Simon Rushworth
@The Cluny, Newcastle, February 23 2015
What makes heavy music? Strings tuned so low they’re almost flapping in the breeze? Playing a Gibson SG through a monstrous backline, boosted by an array of distortion pedals?
In today’s metal scene, perhaps.
But what true riff masters know is that making a guitar sound crushingly heavy doesn’t need anything other than the ability – rare as it is – to wring every last ounce from every low slung note. To follow an achingly high bend with chords only the devil himself could have belched forth. To understand that using the space between notes can be far more powerful than puncturing every second with contorted fretwork.
Tony Iommi is arguably the world’s best exponent of this style. But Dylan Carlson, Earth’s founder and figurehead for more than 20 years, is not far behind the legendary Brummie.
And this show, in support of the band’s heaviest album for many years, proved beyond doubt that Seattle-born Carlson is one of rock’s most unique guitarists and songwriters, with the veteran fusing Sabbathian doom with strains of Americana to create the soundtrack to a blood stained, windswept Western.
The Cluny – fresh from its stint as a BBC Radio 6 Festival hangout – proved a perfect, intimate setting for Earth, who delivered a more varied and heavier set than their last appearance here in 2011. No cello this time, just Carlson, backed by long-time drummer Adrienne Davies and bassist Don McGreevy (who’d earlier kicked off the night with a stunning performance, accompanied by nimble sticksman Rogier Smal). And the trio held a packed venue in thrall throughout.
Following drone/jazz duo Black Spirituals – whose avant garde forays, while too pretentious for some, still drew applause – the humble Carlson stepped up on stage, in front of an amp now bedecked in a Newcastle United scarf. Bemoaning his time away from Tyneside and thanking the audience for their patience, he led Earth straight into Badger’s Bane, from new record Primitive and Deadly, following it with that album’s Even Hell Has Its Heroes and unleashing some of his most expressive lead work to date.
This new material was rapturously received; no surprise as the band’s 2014 opus distilled Earth’s essence, tying together the pulsing doom of their earlier material with the broader soundscapes of more recent work. Indeed, There is a Serpent Coming and Torn by the Fox of the Crescent Moon (arguably one of Earth’s most ‘metal’ songs) also sated the appetites of fans of Primitive and Deadly.
But there were other treats in store too, with The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull played in all its sublime, beautiful glory, and proving a fascinating contrast to the seismic tritones of Ouroborus Is Broken, from 2007’s Hibernaculum and the slow drawl of 2011’s Old Black – perfect examples of Carlson’s talents as a composer as well as guitarist.
Doom, drone, call them what you will, Earth exist in their own world, and on this blustery Newcastle evening, Carlson’s devotees were happy to live in it.
Richard Holmes