Stompbox

with Bonehead, 6L6, and Tree at the Earth First! Benefit at Axis
by Scott Hefflon
photos by Chris Johnson

O.K., so we’re all still waiting for the damn CD to come out, already! Gonna bide a little time here with a live review. The show at Axis was, well, different. Erich’s voice was all messed up and kept cracking all over the place, which was kinda fun. He kept rolling his eyes and shrugging his shoulders, ’cause what’re you supposed to do? To toss Mr. Thaler’s words back at him, the Columbia bio (which in its under-developed stage looks like a high school term paper) has him paraphrased as saying, “I hate bands that are consistent… bands that are impeccable every night… you know, where the drummer never drops a stick, the singer never misses a note, the guitarist never gets lost. That’s what I like about this band… it’s different every night.”

Actually, the band compensated admirably. Guitarist Jeff sang a tune, and they did a Melvins cover that was… interesting. Because it was Erich’s monster bellowing range that kept cracking, Erich switched to a doom metal roar and a hardcore scream which gave a whole new edge to the plodding stompcore. Hopefully the damn CD will be ready for the next issue. Until then, we’ll just have to play Travis (Summit) and the two 7″ from CherryDisc over and over…