By: Pat O'Brien
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Superhopper - Publicity photo by Tom Lloyd
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It was a night full of straight ahead, eardrum-bursting, grind-it-out rock ‘n roll at the Triple Rock on Friday. But before anyone got to see it, the crowd was treated to some “Is this serious or not?” hip hop by a vowel-challenged man in a rabbit suit with mounted duck heads hanging from the shoulders called himself the St. Pauli Grla (that’s “gorilla” for those readers who are also vowel-challenged). It was amusing to watch him faux-drunkenly rap about his life working on the docks, spin tales of smoking spliffs with his friends and repeatedly dis headliners Superhopper. But it was even more amusing to watch the crowd stare at him and trade shrugs and uncomfortable glances, not exactly knowing what the whole thing was really about (he looked more deranged than the rabbit in Donnie Darko). A few people in the audience genuinely thought the Grla was just a drunken fan who stumbled on stage, and I’d imagine that was intended.
The Holy Ghostriders got going almost immediately after the Grla’s exit and promptly exploded with a Tool-meets-Black Flag snarling crunch. The music seemed to be getting more or less strangled and/or pummeled out of the instruments. The dense thicket of guitars was overwhelming for many--I glanced at the entrance about halfway through the first song and noticed there were quite a few people stepping outside--but the ones who stayed did so at the front of the stage. It was louder than loud, the kind of sound that is either entrancing as hell or irritating beyond belief. There was a definite take-no-prisoners, confrontational element to the band, which is something I always like more than I want to admit but certainly gravitate toward; then pay for by saying “Huh?’ to everything spoken to me for the next three hours. Such is life as a closet grindcore fan, I suppose.
Die Electric! would like you to believe D.C. punk and '80s metal have more in common than a mutual hatred for each other – and maybe they’re right. Die Electric! liberally mixed them together with a dollop of glam, creating an aural tornado that was hard to resist. Basslines that sounded like a D-Plan record on fast forward and spiky yet fluid guitars seemed to envelop every pore of my body and shake them into submission. About halfway through their set I was kicking myself for not having caught them sooner; they’ve been playing around here quite frequently and I somehow have managed to miss them and in the process miss out.
After another bizarrely hilarious mini-set from the Grla, Superhopper took the stage to much applause and hooting. I spoke to singer/guitarist Kermit Carter briefly before the set, which he mockingly said was going to be “the worst one yet,” but it was far from it. Superhopper possess a sonic quality that, no matter how much I hate to say it, makes them sound like a punk rock Rush. Now, say what you will about Rush, and they certainly aren’t a favorite of mine, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t want to go buy 2112 on the way home.
Superhopper had a sound that was distinctly their own though, Rush was just a jumping off point that stayed fairly prevalent throughout. The music was also melodious, self-deprecating, surly and loud. Really loud. The band consumed beer at an alarming rate which made them somehow sharper, giving weight to a theory I have about beer being the rock ‘n roll version of spinach, but in any case they got the job done with aplomb and were positively on fire as the set ran its course.
Superhopper lyrics are full of snarky cynicism--if that’s not a term, I’m coining it right now, I guess--but Carter sung every word like he meant it, so maybe it wasn’t as snarky as I thought. Maybe the Grla really does work on the docks and everything meant exactly what it claimed to mean, but if that really was the case Friday night would not have been half as interesting.
Location Info:
Triple Rock Social Club
Artist Info: Die Electric!, Superhopper, The Holy Ghostriders
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