OK, so the Olneyville Providence Halloween party was hectic. A lot of what you expect- knitted homemade Lightning Bolt outfits, RISD kids in elaborate costumes swilling the cheapest of ghetto booze, noise, chaos, a giant warehouse within stones throw of the Onleyville Hot Wiener system, dozen of bands you've never heard of and a few that you have, Several Jesuses, a Transformer, firecrackers, a lot of 16 year-olds, art damage, Japanese people, a Temporary Autonomous Fort Thunder vibe, guest appearances by aging local punk celebrities, a Haunted House, noise, a lot of that twitching jerking freakout that art school kids call "dancing" when anyone associated with Lightning Bolt or Forcefield collective is doing anything that makes a loud noise.
The Party was held in a giant warehouse that was completely open in the same neighborhood as the Munch Haus and the Dirt Palace. There was a big haunted house on the first floor and then areas for bands to play all around the rest of the building. At any time there were two bands playing at once, and never two bands playing in the same area back to back. So the masses of Olneyville noise punks, RISD girls, local crusties, scenesters from NY and Philly, randoms Oks etc. all decked out in insane costume had to roam all over the building to find the music- everything from total sludge stoner rock, digital glitchcore, spazz-rock squack, deathly eerie ambience, Japanese psychadelia, grind, and not a cover of "Monster Mash" or the Misfits' "Halloween" to be heard. And speaking of novelty, this was a massive at-least-tangentially punk-based costume party and I remember seeing only ONE pirate! That should give you an idea of the originality at work.
Bands were playing outside, in the front hall, all over the place so I didn't get a chance to see them all, but some standouts were: Buddy Ship are a Lightning Bolt side project that sounded.. like Lightning Bolt but a bit more of a art-metal Thrones-y influence. Still a lot of that firecracker/popcorn drum freakout that kids love.
A band who couldn't agree that their name might be "Drunk Mountain" and wore evil costumes (see pics below) and played a music that bridged the gap between Art-school noise rock and sludgey/grindy metal, which was crowd pleasing.
"Unicorn Hard-On" was a one-woman digital beatdown with screamy vocals which I elaborate on below.
Probably the most looked-forward to band of the night for the crusties, hobos and kids visiting from the Cranberry Harvest was "The Body"- a two piece who make a lumbering sonic dinosaur of doom riffs that grow into to steady punishing beats that even the hardcore kids can dance to. To say that their live sound is "atmospheric" doesn't even capture it- they arrived on stage in robes- one black, one white, wearing creepy masks- a bear and rabbit. A dusty, creepy sample track of unintelligble voices ran through the whole set, the cadances of which they used as framework for the low-level room-shaking guitar. When (after minutes of ominous build-up) it would boil over into a fierce stoner beat, the crowd would start to writhe and stagger all over each other. Near the end it seemed that things were getting out of control and that the overcrowded room would erupt into drunken violence, but "The Body" reigned it in and unplugged at just the right moment.
The second floor was kind of the "main stage" where the national touring bands played.
When "an albatross" are removed from the world of Philadelphia scenesterdom and placed within the context of Providence's noise art overkill, they acctually sound OK. In a setting where their theatrics and pretention are comparatively minor, you can focus on the music, which is a studious imitation of grindcore with baroque organ parts (Sharkey said they sound like the Zamboni machine that comes on at half-time in a Hockey game). And despite the fact that the singer always stands on an amp, shirtless, does the Jesus-christ pose, rants about "peace and love and rock and roll" and looks like (another Sharkeyism) Dave Navarro, they couldn't upstage some of the other acts for rockism.
Like "Green Milk from Planet Orange" (I shit you not) a Japanese band touring with them. We saw these guys earlier, in designer ski parkas and nikes with expensive rock haircuts and decided that they were so cool and Japanese that they didn't need to wear costumes. I asked one guy what band he was in and he said "Gleen Milk.. from Planet Olange." What sytle did they play? "Uhh.. kind of ploglock, sometime psychaderic." And they did, but also with boogaloo freakouts and groovy extended bass workouts and frantic screamy vocals. The vocalist came out in the audience with a bullhorn and jabbered and ranted and worked the crowd up into a Biblical psych-rock frenzy, circling around him, stomping and pounding on the floor. Their set, probably the best of the night (rivaled only by The Body), culminated in a Boredoms-like rythmic trance that raised the whole proceeding into something like a holy offering to the gods of amplified noise.
Providence's White Mice played a noisy, very Olneyville ugly rock set that I didn't feel too much (see photos below).
Another Providence disapointment were (i think ) "The Fuzz", who had something to do with Bob from Dropdead but were (in the words of Jay Lawrence) "too dumb to play".
Finally, the last of 20 or more bands was DMBQ . If all the noise and overkill and cheap booze hadn't worn out the crowd already, Japanese rockers DMBQ did with their deafening, theatric heavy rock finale. They sound like Guitar Wolf covering two Led Zeppelin songs at once. At this point a crowd of hundreds had dwindled down to maybe 25 stalwarts. For the last 20 minutes of their DMBQ played an excessive, extended noise climax where they invited the revelers to worships their phallic, vibrating guitars and then finally completely destroyed a brand new drum kit peice by peice. This was eardrum atrition, and the last note of the evening.
Like I said, it was hectic.