Tuesday pre-SXSW recap: Mass Sterilization, Surroundings, more
I don't care what the schedule says; the music at SXSW lasts a hell of a lot longer than five days. The proof is in the scores of free, fringe 'mini-fests' going on all across town since last weekend, and continuing into next week after the officially sanctioned shows end. It's also in my blown-out, still-ringing ears from the show I witnessed yesterday at Trailer Space Records. Put on by Austin radio show and record label Depleted Resource, the record store hosted the no-frills floor-show for free, tossing in a few kegs to sweeten the deal.
Denton noise-punk outfit Mass Sterilization began the night on a particularly gruff note, heightening the room's hysteria with every flailing attack. The band's loose, vicious mix of noise, punk and early hardcore is a revelatory punch to the gut live -- almost too much to take in. You can almost certainly thank Mass Sterilization's bass-driven, careening song structure for that. Tunes like "Clutter" built on raspy howls, whiplash speed and frenetic drumming, while Teenage Cool Kids guitarist/vocalist Daniel Ziegler barely controlled his feral, Fugazi-ish guitar riffs.
Next up, Austin power-violence quartet Chest Pain delivered a punishing blow with its set of brash punk head-bangers. The band's energetic, cathartic blasts were impressive, but failed to reach too far beyond the dynamic of rapid-fire guitar and pummeling backbeats; fun, but a little redundant.
Phoenix's Pigeon Religion followed, delivering what was easily the most bizarre performance of the night. Basing its sound around terrifying wastelands of noise -- tribal drums, schizophrenic, weirdo licks and canyon-echo cries -- Pigeon Religion's songs were so loud they killed brain cells. Turning the lights out, chasing every wandering, brutal whim; the set almost felt more like performance art than a concert. An excuse for feedback, a chance to shove an audience down a dark alleyway. Harrowing, no doubt. Especially during the finale, when the group took an electric saw to a piece of degraded metal, shooting sparks into the crowd, scaring out a few squatter punks' dogs and many in the crowd.
Baltimore's Surroundings took the stage last for what was, for me, the most anticipated set of the evening. I saw the band play 1919 Hemphill two years ago -- its last tour through Texas -- and I'm still reeling from it. You might think hardcore punk has moved you; heard guitars so cutting and scummy, their prowess scared you. Surroundings play it dirtier, faster, and -- hell, if the music suggests anything, they'd probably pull a switchblade on them too.
As the band shot through the cuts from its recently released debut, self-tiled LP, the unsuspecting crowd stood with eyes wide, heads bobbing, hardly knowing what just hit them. Songs like "Static Mind" and "Harvesting Dirt" built punk monoliths only to destroy them; contrasting fearless, speed-addled hardcore, with churning molasses-thick stoner metal. The notes are so sharp and menacing, it feels as though they've been engraved in your eardrums. It's what Converge might sound like if the band played twice as fast, and wanted to be more like a hardcore version of Iron Lung.




