Moses: 8/29/10

Shouldn't this flyer have been warning enough?

I had planned on getting to this afternoon show a little bit earlier, but I ended up busting my ass for awhile trying to get a flyer done, slaving over hot copy machines in the cold fluorescent shit heap known as Emeryville Kinko’s (whoops I mean FedEx Office, can’t afford any more fuckin’ lawsuits!) so I could pass’em out at the day’s events. I got to the Stork Club, and I had missed Amarok completely. The main reason I went, I wanted to catch their whole set this time. FAIL.

Next up was Moses, and the first thing that struck me was that Paul Kott was not onstage with them, weird. Moses sounded pretty good, in their way of mimicking late 90’s/early 00’s East Bay sludge metal. Maybe it takes the (partial) Fresno perspective to make this work. Maybe it takes a member of El Dopa recently recruited in your band to make this work. The scene at the Stork Club that afternoon was abysmal, almost no one I knew, and just a bunch of old rockers and pirate punks. I couldn’t stand it, and took to the door one or two songs into One In The Chamber.

Absence Of Light: 8/28/10

This was a daytime show. I had recovered well enough from the psychedelic sensory overload chasms drive forces of the major frontal lobes of the night before, and was out and about town on my trusty two wheeled tank. My touring buddies in Kicking Spit were still sleeping it off, and why shouldn't they be considering the rareness of a familiar and comfortable floor space (Scotty K_____'s) in this waUSAteland. I decided to bike into West Oakland and check out some unfamiliar bands at an unfamiliar house. The Dog House. Cruising through the hood, I heard a rumbling in the distance, not the BART tracks, those were well behind me; not my bowels; they were rather settled at the moment, no, it must have been the final mating call of the beast known as Amarok. My ears caught about the last half of the last song, and I didn't really see the band, once I got into the yard, so much as I saw the backs of a bunch of flea bitten dreaded heads bobbing in slow time to the dirge.

I began wandering about the yard, petting dogs, passing out flyers, and turning down swigs from massive jugs of whiskey and moonshine (Clint? Is that the real you?) Absence Of Light (Like, Darkness? Cool!) played next, and it was pretty good metal, but I can't exactly remember what kind. I think they're from Portland. That was a fun and somewhat unusual way to kill an afternoon. Take a dip in the crust.