It List: Wednesday

Altar Of Plagues/Velnias/Baygon Vert/Akkolyte/Embolization (Phoenix Project): Do you ever get the feeling that you've seen enough electronic duos to last a decade or so? Go to the Phoenix Project tonight and you'll have the rare privilege of catching some Irish Black Metal or French Powerviolence and wash that shit right out of your head for a couple of hours. If you haven't noticed, the old veterans around here (SR and I in particular) are just, so over everything. Except for Metal. That's the only thing that's never offensive. I don't know why. I can't explain it. Lack of pretense? Lack of publicists? To be fair, a lot of Metal gets filtered through only one publicist, Earsplit PR, and SURPRISE, they were much easier to deal with than just about every other amateur with a stolen mailing list that I'm used to getting redundant emails from.

The touring bands tonight sound absolutely BRUTAL, and that's not to mention our locals, Akkolyte, and Embolization, two acts that could stand up to just about any lineup, anywhere on the planet. Embolization in particular has a classic rhythmic directness in their approach that is sometimes missing in other more blast-friendly groups, even though I do like all-out nearly incomprehensible destruction. In short, a lot of this music sonically summarizes my feelings when I look around Dallas and its various shortcomings, musical and otherwise: Fuck. Everything.