EARTH: Live

You may recall me talking about the ERGODOS festival. I went to nearly every concert in this nine day long event, missing just one night to go and see EARTH in Whelan's. I was excited about seeing EARTH – they are meant to be the band who inspired ((((SUNN-O)))), so this promised a lot of drone-rock action. I was particularly excited because I had never seen EARTH before.

Or so I thought. One of the band played a bit of jazz as a warm-up for the main event, but when the rest of the band started coming on they all started looking a bit familiar. Flailing around in mental confusion, I accused my friend E------ of bringing me along to see a subset of NILE, that ultimately not great band seen with him recently in Whelan's. He assured me that I was on crack. Then it hit me – I have seen EARTH before. In fact, I had seen EARTH before some time last summer, in no other venue than Whelan's.

I found this a bit perturbing, because the memory suddenly came back of how I had found EARTH less than overwhelming. This time I liked them a bit more. They do suffer a bit from all the songs being kind of the same – one big fucker of a heavy riff played fairly slowly over and over again. But you can get into it and start seeing the variations or noticing the flourishes being added in over the riff. Curiously, for all their scary music, the band themselves seem to be an amiable enough bunch. I must investigate them on record sometime.

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