Asva played an instrumental set this evening, but disaster already struck them in their first song; the bassist’s main string snapped and he had to replace it during the show. Luckily the rest of the band improvised some heavy noise during this delay. Overall I concluded that the show the five-piece gave was pretty entertaining, yet I lost track and attention after half the show. The riffs didn’t really grab me because they were too slow to really imprint the pattern in my brain. I will check out their latest effort though, as I did enjoy their previous full length. For now, I just couldn’t wait for the main act to begin.

 

The monster that calls itself Grave Temple Trio is actually the more black metal version of Burial Chamber Trio. The latter consists of Sunn 0))) guitarist Greg Anderson along with Oren Ambarchi and Attila Csihar (from Mayhem), while GTT consists of the other Sunn 0))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley along with those two guys. Yet when they took the stage, we were obviously not dealing with a trio. Stephen and Oren were handling their guitars (and electronics) and Attila was on vocals, but a fourth person appeared behind the drum kit. What could we expect? One thing was for sure though, this was the first time I would ever see a Sunn 0))) related project to feature drums.

 

After an eerie introduction from the guitars and Attila singing his spaced out mantra, the drums kicked in. Totally not in a way I expected; tight brutal grooving black metal drums. This guy absolutely went berserk behind his kit, he had total freedom to do whatever he wanted. As this went on for some time, suddenly the guitars backed out and the intensity of the drums was raised to a level of blastbeats. Then came the biggest surprise of all; along with just the drums, Attila started to sing the nastiest goregrind vocals ever to be heard, alternated by nasty high-pitched screams. I was totally flabbergasted! After this it was time for the guitars to return at a louder and heavier volume than before, really making the monumental building in which this venue holds residence tremble like mad. A massage for my intestines indeed. In the end the amplifiers were so loud it was hard to even hear Attila’s vocals at all, everything was completely blown away.

 

Even though the show wasn’t theatrical at all, which was what I expected, the overall show blew me the fuck way. This was totally not what I expected, but it was one of the most refreshing ways of listening to drone music I heard in a while.