Roomrunner and Multicult just wrapped up their tour on the east side of North America, and tried and true Strange Matter served as one of their last stops.
Roomrunner and Multicult just wrapped up their tour on the east side of North America, and tried and true Strange Matter served as one of their last stops.
The two Baltimore-based bands played on Thursday with Richmond’s Mens Room, New Turks and Mutwawa, the two former I missed.
I’d only ever heard Multicult on recording, so seeing them live was super awesome. And wooowee they are loud! This was the wrong show to forget my ear plugs, I’ll tell you what.
Anyway, Multicult boasts a stacked lineup, with members (past and present) of Fight Amp, Wayward and Triac.
There’s something to be said about well written noisy-noise punk, and Multicult is just that. They seriously make some of the most infectious noise rock I’ve ever heard. It sounds like an anomaly: noise rock that gets stuck in your head, but it’s not! Check out my personal favorite recording of theirs, Spaces Tangled, here.
Sometimes the end of touring means slightly low energy, and that’s what I felt from Roomrunner. Actually, I felt like everyone in Strange Matter on Thursday was on Xanax; not a single wild child was in the house.
That being said, there was something weirdly alluring about seeing a seriously loud, seriously noisy rock band playing hard tunes with a seemingly “eh” attitude. I’ve been a fan of Roomrunner from the band’s inception (front man Denny Bowen used to play drums for Double Dagger, a favorite post punk band of mine), and the dudes really can play. And holy shit I forgot how loud they get. I saw this show Thursday, now it’s Monday and my ears still feel fucked.
Last time I saw Roomrunner was about a year ago in a really shitty record store venue, so it was nice to see them in a place they seemed to fit better. They played a noisier set than the one I remember, which is welcome because their lp, Ideal Cities, sounds mostly grunge with a peppering of noise rock.
A lot of people make Nirvana comparisons, which is understandable, because they are very grungy. I’m gonna skip the Jesus Lizard comparisons because I’m sick of comparing every noise rock band to Jesus Lizard.
Mutwawa played last, and I felt like I was on acid, but I think that was the point.
There was a drum machine and a mixing board and a shit ton of guitar pedals and some other synths, I think. and I don’t really know a lot about music equipment so that’s as far as the equipment description is going to go.
All you need to know is: holy crap a lot of equipment. I’d never seen Mutwawa before, and I’m not big on the noise scene, but I dug it. They played on the floor surrounded by the crowd, and I just wish there would have been candles because that’s how my brain works.
Mutwawa, to me, seems like a pretty satanic, dungeony noise project. They played one song that I think was called “the earth is fucked,” and it sounded like a sort of twisted sacrificial tune someone would write after they took too much peyote at Burning Man.
It was cool. It was weird and I wasn’t expecting it, which made it a pleasant, albeit creepy, surprise. You can check out their bandcamp, but if you like noise, you know you need to see this shit live to fully understand/appreciate it.
