Northside Music Festival has commenced in northern Brooklyn, and it’s bigger and heavier than ever. Last night was the first night of the music portion, and I already feel like I barely made it out alive. But then again, I did choose to see A Place To Bury Strangers and Iceage at Music Hall of Williamsburg, so that definitely had a lot to do with it. Pour me another drink and punch me in the face, I’m ready for the weekend.
When I made my way over to Music Hall of Williamsburg, I got there in time for Bennio Qwerty, a three-piece post punk hardcore band made up of guitarist-singer Mike Barron, bassist Nathan Delffs, and drummer Louie Glaser. I was probably looking at Glaser most of the time, in admiration of the way he beat the hell out of those drums, like pulverizingly hard. I could see it in his face, and the way every muscle in his arms was tensed. He went full out, no half-ass, phoning it in here. This is what every show should be like. Delffs was also impressive, with an equally intense look on his face but much more stoic. His basslines were my favorite part, like he had training in some dirty funk and then synthesized that with hard-hitting post punk psych rock for a fresher and even dirtier groove.
There was a boring drone band after that nearly lulled me to sleep, but A Place to Bury Strangers brought me back to life. These guys have been one of my favorite live acts since I first saw them during Northside two years ago, and they’ve only gotten better. Oliver Ackermann (guitar/vocals), Dion Lunadon (bass) took turns on vocals, and then flinging their bodies around the stage, disappearing out of the pointed spotlights into the dark smoke, and then re-emereging into the beams, while drummer Robi Gonzalez beat time – and I mean beat. Instead of creating a noise rock ambiance, they were incredibly active, culminating in a wild wreckage of the stage.
A Place To Bury Strangers – “You Are The One” by Dead Oceans
Ackermann would throw himself to the side of the stage, take aim, and throw his guitar like a spear. At one point he threw his instrument down, turned off all the lights, unplugged some huge cables and plugged them back into different places, took one of the little throbbing strobe lights they had, and set it on his guitar, creating this throbbing drone from the pulsing vibrations of the light. It was mad genius. Then to top it all off, he grabs one of their amps, lifts it as high as he can, and hurls it across the stage towards the Lunadon, who turns, takes off his bass, and stabs the amp right through its heart with the bass head. Over and over, till the amp’s outside casing is ripped to hell. Then his bass gets tossed too. Wild! All of us in the crowd were shock laughing with eyes and mouths wide. My new friend next to me, who I had just bonded with over mutual appreciation of this band, turns to me with the look of a child who just saw the coolest thing ever and stammers out, “That…was…AWESOME!!!” I have no other words.
That was by far and away the wildest thing to happen on stage that night, but when Iceage took the stage is when the crowd on the floor got crazy. This was when the real hardcore kids infiltrated the ones who didn’t really know what was coming; the ones who were there to literally torpedo their bodies through whatever and whoever was in their way. Iceage antagonized that energy as one would expect. Frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt had this super blasé, drunkard way of apathetically leaning and tripping around, singing into the crowd and falling back up. When an audience member would climb up on stage to take a dive, he was there to shove them off the plank.
There was little to no light. The venue was transformed into a dark cavern of hardcore hell, where you go when you can no longer feel anything but numbness, and the constant heavy throb of the subwoofers and the bodies banging into you. When pain is the new pleasure, and there’s nothing more to care about except expressing this visceral emanation, is when you’re in the Iceage. They really came on like a whirlwind and laid it on heavy, then just as abruptly left the stage. There was no gradual cadence or notification of the last song. One minute the band is blasting, and Rønnenfelt is wailing dead-eyed into the faces of the front row, and then he drops the microphone, everything stops, and they walk off stage. That’s it, lights up, spell’s broken, time to go deal with the aftermath of your bruised bones.
