Godflesh, Coal Chamber, Fueled
Trocadero
Friday, Nov. 29
"Listen up, people," a troglodyte doorman bellowed. "Vision of Disorder canceled ... they will not be playing tonight." A series of responsive curses threatened to go on forever. "Goddamn. ... What the fuck? ... Fuck that. ... Gi' my money back." The bitching wound down only after the lengthy queue shrunk to a fraction of its original size. Actually, I was disappointed that VOD wasn't playing, too, but I wasn't going to cry over 50 fewer goateed dickheads to contend with at the show. It just meant that much more elbow room for me and the other six people remaining in line.
Although the doors opened at 7 p.m., it was a good hour before East Bay boys Fueled took the stage to deliver their mercifully brief set. This foursome has generated a healthy buzz in Oakland, which made their mediocre performance that much more disappointing. They started off with a promising riff that boded good things to come, but had little else to peddle in the way of audio delights. The guitarist doffed his axe for the remainder of the show to man his Roland synth, and Fueled soon lapsed into a bland variation on the industrial crossover phenomenon that is now de rigueur among the newer metal acts. "C'mon, let's see a mosh circle going," the lead singer yelled out in desperation at one point. "Godflesh came all the way from England, and they might just go right back if you guys don't start dancing."
Soon after the gaggle of skinhead rock-jocks, headbangers, and assorted post-punkers repaired to the second tier during intermission for mingling and intoxication, Coal Chamber took the stage. It was hard to believe such a fierce din was coming from this Angeleno bunch (who looked all of 15). Though they're clearly not goths or industrialists, they sport the Reznor look in all its Addams Family glory. At first it was appalling to see their bass player, Rayna (a teen-age Ellen Barkin look-alike), in scanty halter-top and skintight plastic pants, which came across as a cheap sales ploy. Truth be told, she's adept on her four-string (thumb slapping included), gracefully wielding a low-end bobble.
Musically, there's nothing remarkable or different about what Coal Chamber does -- the band remains safely inside the self-imposed boundaries of the metal genre. Excepting the occasional prog riff here or no-wave styling there, it was just as tight, muscular, and dense as any music of this ilk needs to be.
By 10 p.m. or so, the house was packed upstairs and down as T-shirts, underground zines, jewelry, and even crucifixes were being hawked by the front door. As the echo of their name went from a sporadic murmur to a more discernible chant, it was all too clear that the night belonged to Godflesh. Justin Broadrick, co-founder of England's seminal thrash outfit Napalm Death and the alleged godfather of grindcore, greeted the legions of fans with something unintelligible due to a rather thick Birmingham accent. No matter. At Broadrick's press of a button, a looping beat commenced to set the slothish pace of "Sterile Prophet" from the new release Songs of Love and Hate. The band's set included racket from Pure, Streetcleaner, and other judicious bits in their eight-album discography. "Cheers!" he said after a few numbers, to which more than a few lunkheads raised their beers as if something were being toasted. Bloody wankers -- that's limey for "thanks."
Godflesh, as their namesake would suggest, embody a multitude of paradoxes. Though they use a small drum machine as a kind of metronome, the band tours with a real drummer (Ted Parsons) and does without processors and programmers, making them a standard acoustic/electric lineup. Still, the mechanized, patience-trying monotony of their sound is clearly industrial in tone and spirit. The music doesn't riff exactly, since their aurally contusing, monolithic pummel strikes the half-awake listener as an exhaustive exercise in bonehead minimalism. But what seems like a mere continuum of one-note anti-melody is in fact a fairly nuanced wall-of-sound against which Broadrick performs all kinds of (pardon the expression) subtle experiments in distortion and guitar squelch.
Godflesh tread a tantalizing line between divine noise and arty dreck, simultaneously piquing your interest and coming dangerously close to losing it. The trio usually rocks just hard enough to keep the heads bobbing and the mosh circle sputtering into occasional movement. In Broadrick's own words, it's all about "groove, discipline, swing, and heaviness." Sounds more like a weight trainer's catechism than a musician's modus operandi. I did notice the occasional yawn and furtive glance at the wristwatch from some less-than-inspired fans. Broadrick would probably be flattered rather than offended by this, since he's so adamant about process and flippant about results.
Sporting only a black tee and a pair of camouflage fatigues, Broadrick must have felt a bit underdressed with all the studied disheveledness and thoughtful costumes in the pit (one fellow demonstrated some serious maquillage with an Ace Frehley-meets-Robert Smith facial). Only bassist George Cothran Green seemed concerned with fashion: His longish black locks, goatee, and bad-guy cowboy hat transfigured him into an accidental doppelganger for Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes.
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