Two Ton Boa, 31 Knots & Totimoshi @ Bottom of the Hill
31 Knots frontman Joe Haege looks like a preacher out of Flannery O’Connor’s twisted south when performing. He seems slightly possessed throughout the the set: when he takes the stage in a marching band outfit, stumbles around, swings his guitar wildly (almost decapitating some audience members) and deliverslyrics to “Chain Reaction”, screaming “And results/Results/Speak louder than words.” His vocal abilities go far beyond his room-commanding shouts; Haege sounds like a crooning standards singer during most of his songs, over music that can be dissonant, melodic, technical, prog-ish, and dub-influenced, yet somehow manages to maintain cohesiveness, while being challenging and accessible at the same time. 31 Knots stole the show. I picked up the band’s new album, The Days and Nights of Everything Anywhere and holy shit it’s good.
Headliners Two Ton Boa blasted away at their songs off their debut full-length Parasiticide and their previous, self-titled EP. Frontwoman Sherry Fraser’s voice is always something to behold, full of tremendous power and range. Unfortunately it was swallowed up by terrible levels, with one of two bass guitars being about five times louder than anything else. Scott Seckington played keyboards on some songs, which were completely inaudible. The band’s good performance was overshadowed by these audio problems. The band did go out on an impressive cover version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.”
Totimoshi kicked things off (well, The Cassettes did, but I got there too late for their set) with a somewhat more melodic set than the last time I caught them, but still pounded away with metal riffs from frontman Tony Aguilar and massive rhythm sounds from bassist Meg Castellano and drummer Chris Irizarry.
31 Knots
Lots more photos, clickity clack:
Two Ton Boa
Totimoshi
March 20th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I went to see these guys (31knots Two Ton Boa) in San Antonio, TX. It was super-rad, but unfortunately not many people were there. A shame, both these bands are stellar musicians and put on a stellar show. It was great. Words fail me now, which is something Joe has never had a problem with.