Location: La Casa Maldita
Bands: the tangled lines, disrobe, eske, tras de nada
Cost: $5
Things I missed to be there: The Pogues at the Congress Theatre, Clinic at the Apple Store
Reasons for going: Figured (incorrectly) that I could go to this show and sneak into the Congress, but the Congress security is getting craftier.
I don't know if I've used this analogy before, but there's this story my parents used to tell, about going to see shows at Second City, back when Chris Farley was still in the cast. That was where he came up with his Matt Foley character (the van down by the river guy). If you haven't seen the sketch in a while, it involves a lot of pratfalls, and the way my Pops told it, there's nothing scarier than sitting in the front row when that 300-pound motherfucker is barreling towards you at 90 miles an hour and you don't know if he's going to be able to stop himself. That's what watching Disrobe is like, except Josh isn't Chris Farley-big and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was going to hit them.
Disrobe hasn't played around in a while, especially not with their guitarist Rick, who's had some health problems this past year, but he was back today and the whole band was hyped. According to Josh, they've been practicing for the past three days in a row with the two-guitarist set up (Rick and the guy who stepped in when he fell ill), and it was good.
The whole show was guitar-ier than usual, to the point that the hardcore was sounding more like metal. Maybe the house brings it out. La Casa Maldita is one of the few joints in town where punk bands and metal bands regularly play together which is no surprise as La Casa is the home to Shaman Records, which specializes in crust, grindcore, hardcore and metal.
It wasn't that Disrobe, Eske, or Tras De Nada sounded louder or faster or harder than any of the other times I've seen them, there was just a lot more shredding than I remember. All three bands have been around for a while and it's interesting to drop out of the scene for a few months and come back and be able to hear how much better they've gotten from just playing together for so long.
The last band of the night was The Tangled Lines from Drezden. They were adorable, and they were adorable without being soft. They played pretty straight thrash, but their singer Luise was this tiny little girl in a hoodie with a powerpuff girl on it and she just took to the stage like Miss Thing, like some kid on a sitcom singing into a comb in the mirror, except she was scrweaming her ass off, and doing it without looking angry. It looked as if she could have walked into a warzone and the entire war would split like the Red Sea to let her pass. Meanwhile the rest of the band wore matching blue shirts with yellow tire skids stampped on. Like I said, adorable. The world (the world of hardcore at least) needs more of that. Just like it needs more guitar.
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