Last Tuesday night, April 24, a group of friends rendezvoused at Studio Seven in Seattle to get pummeled by some hard metal and watch our man Connor make his public debut as a growler, thanks to those most excellent dudes in Bermuda. The occasion for this outing was the Seattle stop of The Young Bloods Tour, co-headlined by Bermuda and Creations and featuring support from Float Face Down and Adaliah (and with local support at this show from Everett, Washington’s Prepare the Bride).
It’s been a while since I attempted to document a show with photos because I’m such a shitty, untrained photographer and it takes me so long to get the images in half-way decent shape for posting at NCS. But I gave it a try on this night and decided to go black and white for a change. The results were better than I expected, though one of these days I really need to get some actual learning about how to use my camera. Anyway, following a few words about the show, you’ll see a batch of pics for each band who took the stage.
The music began fairly early and ended fairly early, even for a weeknight at Studio Seven. Unfortunately, the show was sparsely attended, but fortunately that didn’t stop the bands from giving a bunch of high-energy performances. The music was mainly flavors of -core metal, ranging from straight-up deathcore to Bermuda’s increasingly progressive/Meshuggah-influenced brand of metalicized hardcore mixed with elements of death metal. This meant that I was the oldest dude on the scene, unless you include the security guys and the lone bartender, who didn’t exactly have a lot of customers upstairs in the age-restricted balcony bar where I perched for most of the night to get a good camera angle on the stage below.
Here are just a few scattered notes about the performances:
PREPARE THE BRIDE: Dang, these dudes look really young, probably because they are really young. There’s a certain awkwardness/shyness in their stage presence, but I guess that’s to be expected and will undoubtedly diminish as they get more gigs under their belt. When I referred to straight-up deathcore, I had this band in mind: Pretty vigorous, tight, downtuned pummeling with fleeting melodic leads and a scattering of breakdown explosions got my head bobbing. They’ve got a few tracks up on their FB bandpage and are working on a debut album.
ADALIAH: Metal/hardcore from Florida, with two vocalists belting out the growls and yells in tag-team fashion while careening around the stage like pinballs. Their bruising rhythms stirred up a few maniacs on the floor into bouts of hardcore dancing and got me moving to the groove, too. They’ve got an album coming in May on Mediaskare’s Rite of Passage imprint called Broken Families, and two tracks from that album are up on their FB bandpage.
FLOAT FACE DOWN: I saw this New Jersey band about a year ago at a show headlined by King Conquer (Bermuda was also in that show) and was impressed. They just released a new album (also on Rite of Passage), called Exitium Verum (I wrote about the first single from that album here). I knew I was going to enjoy this set, and I did — despite the fact that their man-mountain of a vocalist was suffering from the flu; I could almost feel the fever coming off him and wanted to go down and hook him up to an IV. He seemed to be gathering himself during the instrumental breaks, but whenever vocals were required, he blasted them out with power. Good riffs, pulverizing percussion, evil tremolo leads, passionate vocals . . . good stuff.
BERMUDA: SoCal’s Bermuda is another band whose set I knew I was going to enjoy, not only because I’ve seen them before but also because I’m hooked on the first song (“In Trenches”) from their new album, The Wandering, which was originally scheduled for release by Mediaskare on May 8 but has now (frustratingly) been pushed back to August. I wrote about that track here.
I caught another new song at the Studio Seven show, and it’s further evidence that The Wandering is going to be rhythmically (or polyrhythmically) intricate — as vocalist Corey Bennett told me after the set, there’s no such thing as a 4/4 time signature on the new album. Bermuda’s blending of heavy, aggressive hardcore, catchy melodies, and off-kilter pneumatics is definitely worth hearing, and I’m way past ready for this album. (Another new track will be premiering on Noisecreep next week).
Speaking of Corey Bennett, the dude is a beast behind the mic — powerful, passionate, and a charismatic presence on stage. In person, he turns out to be soft-spoken, and he’s got a big heart. Through a mutual friend, my man Connor made contact with him through FB, and Corey invited him to be on stage and provide guest vocals on a song during the Bermuda set. Connor worked on that song for a month, and he did all of us proud. He sounded beastly, and when he and Corey belted out the growls in a kind of death-metal duet at one point, I got chills.
Check out Bermuda on Facebook here.
