From - Tue Jun 26 10:09:37 2001 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 BCC: archive@localhost Message-ID: <3B34B85A.1E1E2FAA@clark.net> Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 11:40:10 -0400 From: Tiny Human Ferret Reply-To: klaatu@clark.net Organization: copyright 2001 all rights reserved -- non-UseNet transmission prohibited. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.gothic,dc.music,rec.music.industrial Subject: [Review] Hate Department and OhGr at "The Cage", Washington DC 2001 June 21 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was moping around the house and a friend from way back in the day called me up to ask if I was going to the show. I inquired as to which show, and I was informed that the tattered remains of Skinny Puppy would be performing at "The Cage" downtown in the District. Also to perform was Hate Department. I got into my darkwear and headed on down. "The Cage" is evidently a converted-restored car dealership, in a block which was known from the 1940s to the MLK Riots in the late 1960s as the place to get your cars and car repairs. It's a nice large two-story with a very sizable upstairs, pool tables, a really decently-sized dance floor, dual bars up stairs, and one smallish single bar downstairs along with a smallish dancefloor and lurking spots. "The Cage" also has excellent sound. "The Cage" was, I might add, packed. I was wandering around drinking, seeing who I knew (which was a few people), and then ran into my friend just about in time for Hate Department to get started. I'd never really heard them before, or at least not so that I knew what I was hearing. I was very pleasantly surprised. Hate Department what I'd describe as sort of "roots post-punk/industrial". For most of the numbers it was exactly what I want to hear; I will definitely buy a CD and play it extremely loudly when I want to convince the neighbors in my barrio that the white boy on the corner is suffering from demonic possession. These fuckers rock. They damned well knew that if you want to kick the shit into some rock, you play guitar. There was one guitarist, one bassist, the singer and a drummer, as well as one talented guy on keyboards maintaining the layers of sound, assisting in percussion, and throwing in a bit of melody now and then as well. The singer was agreeably disagreeable in the long-time punk tradition, the sort of guy you want to shout out to him the advice that "you suck!" when it's a simple fact that everyone knows he doesn't. The delivery was clear, articulate, generally all-pissed-off without being bugfuck. He could even carry a tune. The guitar lines were sort of deathrocky and dismal, the sort of gloomy changes you'd expect from any ol' deathrocker but this was all sent out to the audience with a punk energy and a faster fiestier beat. The bassman kept right up. This was an extremely tight band, with their only "slop" coming during what might have been intended to be their slow song or ballad. When they went for the dancable, they got it. Hell, even I danced and this is quite rare and rightly so since I dance like Britney Spears on crack but I'm nowhere near as cute. This was pure mosh heaven, not the old-school three chord "how fast can you play" stuff, with quite a lot of rhythmic complexity; I found myself dancing (believe it or not, and yes I am that old) a modified "Hustle" adapted to skanking. For a while someone had a good pit going on close to the stage, but it never got very large (maybe 20 people, or maybe it was a fight) and didn't get out of hand. When they finally closed, I was all out of breath and was forced to drink heavily as a result. By the time OhGr came on, me and my bud from way-back were sitting around talking a lot of shit and I'd been talking to a few other people too... I was given the advice by a few folks that if I valued my hearing, I should back away from the speakers. This turned out to be excellent advice. These guys played Very Loud Music. I hate to say this, but I wasn't really all that impressed. For the first few songs, they didn't seem to quite have their shit together. I was bitching about this to my friend, who was much more of a Skinny Puppy fan than I am, and he filled me in on lots of band trivia, not that I remember any of it. From the end of the auditorium farthest from the stage, the volume was endurable. As the set went on, the band got their shit together and began playing quite well. But I am from the old school, more of a fan of SoM or the DKs than I am of, say, Enya or Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and raw Industrial generally annoys me. OhGr wasn't actually bad, they were -- by the end of the show -- quite professional and accomplished in their musicianship, but it just wasn't exactly what turns me on. Your mileage may vary, if you like their sort of music you probably would have been happily impressed. As professional and competent they were by the end of the set, I just wasn't feeling the energy from them that I had felt from Hate Department. It might best be explained in terms of drugs; Hate Department was booze and speed, and OhGr was more like heroin and "X". If you're the sort of person who likes to pay perfectly good money to snooze fitfully, this might have been perfect -- it was all very well done but wasn't going to keep you awake. They did have some excellent visual aids, though I couldn't really catch the full benefit of it from where I was, and I couldn't go any closer for any length of time because it was just too damned loud for the size of the venue. Still, everyone else seemed to be having a great time and I didn't hear anyone complaining, though actually I couldn't hear much of anything, after that first overexposure to the truly awesome sound system. All in all, this was an excellent show for the $25 I paid. And once again, please allow me to shamelessly plug "The Cage", and also allow me to thank Psyche for helping promote this. This was one of the biggest Goth/Industrial/Post-Punk "do"s for this summer, and people apparently were coming in from hundreds of miles around. For those who are fans of OhGr or Skinny Puppy, you should probably try and catch these guys if they come on tour to your town. If you're not fans of Hate Department, go give them a try; I think you'll be quite pleased you did. -- Copyright 2001, all rights reserved to TJH Internet SP. Non-UseNet re-transmission of this article is a willful violation of US Copyright Law and the Berne Convention. Statutory damages are $250,000.00 Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/