We Miss Live Music So Much (A Roundup)

The mass cancellations of metal shows, tours, and festivals due to the Covid-19 pandemic has made me think about what live music means to me. Obviously the bands are hit much harder by this than those of us in the audience - it affects their livelihood directly - but I know I'm not alone in missing that live magic. And THE PIT.

The mass cancellations of metal shows, tours, and festivals due to the Covid-19 pandemic has made me think about what live music means to me. Obviously the bands are hit much harder by this than those of us in the audience - it affects their livelihood directly - but I know I'm not alone in missing that live magic. And THE PIT. This week on Metal Bandcamp will be my small tribute to live music, beginning with this roundup of three recent live releases.

Artwork by Cameron Hinojosa.

This Khemmis EP, Doomed Heavy Metal, is only half-live. There's a newly recorded song, two studio rarities, and three live tracks, one from each of their albums. It takes a confident band to cover a Dio song, but here Khemmis takes their shot with "Rainbow in the Dark." They make it work as a "Khemmis song" without tweaking the original overmuch.

But we're really here for the live tracks. Of particular note is "The Bereaved," the best song from Khemmis's debut album Absolution and always a live favorite. Here's a Shitty Video™ from their set at Maryland Deathfest 2018. It's short and the sound quality is terrible, but the jubilant audience wohooo's when the song kicks in probably tell you better than all my words what it is we're missing.

The Inter Arma live EP takes me to a venue in Copenhagen last year. On record, Inter Arma have passages that sound great, beautiful even. Live, they're an entirely gnarly beast. Even the epic instrumental "The Long Road Home" (which was a bold choice for opener of the set) becomes a part of churning maelstrom of nonstop metal, anchored by the incredible propulsive drumming of T.J. Childers. After the last song of the Copenhagen set, there were a few seconds of stunned silence before somebody said, only slightly slurred, "Could you please play one more, if you don't mind... please?" And they did.

Note that all proceeds from the EP will go to Direct Relief, an organization that provides PPE to healthcare workers in regions affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

I never saw Porcupine Tree live - they went into hiatus before I started going to shows again in earnest. In March, the band launched a Bandcamp page with a cache of live recordings, making up for what I missed out on. Some of them are pretty rare, like the surprisingly good recording of their first ever live performance in 1993. My favorite is the immaculate Köln 4th Dec 2007 (TV broadcast). It's a nice collection of songs, including a particularly good performance of the 17-minute "Anesthetize" and a beautiful version of "Dark Matter." I guess I am a sucker for songs with that kind of epic build up.

Like Inter Arma, the drumming on these songs is a joy to hear. Take for example the way Gavin Harrison's cymbals start playing double time during the solo in "Dark Matter." He can change the rhythmic feel of a song like no other, and he knows when to add something interesting to the song and when to step back and let it breathe. It's a high quality live recording, you can hear every little fill he does.

Should Porcupine Tree ever tour again I will definitely try to catch them. But for now I am happy that these recordings has found a home on Bandcamp.

Khemmis - Desolation

By Calen Henry. Khemmis’ last album, Hunted, immediately grabbed me. Their “doomed rock and roll” combined melodic, epic doom with elements of stoner-doom, death-doom, and traditional metal for a wonderful “kitchen sink” approach to metal.

By Calen Henry.

Artwork by Sam Turner.

Khemmis’ last album, Hunted, immediately grabbed me. Their “doomed rock and roll” combined melodic, epic doom with elements of stoner-doom, death-doom, and traditional metal for a wonderful “kitchen sink” approach to metal. Desolation sees the band digging in to their signature sound and shedding much of the kitchen sink approach to create their best record yet. The album will likely cement their legacy alongside bands like Pallbearer and Power Trip as crossover darlings.

