By Andrew Bansal
May 23rd 2013, The Echoplex, Los Angeles CA: There’s just so much live music going on in a city like Los Angeles, it’s impossible to catch everything, as oftentimes there are two or more great bands playing on the same night. Japanese experimental rock trio Boris, who’ve been around for more than two decades, is one such band that I missed out on seeing in the past. Well, that was about to change last night as the band visited the Echoplex on their North American tour, for the first of two sold-out nights. This gig featured their ‘All-Time Classics’ set, while tonight they’ll play the Flood album in its entirety. For gig #1, they brought with them Deafheaven and Marriages as the opening acts. The doors opened at around 8, and the long queue of patiently waiting people entered the venue for what promised to be an intriguing night filled with eclectic music.
Marriages began the show at 9 o’ clock. As soon as they took the stage, the realization hit me that I actually witnessed this relatively new band’s their first ever live show in 2011, when the opened for Russian Circles and Deafheaven at the Trouabdour. For those unfamiliar, this band features Red Sparrowes members Greg Greg Burns and Emma Ruth Rundle. Two years on from that debut gig, their performance last night was very much an indication of where they stand now as musicians and how their music has evolved. I thought their live sound in 2011 was mellower than what is it today. Last night, their set comprised of plenty of heavy jams intertwined with Emma’s smoky, ethereal vocals. It was a highly impressive set by Marriages, and it was good to see this crowd taking the time to watch and listen to the band on stage despite them being the opener. Based on my past experiences here, the Echoplex often goes overboard with their attempts to create the hipster vibe. It was so dark during Marriages’ set that Emma had to ask them to turn it up a bit so she could see her stage setup. That was the only pity about the set, that it ended up becoming a purely aural exhibition and not so much a visual one.
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Deafheaven were up next, and I instantly remembered how loud they were at that Troubadour show I mentioned earlier, so I rushed to the bar to buy a new set of earplugs to keep myself from being in literal deaf heaven. Three-fourths of the band started playing on stage, and vocalist George Clarke with his immaculately combed hair appeared a few minutes later to kick-start the set. The ‘shoegaze’ style of black metal is often frowned upon amongst the so-called elitists, but when you experience a band like Deafheaven, you can’t fault or deny them for the sheer power in the music that delivers largely everything you would expect from a ‘conventional’ extreme metal band. But along with that, they have lots of additional elements that make it accessible even to the non-metal crowds. The impact of the music was there to be felt amongst this particular crowd as mosh pits began forming at regular intervals. The hefty dosage of strobe lighting further amplified the crushing force of this Deafheaven set, leaving us dazed and stunned for quite a few minutes after they were done playing.
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With such talented opening acts, this wasn’t one of those shows where you’d be restless for the headliner to hit the stage. By the time Boris did take the stage, this crowd was perfectly warmed up and primed for the moment. The members of the trio took their respective stage positions and began what would turn out to be a genuinely eclectic display of the endless musical repertoire this band has developed over the years. From hearing their albums at home, I could definitely decipher that their music knows no boundaries, and that was even more apparent during the all-time classics set they played last night. There were soft, tender periods to begin with, as the female vocals dominated the music. Then they transitioned to fast rocking tunes, to slower, heavy doom numbers and just about every other variation they’ve experimented with in their career thus far. For a newcomer, it’s not easy to become a fan of the band to begin with, but when you take the time to assess them, theirs is really an all-encompassing discography.
I personally enjoyed the doom tunes more, but I think every person in the crowd could easily have a different favorite moment from the set depending on their musical preferences. All three band members were stellar in their musicianship, and thankfully there was sufficient stage lighting for us to see them. I particularly liked Atsuo’s efforts on drums and his random enthusiastic ‘woohoo’ yells in the middle of songs. It didn’t come across as a fake stage act and seemed genuine.
As for the venue, aside from the lighting issue which I already mentioned, the bottom end of the mix, i.e. the bass, was turned up much too high, obnoxiously high at certain points of the evening. This place does have a lot of dubstep nights, so may be the house mix was inadvertently geared towards that rather than for a rock show. But I found it strange that no one in the crowd seemed bothered by it. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable night filled with some very interesting music.
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