Monotonix / Dark Meat, April 19, WPW

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Monotonix / Dark Meat, April 19, WPW

POSTED: Sunday, April 20, 2008, 8:24 AM

Filed Under: Critical Mass | Music Last Night

Photo | John Vettese

Let's start at the end and work back to the beginning.

One knotty-haired, shirtless, sweaty Israeli dude belting out a hymn-like Hebrew melody to an awestruck crowd at 1 a.m. Another held aloft by a crowd while still playing his drum kit, also held aloft, his buddy dangling upside down from the rafters and nearly clocking him in the head. Band and crowd seemed to enjoy fucking with said drummer. He managed a continuous attack with his sticks, even as the floor tom and hi-hat ascended basement steps, as they were shifted from one end of basement to another, even as aforementoned knotty-haired shirtless sweaty Israeli dumped a recycling container over his head and poured beer on his snare so the stick would smack the snare and the beer would mist up in both their faces. I think it was Sapporo. Singer dude also tossed toilet paper around the room like a streamer, tied it to his leg, rolled it around the floor, doused it in lighter fluid, struck a match. Guitarist got off easy with his hypercomplex bass heavy Kyuss riffs. But I guess when you've got to follow up a band like Dark Meat, and you're only three guys, this level of insane is necessary.

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

The room is wide and deep, a good thing for Dark Meat, since they've got frickin what like 20 people in the band. No exaggeration. The horn trio, the numerous percussionists, keyboards and trinkets, violins and bugles, guitar-bass-vox whatnots. The sound is big, its deafening, an audio conundrum of riffs and growls and the swish of flailing long hair cutting through stagnant basement air. Its like the Mummers if they weren't a parade. It's like Man Man if they were more southern gothic and less Jim Henson. There's a chilling soprano at the other end of the room and I run across through the confetti rain. There's a tambourine gets kicked across the non-stage, rattling, chattering. There's bits of ceiling debris falling down on the keyboard. There's a plea for merch purchase "cause we're pretty fuckin broke." I'll bet; touring north from Athens, Ga. with this kind of epic lineup to play an $8 basement show doesn't seems the most fiscally sound move. But they're such a tremendous troupe, I hope they made out well enough so as not to be deterred from future visits this side of the Mason-Dixon.

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

Photo | John Vettese

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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