The vast majority of Desolation is Khemmis’ signature melodic doom: melancholy, slightly sinister riffs under soaring tenor vocals. This time they delve even deeper into melody, edging further towards traditional metal, with harmonized vocals lines, lyrical dual guitar leads, and even some lower register vocals reminiscent of the late David Gold of Woods of Ypres

The mix of traditional metal and doom carries through to the band's lyrics. They adopt a lot of the swords and sorcery trappings of traditional metal, but, in a time when traditional metal lyrics about the glory of conquerors' pillaging can seem problematic, Khemmis are refreshingly depressing. Truly living up to their self-styled genre, "doomed rock and roll," they sing of cursed bargains, doomed legions, sole survivors and the associated guilt, isolation, and desolation. It’s extremely fitting that the album is called Desolation, as that single word gets right to the crux of the album’s themes.

Photos by Nessie Spencer (license).

They also ditch other musical styles, except for death-doom, and the result is transcendent. The deep dive into melody juxtaposed against the filthy death-doom riffs creates a fantastic dynamic throughout the album, but it’s when the band directly mixes the two, giving us twin guitar shredding over galloping death-doom or harsh vocals over soaring guitar melodies, that their sound becomes truly legendary. Album opener “Bloodletting” showcases this beautifully, when soaring guitar and epic vocals suddenly break into a filthy death-doom riff accompanied by an extended twin guitar solo.

With the overall stylistic change, the album doubles down on melodic vocals and some raspy harsh vocals that are more black metal than death-doom, but they work extremely well with the band’s overall sound. The melodic vocals are even better than on previous albums, and the combination of lower vocals and faster tempos than Pallbearer sets Khemmis apart from their closest sonic touch point.

The production is also slightly improved over Hunted. It's a bit more dynamic, and although it's still brickwalled, the slight improvement makes a difference. There is no audible clipping, and everything sounds just a bit better than it did in 2015.

Desolation one of the year's best metal albums, and the stylistic changes mean that anyone not completely melody-adverse should check it out, even those not sold on Khemmis' previous material. The band has completely come into their own. Hunted absolutely floored me in 2015, and Desolation is leagues ahead of it.

Khemmis - Hunted

By Calen Henry. Khemmis’ last record Absolution made waves in the metal press but didn’t quite hit the mark for me. At its core it was excellent Pallbearer-ey melodic doom, but it was mixed with out of place deathcore vocals and the result didn’t quite work. With their second full length, Hunted, Khemmis hits the bulls eye.

By Calen Henry.

Cover art by Sam Turner

Khemmis’ last record Absolution made waves in the metal press but didn’t quite hit the mark for me. At its core it was excellent Pallbearer-ey melodic doom, but it was mixed with out of place deathcore vocals and the result didn’t quite work.

With their second full length, Hunted, Khemmis hits the bulls eye. It's is again rooted in mournful, melodic, twin guitar driven doom with some of the best clean vocals in the genre, but they also bring in myriad other doom styles in a kind of “kitchen sink doom” approach (they call it Doomed Rock and Roll, which also works). The result is the phenomenal record at which Absolution hinted they were capable of making.

Two things really make the album work, the style jumping and composition.

All the various doom styles are expertly executed. The vocals run through clean harmonized sections, tunnel shrieking, well bellowing, and some Matt Pike style stoner doom shout-singing. The vocal styles are supported by matching riffs and guitar tomes, lightly distorted soaring harmonic riffs morph into filthy fuzzed out plodding funeral riffs and back.

It’s held together by fantastic composition. The songs ebb and flow organically between styles even intertwining different styles. "Candlelight", for example, starts with an extended classic doom section before a drop into plodding sludge-doom, complete with a vocal shift to well bellowing. After establishing the new motif harmonized leads are brought in over the sludgy riffs. It’s fantastic.

To top it all off, the solos are amazing. In contrast to the mostly slow pace of the rhythm section the solos feature all kinds of flashy fret work, again, surprisingly well integrated with the record’s overall sound.

There is a caveat to the record, and depending on your proclivities, it’s a big one. The album is loud all the way through with many of the more intricate and busy sections having audible clipping. Because Khemmis use so much distortion a lot of the clipping is somewhat disguised but it detracts from what is a home run, musically.

Undoubtedly a high water mark in modern doom somewhat, but not irreparably marred by poor mastering.