Bile – with Cop Shoot Cop at The Middle East Cafe – Review

Bile

with Cop Shoot Cop at The Middle East Cafe
by Smak

I had heard Bile only just before their show from their album, Suckpump (Energy Records). The CD had been kicking around the offices/bedrooms of Lollipop for a while, and was fairly well-received in these quarters. When I heard they were playing with Cop Shoot Cop (a huge boner favorite of mine), I jumped at the chance to go.

So, how was the show? Well, for starters, there was no one there. This was mainly due to the fact that they (undeservedly) went on at ten o’clock, a bad spot for any band to fill. Moreover, everyone was down at that Lansdowne thing watching Courtney Love make an idiot of herself (serves them right, if you ask me). This, and the fact that the sound was less than perfect impeded their progress from the start.

Bile’s music is that hybrid of industrial and metal that’s become so popular these days. They’re good at it, but the songs did seem to blend into each other after a while. On stage, they had two singers, guitar, bass, keyboards, no drummer, and one person whose only purpose was to dress up like The Crow and be beaten by the rest of the band. Their attitude was more ferocious than a pit bull on steroids, and while this might have been good at a more crowded and energetic show, at this one it verged on silly. They did, however, have a television on stage showing some of the most disgusting and perverted porn that man has ever made. If you got tired of watching the band you could be entertained in a road-accident-onlooker sort of a way (I was).

Bile shows promise, but more diverse songs, better attendance and a little less machismo would definitely help them out. But even with these drawbacks, they still aren’t half bad, and they certainly deserved more than what they got from the crowd that night.

P.S. The other band was Soul Coughing. I came at the end, and my fellow reviewers were envious of that fact. They had cool samples mixed with danceable white-boy hip-hop. Bloated and self-serving, but with rap-a-long commentary and an energetic beat. Ed