Extreme black metal groups Dragged Into Sunlight and Gnaw Their Tongues embarked on a tour supporting their collaborative 2015 effort N.V.. As to be expected, their visit to Brudenell Social Club was loud and terrorizing, but what really unnerved me was when the bar-goer next to me warned that “not everyone makes it through” Gnaw Their Tongues. Oh boy.
Where shock value and utter desolation reign supreme in this vein of music, the biggest surprise was when a laptop was brought out for this band. For a genre so infamously puritan, seeing the prospect of electronic influence was exciting – and it was, for about a total of five minutes. For the rest of their performance, it seemed to just be used to provide all the backing for the sole guitarist; as earth-shattering as their sound was, this made the visual dynamic disappointingly lacking. Two thirds of the group were hunched over their electronic equipment – not exactly an impressive spectacle.
The black metal genre is notorious for having intentionally gritty production, but in a live environment, it often shoots the artist in the foot and makes their devastating music just intangible – Gnaw Their Tongues’ little variation away from a wall of crushing harsh noise and screeching vocals did not help this one bit. Sound quality aside, the desolation conveyed through their music were impressive and reminiscent of SunnO))) and Boris, but it was GTT’s industrial flair with vocoders and electronic beats which jut the group out from the rest of that evening. GTT have some intense and interesting ideas, if a little too niche – but these were lost in translation to a live environment where the sound quality, quite frankly, went to shit.
The night was salvaged by the main headline act, bringing back a large number of the audience who left during GTT – turned out that bar-goer was right – and also brought back the terror and visual dynamic that was so sorely lacking. Animal skulls, candles and an abundance of strobe lighting and smoke machines really perpetuated the occult, satanic atmosphere Dragged Into Sunlight convey through their music. But even DIS weren’t immune to the poor mix; even though it was a vast improvement from the previous band, the sound quality was still unpleasant at times. For the most part the guitar tones remained cohesive, the rhythms were driving and intense, and there were even engaging melodies in the latter half of their performance, which are often a rarity in this genre.
Between a combination of the bands’ exclusive niche and the grating sound quality, this night’s performance wasn’t for the faint of heart. Though I do recommend their studio work, I only wish I had brought some earplugs.
Jekabs Jursins