Bile

with Neon Jesus at Mama Kin
by Rebekah Sue Harris & J. Lianna Ness
photos by Rebekah Sue Harris

A Bile set is always an assault to the senses, and the Mama Kin show was no exception. Though they didn’t play with the usual menagerie (Sin-D and Bobabuse were sadly absent, as were Bear’s porn-filled videos), Bile still put on a great show.

Their noise was hypnotic. Leaning on a speaker with closed eyes, they didn’t sound like the Bile we know from CDs. The sound wasn’t different; it was… more. Yeah, that’s it. More Bile. They sounded almost orchestral, the drums sounding like trumpets. Krz and Brett, their sweaty, stringy hair playing through the smoke/green lighting combo, looked like swamp creatures; yet… somehow sensual at the same time.

Krz’s haughty disdain for us all is obvious in songs like “No One I Call Friend,” but the music was mesmerizing; we wanted to get on our knees and submit ourselves to Bile. We felt like the slave girls in an Anne Rice erotica book; we wanted their contempt.

Boston’s Neon Jesus (formerly known as Fuck Machine) sounded like a combination of Faith No More, Metallica, and Soundgarden with a light dusting of Jane’s Addiction and Clawfinger. Their repetoire fluctuated from the slow grinding grooves of songs like “Corona” to bouncy, brassy numbers like “Neon Jesus” (“You’re gonna wake that sleeping rage inside of me… and I will take it out on you!”) that are both chunky and funky. Our day-glo messiahs have arrived to save us from the same old alternamuck we’ve been drowning in. As it is written, so it shall be.