High Defiance
with Creepshow Mary at The Rat
by Scott Hefflon
It attracts a crowd ranging from Metallica patch-wearing metalheads in tight jeans and white high tops to skater/hardcore kids with baseball caps and oversized clothing to the brothers with the crotch of their pants hanging mid-thigh doing that “whoa-whoa” wave thing. Mixing the female populace including poofy heads in skirts to combat boot babes in black. Clever journalists are still trying to nail a label to the style, but the bugger keeps shifting and mutating. Two of the notables in this nameless genre assaulted the Rat in early November. Each took the standard metal recipe and added pinches of this and smidgen of that and cooked up something all their own.
Call me a Johnny-come-lately. High Defiance has been getting nice things said about them in many of our local presses, but this is a band you really have to see and know and read between the lines to understand. Their logo says it: thrash/funk rapcore. It’s heavy metal that evolved into thrash with social/political lyrics without stooping to “fuck the government” uselessness and without floating in idealistic “wouldn’t it be nice” daydreaming. It’s a daily frustration with accepting the confines of “that’s just the way it is” at face value. This is no posturing rebel stance, this is defiance of the purest kind: Personal.
Their “music style” incorporates so many styles, it’s hard to keep track. The bassist is a slaphappy madman and lets loose some killer funk riffs, often accompanied by hip-hop beats and DJ scratches, slurps, and skipping, screeching sounds. The two guitarists duel like classic Maiden, chug like Metallica, and then rip through speed licks like a lotta thrash bands. The drummer raps, rocks, and rages hardcore with intricate time changes and keeps the beat solid, perfect, and always heavy. All members of the band share the vocal spotlight. Impossible to tell who’s singing/yelling at any given moment. A multi-ring circus of diverse, talented, and angry musicians with something to say and a powerful musical force with which to say it.
Look for both these two bands in local listings and watch for new releases at shows and in the local section of your friendly neighborhood music store. (If they don’t carry local tapes, tell the manager he’s an unhelpful, corporate pig and should move to some soulless, neon mall chain.)