This is a band of Australians transplanted to California with a new vocalist (Tom Hirst, formerly of The Gun Show) and a new album called Unworthy that should be released by Mediaskare sometime this summer. I only caught a couple of their songs because I spent most of their set outside talking with Connor, Corey Bennett, and a bunch of friends following the Bermuda set. But I liked what I heard. Creations is an avowedly Christian band who view their music and touring as a form of ministry, but they create some hellish sounds, and Hirst makes a great frontman.
OK, enough with the words. Here are the pics:
PREPARE THE BRIDE
ADALIAH
FLOAT FACE DOWN
CREATIONS
BERMUDA
21 Responses to “BERMUDA AND FRIENDS AT STUDIO SEVEN”
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Sure, if those pictures were any worse, you’d only be able to get a job at Rolling Stone. You’re such a shitty photographer.
I hate you. (Not really.)
Why, thank you sir. To be honest, I just pushed a whole bunch of settings on the camera and let it do its job. I’m not even sure I can remember what I did.
Well, I don’t know shit about photography. But the pictures look…umm…exciting? In the moment? Dynamic?
They look like hot shit, is what I’m saying. I think that’s something that cameras can’t do on their own.
Although…maybe?
I monkeyed with the settings at the beginning, knowing that the stage wouldn’t be brightly lit and knowing that everyone would be in motion, but really not knowing whether the settings would work since I’d never used them before. So, it was really beginner’s luck. After that, all I did was change the focus (zooming in or out), frame the shots, and push the button. Given that the guys on stage were rarely stationary, I was expecting one blurry shape after another . . . but got these instead.
Also, using the iPhoto program on my Mac, I enhanced the exposure on the photo files and played with an adjustment to reduce “shadows” so things would appear brighter and more visible, because the original pics were really dark. That was also trial and error.
Now I’ve got to try to reconstruct what I did and write it down so I can attempt to repeat this in the future, and maybe make it better.
Oh, pwa-sha. Just admit it. You used to be a photographer for Bukkake Cum Shots Daily.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR SORDID PAST!!!
None a those shots came out nearly as well as these. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.
I think you mean you need more practice filming yourself masturbating.
I might know a guy who could help. But I…sorry, I mean *he* is gonna need payment up front.
What’s up with no shoes? I don’t get it.
Barefoot = awesome!
Yeah, I have to say I wondered about that, too. I wouldn’t do it, because I’m clumsy and undoubtedly would stub my toes on a monitor or get them stomped on by a passing guitarist. But I also thought it was kinda cool.
Now that I’ve thought about it a bit more…
Barefoot in a bar seems like a bad idea. Like having sex with Paris Hilton without a condom bad idea.
Definitely a risk of stepping in loogies on stage, that’s for sure.
Not only loogies, but broken glass. Which means the loogies would have direct access to your bloods.
Not just one of your bloods–all of them! It’d be like having a three way with Courtney Love and Freddie Mercury!!!!
These were Exactly my worries about this situation. I think its a hardcore thing – I’ve seen Rollins barefoot in some pictures. That makes more sense though, because he can fight disease with his muscles. Your everyday singer though… get some flip flops dude, there’s loogies/glass/hilton juice on the ground.
Also, it wasn’t mentioned in the article, and so I kind of feel like a dick for even asking, but the guy with the nice set of wheels–is he your friend for whom this was his first time performing or is he a regular band…dude?
(Band dude????)
I guess I should have made that clear. Yeah, the dude in the chair is Connor, not a regular member of Bermuda.
Sweet!! That was really cool of the band to let him join them!!!
Is he hoping to make this a full time/regular thing?
I think he would love to. We’ll see where this goes . . .
In my opinion the photos aren’t that bad. I have a flip phone from 2008 which takes terrible, terrible photos; on Saturday I got a super-blurry image of Josh Elmore who was only standing maybe 4 or 5 feet in front of me. My phone really makes me want a super-awesome camera to take to shows… the only problem with that is that I rarely ever get to shows and have no job that supplies money to buy said camera with. Hopefully since I’ve moved to northern Delaware I’ll be able to visit Mojo 13 semi-regularly and perhaps Philly.
Many kudos to Connor! It’s great seeing a guy conquer his disability and/or stereotypes.
I think I may just go make another attempt at applying at Home Depot. I say attempt because I’m too lazy to get through the application process… yay for annoying questions which are entirely fallible and overly-general!
Cool that you’ll be getting to see more shows. And yeah, Connor has more guts than I’ll ever have. First time he’d ever done anything like this, and it’s not like karaoke when you’re up on stage next to the actual singer for the actual band. Fucking it up would have been painful — but he really pulled it off well.