SKOAL KODIAK
SKOAL KODIAK
Skoal Kodiak’s Markus Lunkenheimer plays a modified bleach bottle, with circuit-bends, distortions, and manipulations causing his voice to squelch, gargle and gasp as if he's being devoured by a gigantic meat grinder. The rock-solid rhythm section of bassist Brady Lenzen and drummer Freddy Votel lay down a solid groove informed by dub reggae and early 80s post-punk outfits like Public Image Limited and Gang of Four. Put it all together and you have the most innovative cult rock band in the Twin Cities opening up the evening’s festivities.
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Grinding Hump Haus oozes from the erect speaker cones when Skoal Kodiak is unfurled, without fail. The band (a three piece you know) is from Minneapolis and has been around for 6 years jamming the shiv into your boil bag and heating up your granny pad. While the band has a lineage of mighty prestige (reference Quad Muth, the Cows and SeaWhores), look past this and see the golden vista of their green-visioned night goggles heating up the night with an unholy stew of primal fuck huff. The band already has one big 12 inch swinging in the wind from a few years back, though this record ups the ante large. Echoes of the hard funk jut up against Mars Rover squelch to create something totally timeless and new but also borne of a future so toxic that there is no escaping. Dare I say the only hatch out of this doomed vessel maybe a grinding pelvic grunt with the release of a flesh dance. Yes, I dare you to listen and not be immediately summoned to movement. Powerful movement. This record is profound in its human effect. Do not be left behind, the cure has been found. Inaction is useless. Buy one, buy several, you are now a foot soldier with a flesh uniform, go out and preach the word of Skoal Kodiak from a tall structure loudly.
TABOO
This is not metal, nor is it punk; after the opening by id m theft able, it was a sound event, made by people far off the grid of those local scenes. For probably the first time in many, many months, earplugs were essential. The guitar — here played stoically by new addition Asa Irons (the Ecstatic Peace dark drone guitarist formerly of both Feathers and Witch) — dealt in modern psychedelic riffery, but all other sounds Taboo made are better described by concept or sensation rather than genre. Violent, dismissive, wincing. Microphones were hurled across the room.
ANCESTRAL DIET
Ancestral Diet is an anti-society sound retrospective. Their music is inspired by true life. In a single set, slaughterhouse sounds, graveyard groans and burning factories simmer along with early 90′s industrial beats and hollow-eyed duets, of which they’ve been listening to all their lives. Members are Caethua (recording project for singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Clare Hubbard) and Andy Neubauer. They live together in Maine.
MOTHER OF FIRE
Minneapolis band Mother of Fire’s eponymous record is a dark, almost terrifying musical journey. The band uses a fiercely unrelenting combination of caustic violin, guitar distortion, and bass/drum rhythms to convey a haunting sense of dread that marks each of the LP’s six tracks. Imagine the scene from Temple of Doom where the cult leader plucks out his human sacrifice’s heart – except that in place of a chanting Thuggee army you instead have Naomi Joy, a force of nature on the violin whose fiery vocals give the sound the menace of a thousand Steven Spielberg bad-guys.
