Sunday, August 12, 2012

This Is Where I'll Stand



HOLY SMOKE CLEANSING WAVE FRIGGIN' KILLED LAST NIGHT

Holy shit, I can't remember it being any more muggy at The Whitney House than it was yesterday. There was actually a bit of a breeze outside which was keeping things sort of cool, but as soon as you'd open the downstairs door to take a half-step inside, the air would hit you like a wall. There was so much humidity in the basement that walking around inside was like wading through a loaf of bread.

I really like the Cleansing Wave demo (and the 7" EP now, too, naturally), but the first couple of times I saw them at Whitney House, the sound was kinda murky and I couldn't really get into it (plus there was the matter of the smoke machine and the green lights, too). Last night was totally different, though -- Cleansing Wave ripped right from the start, and every song crunched and every riff was punchy as hell. I literally stood there afterwards with my mouth open going, "wow, these guys just played a hell of a set." Definitely a great band.

Oiltanker played their first show in about a year, and understandably were a bit rusty, but they still sounded like a thousand jackhammers. Jim Martin was there, shooting video of their set; he had a separate lighting set-up to try to make everything look good, it'll be interesting to see what comes out of it. I finally got to buy the Oiltanker split 12" with No Tomorrow, which is on really neat-looking swirly green vinyl, you should pick it up (plus No Tomorrow are pretty good, I'm just starting to figure that out).


Oiltanker -

"Ends Meet"

Cleansing Wave -

"Tread On"























6 comments:

Jere said...

So we were gonna go to Foo Fest here in Providence Saturday. I had looked at the band list and it all seemed like crap...until I looked into Cleansing Wave and thought they sounded good. So suddenly I was psyched to have at least one band I cared about on the bill. But the night before, I saw the full schedule of bands, and they weren't on there! I was kinda pissed--but then we decided not to go at all. Now I see here they played this other show in CT. Any chance you know if they played another show on the same day (possible since Foo runs 1 PM to 1 AM--maybe they got stuck with an afternoon set)? Or was this show the reason they backed out of Foo? Or were they kicked off Foo and found this show instead? Or what?

Brushback said...

Hmmm, I didn't hear anything about that... I don't think their Facebook mentions anything, either.

Jere said...

Weird! They were on the flyer for Foo--but then I saw a different one where they were left off... I just couldn't figure out if they were added or subtracted. Signs point to the latter. (Also, the "heavy music" is usually reserved for affffter darrrrk at Foo so I really doubt they played in 2 different cities between 9 and midnight or whatever.) Oh well, at least I don't regret not going now.

Brushback said...

One of the things that popped into my head when I looked at those flyers was if there's another band called Cleansing Wave out there.

Jere said...

Yeah I mean when I saw that flyer for the first time and saw the band name, I thought "this one can't possibly be something I'd like" but I checked just in case, and it was these guy/rls! Saw they were from Worcester and were a current band, so it made sense. And yeah Foo Fest usually has some really shitty music all day long, but there are always some harder bands--Dropdead was basically the headliner two years ago.

Brushback said...

I'm pretty sure I was going to be around the Providence area on the weekend that the Dropdead thing was happening, and then I looked at all the other crappy bands and decided not to go.

I went to the Wendy's in Providence with all the Providence Reds pictures on the walls, that was pretty cool.