By Andrew Bansal
February 2nd 2015, Five Star Bar, Los Angeles CA: Purveyors of all things evil and extreme in the Swedish metal underground since 1991, Unpure finally got an opportunity to carry out their first ever live ritual in the United States. This would be Unpure’s one and only US gig on this trip, and Hate War Productions brought it to the Five Star Bar in downtown Los Angeles, in front of a set of eager, excited fans. Aptly christened “a night of total death”, the event also featured Infinitum Obscure and Coaccion from Mexico alongside California black metal group Volahn, and promised to be an entertaining outing for all in attendance.
Doors opened at 8, and there was already a strong turnout for the show. The abundance of attractive females along with dudes wearing vests littered with unreadable band logos left me in no doubt that I was indeed at a black metal show. Volahn began proceedings at 8:45 with a solid representation of the genre, the usage of keyboards adding another dimension of atmosphere to their already intense sonic landscapes. The following band Coaccion canceled at the last minute and as a result Volahn were told to keep playing. But we discovered this afterwards, and all the while the set kept getting extended, I was perplexed and wondered why they kept playing. It has to be said that the lengthy duration of the set brought down its impact level to an extent, and this is where bands should place an upper limit on their set length to deal with such scenarios in a manner that isn’t detrimental to their cause. Good set by Volahn, nonetheless, and as it turned out, their efforts were far more enjoyable than the band that eventually played next.
Volahn links: facebook
This was not only a night of total death, but a night of firsts and superlatives. This was the first time I’d seen so many people in attendance for the first band at a Five Star Bar gig. It was also the first time a band had taken as many as 90 minutes to set up, as was the case with Infinitum Obscure whose drummer was M.I.A. for the longest time, but even after his drum kit was on stage and ready to go, it took an eternity for them to start. Volahn ended their set at 9:30, and Infinitum Obscure began theirs at 11. Regardless of the reasons for the delay and whether or not the situation was under their control in terms of the setup time, they had already lost the attention of a majority of this crowd even before they started playing. People still gave them a chance but the room started clearing out a couple of songs into the set. I turned around momentarily to gauge the diminishing crowd and saw a dude behind me letting out the biggest yawn of his life. It was a telling summarization of the audience’s general reaction to the band’s music. It is possible that our judgement was clouded by the frustration of being made to wait so long and the band’s performance might have been better than we thought, but Infinitum Obscure must certainly have had better shows with higher intensity in the past to be deemed worthy of being billed as the main support act for this gig.
Finally, at exactly two minutes to midnight, Unpure took the stage and treated the crowd with what they were longing for, specially after the lull of the last two hours. Starting out all guns blazing, the quartet instantly induced violent head-banging movements amongst the crowd, from the first row to the last. Fists and horns were unanimously raised by everyone part of this gathering after every song, in approval of the band’s fierce musicianship and on-stage persona. It’s hard to decide which aspect of their music was more punishing, the ominous low/mid tempo passages or the relentless, breakneck fast sections, and both varieties made an equally strong impression on attendees. Unpure were putting on a performance well and truly worthy of its status as the first one on American soil.
But, just when I was thinking about how refrshing it is to see an extreme metal band that is not a three-piece, one of their guitarists left the stage in the middle of the set and did not return until after several more songs had been played by the rest of the band as a three-piece. Whether he had a technical problem with his instrument or it was a delibrate move remains unclear, and although his disappearance did not take much away from Unpure’s show as they still held fort as a trio, a powerful surge was felt in the band’s sound as soon as he rejoined them for the ending portion of the set.
The most notably interesting thing about the crowd’s response to Unpure was their preference to head-bang rather than mosh. As most people in the front few rows banged their heads, there was no mosh pit and it actually allowed me to watch the band properly from a short distance from the stage, while indulging in some neck movements of my own for parts of the music that absolutely compelled me to do so.
The LA extreme metal faithful can undoubtedly always count on Hate War Productions to unearth underground gems locally and from lands far beyond, as was successfully done here in the form of Unpure. Despite a few setbacks, this gig was met with an overwhelming sense of approval from those in attendance, and everyone present here would certainly hope and wait for Unpure’s return.
Check out Arturo Gallegos’ video footage of the entire show here.
Unpure links: facebook