Christopher Nosnibor
A week ago, buying a ticket to see four metal bands for a tenner in a tiny basement venue seemed like a good idea. But then yet another heatwave happened, and arriving at the Mickelgate Social – something of a hipster bar just feet inside the city walls on what used to the York’s most notorious street for bars and nightclubs frequented by stag and hen dos and townies and other twats, which has gone rather more upmarket in recent years – damp and uncomfortable, I find myself questioning my sanity. The doors are 7:30, and I arrive some time after, but Tame The Savage are still soundchecking at 7:45 and Onion Terror are still to go. Provided I don’t collapse from heat exhaustion, I assume things can only improve. And, for the most part, they do.
Onion Terror are a duo: guitar, vocals, and drums and other backing off a phone. The guitarist is playing through a 5-watt practice amp that feeds back a lot, while the vocalist charges and leans and squats, alternately bellowing and growling, while sporting a pint balaclava. They clearly don’t intend to be taken seriously, but they are seriously good fun. Their eleven-minute set is a mash of all kinds of metal – primarily some mangled kind of grindcore, but with purposefully cheap-sounding drums and samples galore – consisting mostly vocal snippets about onions. It’s loud and it’s messy and makes for a great start to the night.
Onion Terror
Tame the Savage trade in filthy punk, somewhat in the vein of Anti-Nowhere League. But what sets them apart from your meat-and-potatoes punk is the way the bass – played by the lead vocalist – carries the most weight, doing a lot of work on the upper half of the fretboard and the higher strings, and essentially playing it like a lead guitar, with a lot of mid and some distortion. But then, when he does drop to the lower octaves on the bottom strings, the impact is immense, a thick, rumbling groove melding with the hefty percussion. And the drummer looks like he’s having the time of his life.
Tame the Save
Hella Bore’s bassist, wearing a facemask, baseball cap, and hoodie with the hood up – the dude must have been liquid inside that getup – approached me just before their set and requested no photos, so you’ll have to imagine him, and the singer, a stocky, shaven-headed guy with a waxed moustache, in a wifebeater and too-tight cutoff blue jeans shorts. Hmm. Perhaps this was why they didn’t want photos. The drummer, bearded and with plaited pigtails (when he removes the knitted balaclava with floppy rabbit ears) makes a nice addition to the visual. I’d like to report that they sound better than they look, and they do – although it’s marginal. It’s not that they can’t play: they evidently can. But what they play is like a Nu-metal Rage Against the Machine with Al Jorgensen’s vocals roaring over the top. The material is pretty leaden, the lyrics aren’t great and overall… It’s understandable why a large chunk of the audience take the opportunity to get some air during their set.
In contrast, Miško Boba have both their look and sound absolutely nailed, and just keep on getting better. They’re a cohesive unit, and each member brings something specific, but it’s in the way they come together which is where their strength lies. During the slow, slugging riff sections, they all bang heads in perfect union, the gut-churning five-string bass underpinning the twin guitar assault. At the back, Leviathan’s powerhouse drumming very much drives everything along, but it’s apparent that they all recognise that in Kanopa they have a formidable and compelling front woman. Visually, she’s impressive, a classic horror scene, a walking gorefest, appearing to have had her eyes torn out, and her arms are streaked with sanguine fluid. But this is nothing compared to the vocal performance, which is nothing short of spine-quivering, blood-curdling, demonic roar, a desperate purgatorial scream.
Miško Boba
They just get heavier and more fierce as the set progresses, and seem to grow in confidence as well as intensity. The set may only feature seven songs, but it makes for a truly obliterative forty-five minutes, and any longer you’d probably feel your skull start to cave in. Tonight’s performance, which is pretty big on new material, is something else, and exemplifies why they deserve to be on a label, and to have PR pushing for their (inter)national exposure. This is a band who are taking black metal – and Lithuanian metal – to a place which warrants appreciation. If you want your metal black, you’ll find none more black than Miško Boba .
Aural Aggravation 