Asva / Gravetemple - Underworld, London - 10/7/08
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Due to no fault of my own, I arrived late tonight and only managed to catch the last half an hour or so of Asva. For a band like Asva, this means two songs.
And straight away I notice it's too loud. It irritates me a bit that the way gigs are being run these days means we all have to fork out for ear plugs. I haven't got round to doing this myself which means every gig I go to, I get me ears damaged. It does seem silly to me that there are no restrictions or regulations on these things when the volume at these gigs can be damaging to your ears permanently. But what the heck - after a few minutes I realise this is the first time that I am watching Trey Spraunce on stage. The man is a true hero; I can think of few people with a better attitude to writing music than Trey Spraunce, you only have to read his contribution to, John Zorn's Arcana 2 book (ISBN: 9780978833763, don't you know) to realise that Trey is a man with a very singular and mature view on music.
The vastness of Asva's music comes across far better than on record tonight, due to an intensely strong performance from a slightly stripped down 5 members, the band manage to hit home that this is really emotional music tonight. There is absolutely no fear of a dud note or mistake with these fellas. The musicianship is truly a cut above what you might usually expect from a doom band playing the Underworld. Unfortunately for the band the turn out is appalling tonight, due to a confusing last minute change of venues, but this of course makes the show all the more enjoyable for the people that do attend.
On to Gravetemple. Mr Steve O'Malley (of Sunn O))) fame - is fame the right word?) is on form tonight, starting the set with an uncharacteristically high pitched expansive drone, partnered by minimal guitar effecter Oren Ambarchi. Ambarchi fills out the wider stereo panned room space tonight which adds a brilliant counterpoint to O'Malley's thick heady washes of toneless reverb. We get a good while of this before we're treated to Attilar Csihar's impressive low pitched droning chant, and as the drone builds up the room becomes a unique sonic chamber, one step to the left and the low frequencies will make your intestines buzz, one step forward and your ears will pop. It's as if the room is a sort of sonic playground. By this point it really is quite an exciting set, and you get the feeling that the three of them really know they're on to something. It is certainly some of the best use of O'Malley's knowledge and talents. If he carries on collaborating like this, challenging himself and his audience, then he will undoubtedly prove to be much more than just the man that made heavy low guitars fashionable and arty.
The room is filled with an unusually thick fog of dry ice. I don't think that I have ever seen a band take dry ice quite so far as this band tonight, and it's good, it does add an extra exciting element to the set. The fog is so thick that you can't really see a great deal on stage. After about half an hour it becomes clear that there is in fact a drummer behind the kit as one of the most impressive drum poundings appears out of seemingly nowhere. This is one of the most exciting things I have seen live for a while, the drummer is Matt Sanders founder of Australian band Damaged and drummer of countless death metal hardcore groups including his current outfit Terrorust. The drumming style is traditional double pedalling high tuned drum blasting, and not having been to a death metal show for a long time and not being the most frequent attendee of those shows at best, this level of death metal drumming live is completely new to me, and I am totally flabbergasted as this is absolutely fantastic. Meanwhile the droning dirge carries on from the rest of the band and fits really interestingly. The length that Mr. Sanders keeps up his pounding is really quite incredible, it's after a good while of this that the band launch into a fantastic grindcore breakdown, with all the guitars still heavily effected. This is what grindcore should sound like, crusty, visceral and frantic. The set should have stopped there, not that the rest of the set isn't great, it's just that this would have been a fantastic end to the proceedings, yet the rest of the set returns to a similar style, as it was before the breakdown. You still leave thinking Gravetemple are completely amazing.
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