Your friends from out of town are probably tired of hearing you talk about RVA’s terribly cool music scene.
Two things of note there:
Your friends from out of town are probably tired of hearing you talk about RVA’s terribly cool music scene.
Two things of note there:
1 – It is a very good place to play music; you are not wrong.
2 – They really gotta go to a house show in town to know what we are talking about.
You may have even said just that.
But really, a good house show changes lives. When I was young, the mere idea had me buying stud bracelets at the mall.
The experience of a house show still does has its pitfalls, with metal-banger-sessions turning into a crowd of half-drunk people talking loudly over their tinnitus while the band fixes a blown amp fuse. Or the lamest surprise band of all, the cops, show up.
But frequently it’s great. Sometimes it’s even magnificent.
The three-band bill at an unnamed, but burgeoning house venue (let’s call it something dumb like The Crabcake Factory) is about as fine a reflection of the somewhat niche, but surprisingly accessible world of (very) loud music available in and out of RVA.
Loma Prieta, a four-piece last in Richmond headlining a show at Gallery 5, screamoviolence veterans from San Francisco, rocked Randolph along with Kaoru Nagisa, a chaotic 5(ish)-piece from Richmond and Northern Virginia, and two-year-old Swan Of Tuonela, a five-piece screamo friggin symphony from Richmond. It was rad as hell.
Kaoru Nagisa (VA), started off the night by announcing via music that all of the 80-plus in attendance at the Factory oughtta move around a bit. Loud.
Just volume-wise, these fools will not turn down. This seemed like a good method to get the smokers back inside and it worked. Kaoru plays regular shows in in Richmond, and they’re an explosive outburst of energy and noise.
In all honesty, I haven’t seen an “opening band” play like they are headlining quite like this. It started as raucous possible, and the enormous attendance made for an even more wily opening act. Their split with “best friends” Swan Of Tuonela is a must listen.
Swan Of Tuonela (RVA) promptly destroyed the house and killed almost everyone in the room with hypermelodic howls best suited for an insane person.
At almost three-years-old, Swan Of Tuonela is no duckling, but they never were, as the current line up features members from bands like Caust, Ostraca (formerly Kilgore Trout) and others hit the scene with the intention of breaking speakers from day one.
Being roughly the eighth time I’ve seen them, this was easily the best.
They were tight but groovy, fast yet extremely melodic, even at times ambient (a loaded word for sure.)
Post-rock influences like Explosions In The Sky and Pray For Teeth are noticeable, but the music remained extremely original. That part of their sound must be heard, not imagined, along with the rest. And they did all this with precision.
I can also (easily as well) say that each time catching Swan Of Tuonela is better than the last. They have a good amount of material recorded, so check it out. Their self titled EP is already a classic with fans and they have done two splits and this past August released an incomplete portrait, an awesome progression in terms of composition and new sound.
Loma Prieta (SF) were just brutal. They pulled many Richmonders to this basement and we thank them mightily. Lots of glasses were steamy. They easily embodied the 1989 earth quake they took their moniker from.
The crowd seemed almost, shall I say it, tired, right before the set. But it was a brief gasp before everyone went back under to be drowned in has been described as hardcore, emoviolence, screamo, post-hardcore, post-pre-noncore core core, and “awful” (by my dad.)
I’d say they are all that, sure. But this Thursday it was, as I said, just brutal.
House shows are core to RVA’s music scene, and house shows like this one deserve to be talked about.
Be at the next one you clicked “maybe” on; maybe it will rock.
