WOLF EYES
Netil House, London | November 26th
This review ends up getting a little discursive so let’s start with the fun stuff. Turning up halfway through Sacred Bones-signed Chilean cosmic explorers Follakzoid’s set may have lessened its impact somewhat, but you can only judge what you see and there’s something lacking there, their celestial gazes come off a little contrived. If you’re 17, stoned, and have never had the pleasure of listening to La Dusseldrof you’ll probably think they’re the best band you’ve ever heard.
Porn – featuring Thurston Moore on fret wanking/string laceration, and Faith No Moore’s Billy Gould on bass – followed, and their set of dirgey avant-skronk with occasional thrash metal flourishes – seemingly at least semi-improvised – was hard work. Moments of sheer dumbheaded bludgeoning riffola fought against the trudge of Sunn 0)))) style sludge, neither as satisfying as they could have been. If this was porn it was horrible German stuff, all binbags, vaseline and no holds barred fucking that goes on for a bit too long to be enjoyable for either the creators or the consumers.
Here we go then. Noise isn’t just ‘noise’ (the capitalisation, or not, is essential here). It isn’t just something amelodic and abrasive. Yes those two elements are an essential part of its sonic aesthetic, but Noise does more than that: on record Noise acts as a bastardisation of ambient music, hissing and snarling into a malevolent background presence. Heard live it asks us to question the importance of entertainment: Wolf Eyes’ set – an hour of synth mutation, battery-acid-hard circuit bending, inaudible screams from the pit of Nate Young’s stomach – wasn’t entertaining, the audience didn’t leave smiling, and any pleasure to be derived from the performance was a knowingly perverse one. But that’s the thing: when something is this loud – and Wolf Eyes were as loud, if not louder, than any band this writer’s ever seen – it takes on pseudo-psychedelic properties; you zone out, manage to mentally block out the aural assault and, for moments, sometimes minutes, hear nothing more than your own internal monologue, see nothing more than the impression of strobes on the inside of your eyelids.
Live noise also brings up ideas about the presentation of masculinity: Wolf Eyes come out to Slayer’s Angel of Death, they wear sleeveless denim jackets and pulled down tight leather caps, and spend the set slowly, grindingly, fistpumping. Is it all a display of PoMo machismo, just a facade, or is there something to the notion that, maybe, this kind of OTT performativity is a means of attempting to understand the role of man in society by combining signifiers of a classic rock/hair metal heteresoxuality with this incredibly sexlessly, deviant music? Then again, it might just be a few dudes who like fucking about really loudly on stage and downing beers to Slayer.
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Words: Josh Baines
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