The months of November and December arrive, and with them, the most culturally desolate stretch of the year. Thankfully, Seattle's paramount metal, hardcore and punk venue, The Highline have kept their calendar vital through the holiday season. Even with the eminent consequence of their host building's purchase by a Seattle "lifestyle brand", the venue continues their strong programming into the new year. The second week of November sees a night of post-harcore band Daughters perform their jagged, dynamic take on metal, industrial, and postpunk informed rock. Returning after a 8 year hiatus between albums, they're back with a heavier hitting and more genre elusive collection of tracks that propel them into the hybrid rock contenders of the year. A blistering live show, scaling heights of dynamic power and propulsive hard hitting industrial rhythms is almost guaranteed. If their "You Won't Get What You Want" on their new home of Mike Patton's Ipecac label is any indication, this is likely to be a memorable night for all those into the vituperative, abusive frisson of the heaviest nature. The following month sees the venue host showcases of artists from the always quality 20 Buck Spin, Flenser, Relapse, and Profound Lore labels. These two respective nights spanning post-harcore, black metal, sludge and doom from Fister, Ulthar, Hissing, Heiress, and Ilsa, are a welcome injection of music on the edge, in an otherwise uneventful season. Some of these same bands returning from their last occasion here in during this past summer's notable assembly of progressive black metal, doom and hardcore for the week of Northwest Terror Fest. The festival showcasing sounds from the heavier end of the 21st Century rock and noise music, particularly those heard issuing from the mutating offshoots of black metal. The global expansiveness of this sound and scene is probably best detailed in Brad Sanders' overview for The Quietus, "Untrue And International: Living in a Post-Black Metal World". These multitudinous offshoots encompassing everything from the tangents of psychedelic rock, atmospheres lifted from shoegaze, industrial drumming, electronic textures, and pure experimental noise.
The latter is the case the first week of December, when Chop Suey hosts an equally heavy-hitting night on the razor sharp brink of harcore, postpunk, noise and industrial. Epitomizing the sound of the label Sacred Bones, and their diverse roster of artists spanning indie rock, noise, electronic, neo-folk, and industrial, Uniform return on tour with this year's, "The Long Walk". The furious soundscape of their third album (outside of a set of collaborations with The Body), runs the gamut of a dissonant molasses crawl, passages of substantial lurching weight, and bludgeoning epileptic hysteria. Fitting then that The Quietus' "Killing It In America: An Interview With Uniform", touches on the American genre author, and that this spastic, guttural album is inspired by a dystopic, authoritarian short story by Stephen King. While the New York trio represent for an aspect of the sounds issuing from their Brooklyn based label, founders Caleb Braaten and Taylor Brode of Sacred Bones told their complete story for Red Bull Music Academy this past year. On the eve of Sacred Bones' 10th Anniverary showcase for the New York event, the label's programmers run the gamut of their roster, encompassing; Pharmakon, Zola Jesus, Jenny Hval, The Soft Moon, Marissa Nadler, Föllakzoid, Jim Jarmusch's SQÜRL and collaborations with Jozef Van Wissem, Moon Duo, Blanck Mass, and the music of American cinema mavericks, John Carpenter and David Lynch. As an entrance into their substantive discography, there is probably no better point of access than Billboard's, "Sacred Bones Turns 10: Caleb Braaten Breaks Down Five Key Releases from Zola Jesus, John Carpenter, and More".
Outside of shared label mates Liturgy, there are few acts that fully embody the term experimental metal, quite to the extent of The Body. Through a small abundance of solo and collaborative albums both with Uniform, and blistering noise-thrash of Full of Hell, and their recent "Ascending A Mountain Of Heavy Light", The Body have carved out a corpus of sounds at the vanguard of the genre's evolution. The Quietus' "Prepare For The Worst: Facing The Apocalypse With The Body" describes the doom-full trajectory that has led to this year's, "I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer". Even further out on the precipice of genre inspecificity, mechanical engineer and artist Tristan Shone's project under the name Author & Punisher, utilizes primarily custom fabricated machines, midi controlling devices and custom monitor speakers to manifest an explicitly 21st century industrial noise. Recently signed to Relapse, Noisey parallels his "Beastland" as an act of "Creating Metal in His Own Twisted Image". In performance, Shone's interaction with the devices draw heavily on aspects of industrial automation, robotics, mechanical tools and human interface, "focusing on the eroticism of the interaction with machine". The constructs and his engagement with their mechanical forms find points of reference in the work of early industrial culture mavens, Survival Research Laboratories. As well as drawing inspiration from the Dystopian Modernity that describes J.G. Ballard's work, and its occupations with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies", particularly in relation to how "J.G. Ballard Foresaw Our Strange Present".
