(((O))) : Live: The Body, Voe, Headless Kross and Buried Sleeper – Audio, Glasgow. April 22nd, 2014.

In case you hadn’t noticed yet, it’s European festival season. And I’m not talking about T in the Park or any of those pish mainstream festivals, no I’m talking about the more underground, non-mainstream festivals. We just had another great edition of the infamous Roadburn Festival and also the more instrumental music orientated Dunk! Festival and StrangeForms, and we’re now working towards Desert Fest, Temples Festival, Heavy Days in Doom Town, Hell Fest and many more. Even if you don’t manage to get to go to any of these festivals (like myself), it’s still good times as most overseas bands will combine a smaller club tour with their festival appearance. One such band is The Body from Portland, Oregon, who travelled to Europe for their first overseas visit ever in their long existence.

At their Glasgow gig at Audio they were supported by three local bands, Voe, Headless Kross and Buried Sleeper, with the latter kicking off the gig. I recently saw Buried Sleeper when they supported Space Witch in Edinburgh and I wasn’t very impressed with Bryce Sutherland’s vocals at the time as they sounded out of tune. I hereby apologise to Bryce and the band as last night Bryce’s vocals were near perfect in tune and this was the first time Buried Sleeper convinced me as a live band. The whole sound they had was great, loud and very beefy. They opted to play only two tracks, both of their Colosseum release, which were ‘Pale Blue Dot’ and ‘Temple of Nothing’, and they played these tracks really well. I’m really looking forward seeing them again sometime soon now!

Next up were Headless Kross, who seem to be supporting every touring heavy doom band at the moment when they play Glasgow! But this is not a bad thing as each time they play this three piece has some fine bluesy tinted doom metal on offer for the audience, and they get better and better each time I see them. Their doom vairant is complimented with great spaced-out guitar playing, with Tommy Duffin adding plenty of solos to the mix, whilst Jonny Montgomery’s steady drumming builds the foundation for Derek Sexton’s heavy bass playing. Derek also throws in the occasional rough sounding scream, making it the type of psychedelic doom I’m very appreciative of. They played two long songs that haven’t been recorded yet, ‘Rural Juror’ and ‘Even the Destroyed Things Have Been Destroyed’, but I believe these will be recorded later this year for their next release. I’ll sure be looking forward to that!

Third band on the bill was Voe, a band I was totally unfamiliar with. I only knew of them as a couple of my friends know them quite well and have been mentioning them a few times. Voe is a four piece, playing with two guitarists, a drummer and a singer, but both guitarists also take regular vocal duties on board. Before I say anything else, this is my new favourite band in Scotland. There are a lot of great heavy bands around at the moment, but Voe sounds like they’re taking the best elements of Neurosis and Amenra and mixes these together to create their own blend of atmospheric post-metal sludge. Voe’s singer Martin Friel has a very similar voice to Amenra’s Colin H. van Eeckhout, hitting comparable emotional levels, while the two guitarists aggressively throw out heavy sludge riffs. It’s not all aggression and sludge though as a couple of the tracks have very soft sounding guitar parts, adding just the right level of atmosphere to the mix. They recently released Rvst (available on limited edition tape through the fantastic Dry Cough Records) and their set mainly focused this release, as they played ‘Dead Air Pt One’, ‘Last Days Of Burden’, ‘Beyond The Sea’ and ‘Rust’, before they ended with a new song. If post-metal atmospheric sludge is your thing I recommend you get onto this pronto!

At this point the stage got completely redone as The Body was preparing for their show. Chip King uses an impressive amount of amps, which were all shifted to one half of the stage, while the drum kit was moved towards the other half, and slightly turned to get a more ‘intimate’ set-up for this two piece. On drumming duties wasn’t The Body’s main drummer Lee Buford, but Matt Melon, who usually hits the drums hard and fast with his black death metal band Pissgrave from Philadelphia. Apparently Lee isn’t a very happy flyer and decided to stay at home in Portland, and being a good friend of the band Matt suggested he’d go along on tour.

The Body played a short set of 30 minutes, but these were probably one of the most intense 30 minutes I’ve ever experienced. If you’re familiar with The Body’s music then you would probably have a good idea what I mean. If you’re not then try and imagine the soundtrack to some amazingly scary horror movie, with slow camera changes, grainy images and your heart beating heavily in your chest trying to anticipate what might be coming next. The Body’s music is very heavy, with lots of slow heavy drumming and noisey, sludgey guitar parts being borderline drone. What makes it dead scary though is Chip’s high shrieking, howling vocals that penetrate your eardrums while the heavy music hits you in the guts. It’s not for the faint hearted and in that respect 30 minutes is probably the perfect length, as most people would probably not be able to endure more of this ultimate musical hell. The Body is pushing the boundaries of heavy music and it is truly brilliant stuff.

I was so soaked up in the loud wall of spewing noise that I only managed to recognise one song, which was ‘The Ebb and Flow of Tides in a Sea of Ash’, taken of their Master, We Perish EP, but I’m nearly sure that 'The City Of The Magnificent Jewel', of their self-titled release, ‘To Attempt Openess’ and ‘I, the Mourner of Perished Days’, both of their latest Thrill Jockey release Christs, Redeemers, were some of the other songs on their setlist. I think so at least, but it doesn't really matter as The Body is an experience you just need undergo and not bother about details like these too much.