Review & photos by Andrew Bansal
[Video by Matt Nielson]
June 13th 2014, El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles CA: Chicago-based instrumental rock quartet Pelican released their fifth studio album ‘Forever Becoming’ in late 2013 via Southern Lord Recordings. Their first release after a four-year gap, it’s an album that brought forth a darker sound and marked a new chapter in the band’s career with a major lineup change, as Dallas Thomas replaced original guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec to become a full-time member. Pelican set flight on a short US West Coast run with support act Tombs on June 12th in San Diego, and along with local opening act Mustard Gas And Roses, the touring party visited the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles last night.
Doors opened at 7, the crowd inside the El Rey was steadily building, and at 8:15, Los Angeles-based instrumental ambient rock quartet Mustard Gas And Roses started off the show with a compelling 25-minute set. Mike Gallagher of Isis fame is the mastermind behind this new project, and very recently released an album which serves as the soundtrack to ’22nd Of May’, a film by Koen Mortier. While this 8-track album soundtrack consists of mellow atmospheric rock compositions sans drums, the live show Mustard Gas And Roses played here was with a drummer, and very different as a result. The set began with Mike Gallagher as the sole man standing on stage, playing an introductory ambient guitar piece, but the set truly got going once his three band mates, including J. Bennett (Ides Of Gemini) on bass, joined him on stage. MGR presented some excellent jams composed on the foundations of repetition, possessing a hypnotic quality to them and rendered heavy by the efforts of the rhythm section. J. Bennett’s towering stage presence added further to MGR’s overall impact on the audience, a majority of whom were previously unfamiliar with the band. It’s safe to say that Mike Gallagher’s newest project is promising, and presents him in a different light from Isis but easily appreciable amongst fans of that band.
Mustard Gas And Roses links:
facebook.com/pages/Mustard-Gas-and-Roses/1416322848640333
MustardGasAndRoses.bandcamp.com
Brooklyn NY’s extreme metal quartet Tombs were up next, a band I was looking forward to seeing as much as the headline act here, to get a taste of their stellar new album ‘Savage Gold’ which came out just prior to the start of this tour via Relapse Records. It has received a tremendous response from everyone who’s heard it so far, and rightly so. It’s certainly destined to feature in numerous ‘best of’ album lists this year, and has transcended the band to a completely new level. As expected, a large portion of their 40-minute set was focussed on this album, and it’s discernibly clear that in the live setting, every tune off of ‘Savage Gold’ is several fold more crushing than its respective studio recording. With musicianship ranging from chaotic black metal segments to delightfully slow and heavy riff-based passages, Tombs’ performance obliterated this audience with the force equivalent to that of a ten ton hammer. Frontman Mike Hill and his band mates were at the peak of their powers and succeeded in leaving an indelible impression on anyone and everyone. 2014 is the year of Tombs.
Related: Interview – Tombs Frontman Mike Hill Talks ‘Savage Gold’, Artwork & More
Tombs links:
TombsCult.com
facebook.com/TombsBklyn
twitter.com/Tombs666
instagram.com/TombsCult
TombsBklyn.bandcamp.com
And at 10 PM, the four members of Pelican stepped on stage to deliver a fantastic 65-minute set of instrumental rock accentuated further by visuals projected onto a screen in the backdrop. The front lighting was minimal, allowing the visuals on screen to be utmost prominent, and as bassist Bryan Herweg stood in the center of the stage, directly in the path of the projection, some of the rays fell on him (as you can see in the photo above) and made for interesting scenes to go with the music. The last time I saw Pelican was three years ago at the Power Of The Riff festival at the Echoplex, and in comparison to that gig, I definitely thought this particular performance by them at the El Rey was more diverse, but heavier overall, as a natural consequence of their newest material being included in the live show. A good portion of this set boasted of gloriously sludgy riffs that provided brilliant contrast to the more tender, trippier jams that Pelican is known for.
Video of Pelican performing ‘The Tundra’ (by Matt Nielson):
The heaviness of this Pelican performance is a perfect example of just how misleading genre/sub-genre definitions can be. While in some ways it’s necessary for bands, journalists, record companies and fans to put genre labels on music, it’s detrimental in many cases. When you think of the terms ‘post-rock’ and ‘post-metal’, you’re thinking of mellow music, and even though Pelican certainly has a mellow side to their musical creativity, they showed that they’re just as heavy in equal measure, so much so that ‘Mammoth’, the final tune of the set, garnered a full-fledged mosh pit amidst the front few rows of the crowd. But it was during this tune that a miscreant in the pit decided to hurl something towards the stage and it hit the bassist on the head, much to his dismay, and perhaps the only negative moment of this entire evening.
Overall, Pelican’s set was a spellbinding sonic exhibition, and an embodiment of the beauty and power of instrumental rock.
Check out a full gallery of 22 photos of Pelican, Tombs and Mustard Gas And Roses from the show below, or view it here if you’re on a non-Flash device:
Pelican links:
PelicanSong.com
facebook.com/PelicanSong
twitter.com/PelicanSong
instagram.com/PelicanSong
Set List:
01. Dead Between The Walls
02. The Tundra
03. Deny The Absolute
04. Ephemeral
05. Vestiges
06. Lathe Biosas
07. Immutable Dusk
08. The Cliff
09. Strung Up From The Sky
Encore:
10. Mammoth
Pelican/Tombs remaining tour dates:
6/15: San Francisco, CA @ Slims
6/16: Sacramento, CA @ Midtown Barfly
6/17: Portland, OR @ Branx
6/18: Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw
6/19: Seattle, WA @ Neumos
El Rey Theatre links:
TheElRey.com
facebook.com/ElRey
twitter.com/ElReyTheatre