The first thing I noticed upon listening to Greg Freeman‘s 2022 album I Looked Out was that he sounds like Jason Molina. Like, quite a bit.
Not just vocally, though his vocal delivery is quite similar, but in the music itself and even lyrically. It’s hard not to see the influence of Molina in a lyric like, “You came as a bird in a dream to my bed/Your talons sharp, your wings dark and splintered/You were born in fall and never left that state/I was born in the middle of winter,” taken off “Souvenir Heart,” the penultimate track on I Looked Out and one of the highlights of his set at The Baby G on Wednesday night. But hey, I’m a Jason Molina fan, so no big complaints on that front.
For his part, Freeman was a fairly soft spoken and amiable frontman, leading his bandmates through an impressive set that featured a mix of tracks off I Looked Out and newer, unreleased numbers, ultimately proving that there’s more to his sound than just simple Molina worship.
Sure, the Molina influence is undeniable, but I also detected hints of Neil Young and Pavement and the inclusion of a saxophonist in his band gave things an almost jazzy vibe at times. “Tower,” another highlight of the set, took things in a different direction with its post-punkish bassline and driving, motorik beat.
The standout track of the night for me though was “Come and Change My Body.” Check out a live perfomance of that track below, recorded last year for Bell the Cat Broadcast.
A few songs into Wilco‘s Tuesday night set at Massey Hall (the first night of a two-night run at the storied venue), Jeff Tweedy addressed the crowd by acknowledging that he would likely not be addressing the crowd too much, noting that they had some songs to play, but not a lot to say. This seems a little ironic considering that I spotted at least three books penned by Tweedy for sale at the merch table. So clearly he has something to say, but in the context of this evening, he and the band were content to let the songs do a lot of the talking.
And it’s true, they’ve got some songs. This was evident from the evening’s setlist, which was frontloaded with a bunch of classics – “Via Chicago”. “Misunderstood”, “Forget the Flowers”, “Handshake Drugs” and “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”
For any other band, those songs might all be encore material, but Wilco just tossed them out in the first half dozen of the night, alongside relative obscurity “Panthers,” which the band played just this past weekend at their Solid Sound Festival, but which hadn’t been played in nearly a decade prior to that.
And it’s not like the quality of the songs dropped off from there. No, it was, in fact, quite a well structured setlist featuring a good selection of songs from throughout the band’s career, with highlights such as “A Shot in the Arm”, “BirdWithout a Tail / Base of My Skull” and “Impossible Germany” coming later in the set – the latter two numbers also stood out as showcases for some particularly impressive guitar heroics from Pat Sansone and Nels Cline.
Wilco even threw in a single representative from from their debut album A.M. towards the end of their set with Tweedy joking that any youngsters in attendance could use that song (“Box Full of Letters”) as their chance to take a pee break and then following that up with a bit of mock outrage when one guy sitting up front actually did so.
Also impressive was the addition of some extra accompanists during the encore in the form of the GCVI Chamber Choir, who joined the band onstage to add a little something extra on “Cruel Country” and “California Stars.” After the choir left the stage, Wilco followed up with “Falling Apart (Right Now)” before closing out the encore with the epic “Spiders (Kidsmoke).”
Death To All are certainly not the first band to bring together former members of a beloved band to revisit their back catalogue and pay tribute to fallen comrades and they likely won’t be the last, but with impressive players like Gene Hoglan, Steve Di Giorgio, and Bobby Koelble in the current iteration of the band and Max Phelps ably taking the place of the late Chuck Schuldiner on vocals and guitar, they definitely do justice to Death‘s legacy.
The band are currently on their Scream of Perseverance tour, which saw them hitting The Phoenix for a two night residency playing Death’s first album Scream Bloody Gore on night one and their seventh and final album Sound of Perseverance on night two. For those readers who might not know their metal, this is somewhat akin to watching a Beatles tribute band play a set of Please Please Me songs and then following it up the next night with Let It Be – both great albums in their own right but certainly a bit of a shift in tone. Much like The Beatles did, Death progressed a lot over their career, moving from the straightforward death metal of the first album to, well, something more progressive by their final album. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but this may be the first time that anyone’s ever made a direct comparison between The Fab Four and Scream Bloody Gore. Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself on the back in recognition of this monumental accomplishment.
Early on in night one’s set, after playing a handful of tunes from their second and third albums, bassist Steve Di Giorgio addressed the crowd, noting that since we all have the internet and we’d all bought tickets, we clearly knew what we were in for – a track by track performance of Death’s debut album.
“Who remembers those days? Combat Records?” he asked, before pointing to some fans up front and adding, “Greybeards like us.”
It’s true, there were a fair number of “greybeards” in attendance, but also a lot of younger fans too. It’s a testament to the continued relevance and significance of Death as pioneers of death metal that many who weren’t even born when Scream Bloody Gore came out were there to take in the show.
And it was quite the show. On that first night, the band played an energetic and fun set that really got the crowd going. It may not have been a sold out show, but those who were there were a dedicated bunch for sure – I was mosh pit adjacent for much of the set and there was a decent sized crew mixing it up in there for pretty much the whole time. Towards the end of their set, Di Giorgio asked how many would coming back for night two and received a fairly robust response. And sure enough, when I arrived at The Phoenix the following night, I did indeed see a lot of the same faces in the crowd. And then some.
In comparison to Thursday night, which offered up a little more breathing room, night two was a much more packed house. This suggests that either Death fans are more partial to the late period albums or just that Friday night shows are a bit of an easier sell. Probably a bit of both. Either way, there was a lot to like about the setlist on each night, with the band playing a few select tracks taken from throughout Death’s discography in addition to the full albums.
To close out the second night, they ended off the main set with their cover of Judas Priest’s “Painkiller,” the final track on the band’s final album, before returning for an encore of “Spirit Crusher”, “Lack of Comprehension” and “Crystal Mountain,” thus ending things off on a high note.
Following the 2019 release of Transmissions After Zero, a documentary covering their career and musical legacy, Brainiac is a going concern once again and the band put on a thrilling and energetic show on Friday night to kick off their current tour alongside openers Exit Angles.
I will admit that I hadn’t given Brainiac much thought in the time between their initial dissolution following the 1997 death of original lead singer Tim Taylor and their reunion of recent years, but when I saw that they were playing The Horseshoe this past Friday night, I made a note to reacquaint myself with the Dayton, Ohio four-piece. And they did not disappoint.
With a synth-heavy, noisy, chaotic sound that incorporates elements of punk ,electro, noise rock, and so much more, Brainiac have definitely made their mark since forming back in the early ’90s. And though they got their start over 30 years ago, the band sounded as fresh and vibrant as ever as they ran through a career spanning set that included such classics as “Pussyfootin”, “Indian Poker, Part 3” and “Hot Metal Doberman’s.” Good times.
