Weedeater

Amidst drumstick trickery and moistened hair comes a rolling gnarl. Its earthy register is so low it sounds like a bubbled churning. The sound you’d hear as you drain the air from a water-tight smoke pipe. It drags on and on and those closest to the growl start to cough as they drown their bodies of oxygen. In the dusky alcoves of Camden’s Underworld, Weedeater are winding their audience with a punch-drunk whop to their lungs. 

Prior to Weedeater are King Parrot and Dead Existence. On the former, Joe Hoare of Orange Goblin provides a fretful disclaimer for the room: “It doesn’t matter where you stand, you’re in trouble.” With a remote odour of desperation, King Parrot’s frontman Matthew Young tumbles fist first from the stage to the club floor. He tumbles and forcibly berates the audience like a projective pouring of day old discharge from G.G. Allen’s arse. His band splay out mangled grindcore with shredded precision as Young reels out this high-timbre buzz from his larynx. The Aussies are audacious and tactless yet imitative and wholly laboured. Their antipodean hyperactivity is then diffused by London’s Dead Existence. Their nethermost barrel scraping moody guitar work is totally synonymous with the likes of Belzebong, Saint Vitus, Electric Wizard, Pentagram and countless other comparisons between. This is not to say they fail to deliver as much as desiring more ingenuity from a group of teeth kissingly adept musicians. Their doom is fully realised. Their potential is not.

Weedeater are a trio of dazed and dirty North Carolinian loyalists playing simple boggy and boisterous North Carolinian riffs. The pace of their set duels between the psychotically slow to mid-tempo thrash. And aside from the southern hayseed truisms, the moonshine spilling, cornfed belching and the bong resin stinking hokum, there is no schtick to Weedeater. They’re exhausting the place without any sensationalism. They’re just three bawdy bushwhackers playing very loud, very crass, very heavy drone with enough natural showmanship to leave you warped.

Directly centerstage is Travis Owen’s drum set up. Sandwiched between him are vocalist Dave “Dixie” Collins and Dave “Shep” Shepherd. Collins slings his baseball cap, allowing enough view of his hawkish sneer. Owen’s form begins to mutate around his snare. Sticks are flung into the air, grabbed and slapped back down onto a shivered hi-hat. Heads ricochet up and down and up and down. Shepherd’s volume is almost unstable and sounds to be pushed to a painful acme. They slobber out sludge renditions of Jason…The Dragon cuts along with a digested rephrase of God Luck and Good Speed. It’s furiously slow. Everything seems to be covered in human grease. A cover of Lynard Skynard’s Gimme Back my Bullets is punched up and given a metal tinged bandage. Everyone is struggling to breathe through the heat and necessity to scream.

There are very few metal bands that permit themselves to shed the trite doldrums of despair. Weedeater’s image is dictated by the doom they wield, the beer they consume and the weed they smoke. Their gruesome attitude is without guise. Their mannerisms are wholly believable and consequently relatable. This is what makes their show so deafeningly gratifying. Tonight also showcases new material aiding in crystallising Weedeater’s imminent future releases. This group’s burgeoning bong riffing seems to have no intention of expiring.