s five minutes from me) newcomers Four Speed Fury opening. Fronted by former Ichabod vocalist Kenneth MacKay, it was their third show, second with the same five-piece lineup, so one adjusted expectations accordingly. To their credit, they didn’t say as much from the stage, I heard it in the crowd — bands making excuses is perennially lame, and really, they had nothing to make excuses for. While they were clearly getting their bearings in that post-Milligram/Roadsaw balance of groove and aggression, the band named after a car and suitably motoring, they still presented the beginnings of a solid songwriting process, particularly on “Stranger,” which closed and found them at their most comfortable. Comprised of MacKay, guitarists Robb Lioy and Keith Genest, bassist Bruce Wahl and drummer Shawn McIverthey found room in their set for a take on KISS‘ “God of Thunder” and were a decent start to a night of bruising rock.

Connecticut duo Bedroom Rehab Corporation followed. I recalled the work of bassist/vocalist Adam Wujtewicz and drummer Meghan Killimade from their 2013 full-length Red Over Red (review here), and I had been impressed last year with the variety the duo brought to their recorded output, but frankly, I was caught off guard by how cohesive and commanding they were live. In front of Wujtewicz on stage was a sprawling pedal array that turned his bass — pumped through an Orange Terror Bass head; those things are adorable — into a fuzzed-out echo buzzsaw or a wash of noisy feedback, and the set was impeccably constructed for maximum impact. His dynamic with Killimade impressed, and both players impressed individually as well, Killimade singing along with the songs as she stomped her way through them.

Their grooving instrumental “All Hands” made an excellent centerpiece before the more brooding “S.O.S. (Son of Siren),” and the starts and stops in “No Payment for the Boatman” only underscored how much more tonally creative and full-sounding Bedroom Rehab Corporation were, Wujtewicz showboating a bit on vocals but selling it well. There was a point at which I had to step back and tell myself that if they keep going the way they are in five years they’ll be completely unfuckwithable. Flourishes of Melvins-style weirdness that didn’t come through on the record made them seem all the more volatile, and that only worked in their favor. They’ll play Boston in the fall as well and I expect I’ll look forward to seeing them again.

I’ve seen Ichabod three times now in three months (reviews here and here), so I kind of knew what to expect, but “Baba Yaga” and “Huckleberry” from 2012’s Dreamscapes from Dead Space made an enticing opening salvo, guitarists Dave Iverson and Jason Adam, bassist Greg Dellaria, vocalist John Fadden and drummer Phil MacKay wasting little time in brutalizing the assembled post-burger Ralph’s masses with their riffy extremity and Fadden‘s vicious screams. Any day that dude opens his mouth is “Metal Thursday,” I don’t care if it’s Sunday afternoon. Later into the set, they brought up Ken MacKay — also Phil‘s brother — to guest on “Sleeping Giants,” the opening track from 2009’s 2012, on which he originally sang, and he and Fadden traded parts while the band loosed various furies behind, closing out — fittingly — with the newer “Squall” from the forthcoming Merrimack LP and reserving perhaps their most brutal moment for last, an atmospheric jam providing momentary respite from an onslaught for which my respect only seems to increase.

By then it had already been a long night. It was after midnight as Deville got on stage, but the four-piece came all the way from Malmö to play, and even if they hadn’t crashed with The Patient Mrs. and I the night before, sticking around seemed like the bare minimum effort to make. A big part of why I wanted to see them in Ralph’s was for the good lighting, and I had my “well of course” moment when guitarist/vocalist Andreas Bengtsson asked the sound guy to turn the lights down and put them in red. The full O’Brien’s experience, only further away. Fortunately, Deville‘s set itself was a reminder of how killer professional-grade heavy rock can be, the double-Andreas/double-Markus lineup of Bengtsson , fellow guitarist/backing vocalist Andreas Wulkan, bassist Markus Åkesson and drummer Markus Nilsson building an irresistible momentum as they ran through cuts from their 2013 Small Stone debut, Hydra (review here), like “The Knife,” “Lava” and the savagely catchy “Iron Fed,” all of them weightier in tone live — Wulkan joined the band after Hydra was released as well, so that could be a factor — and delivered with energy that spoke to a genuine sense of performance. They could’ve been on stage at a European festival, from the look of them, and carried themselves just as well.

That level of professionalism, again, can be heard on Hydra, but the active engaging of the crowd and the four-piece’s vigor in conveying the material went a long way. Deville were seven shows into their first US tour, and coming from having an off day on Wednesday, so I expected they’d be pretty tight, but they outdid my expectations with apparent ease, and reminded me of what I dig so much about European heavy rock and particularly Swedish heavy rock: that a band can be so heavy and so raging and still craft a quality song. The largesse of the riff in set-closer “Rise Above” — also the cap to their 2007 debut, Come Heavy Sleep, recently reissued by Heavy Psych Sounds (bought the vinyl) — was among the most satisfying I’ve heard since Wooly Mammoth’s “Mammoth Bones” and they took it for everything it was worth, jamming it out to give the show a huge finish that brought the audience all the way forward and extended even the reissue’s newly-recorded version’s eight-minute runtime.

During that finale, I had a moment where it suddenly didn’t seem that unreasonable to drive two hours to see them again tonight in New Haven, and while I don’t think that’ll actually happen, the impulse was there. For a band like Deville to come and try to break ground with a US audience is an undertaking of considerable personal sacrifice, but aside from being admirable on that level, they absolutely killed it on stage, and my only hope is that this tour proves worth their while enough for them to plan another one at some point. We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. The rest of the dates are here. They didn’t make it easy on themselves, but as they showed on stage last night, hey’re obviously willing to put in some effort.

More pics after the jump. Thanks for reading.

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