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Saturday, November 5, 2011
Phalgeron
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Phalgeron have deep roots in the post-British Invasion, Power Metal genres, but aren't constrained by them-- for anyone not interested in vocals that wail or ramp up to a flamboyant falsetto, that may be their greatest strength. They can march out covers of Mercyful Fate (with growls and roars replacing King Diamond's trademark shrieks) and Suffocation with equal panache, both made more impressive for Phalgeron being a guitar/bass/drum power trio.
My night with them at the Galway was not my first time with them-- I've known this band since they were called Phlagathon, I've seen them a number of times, got a ride home with them from a too-long-to-walk-home-from show in the south of Seattle, played with them at Beer Metal Summer Camp.... I've known this band for a while, and I've always liked them.
So I don't want this review to fall on deaf ears just because I was a bit out of m'self. I've dug this band since well before I started this blog.
That said, my Phalgeron eureka moment occurred maybe six hours after ubik.frontwoman Michelle and I got slightly out-of-our-heads (some substances stay potent, wrapped in foil in a ziplock bag in my fridge, for five years. Who knew?) We did enjoy our time in odd places before the show, but it's fair to say we both breathed a sigh of relief when we took our seats at the Galway: safe haven. Home base.
Watching good, national bands (Phalgeron was the only local band of the night) tune up on a small stage at a local bar was a bit of a godsend to me at the moment: I've been in Seattle long enough that I'm not sure I ever appreciated how far removed I am from my 16-year-old self, someone who listened to tapes of obscure bands I never thought I'd see live. Shows like this are a candyland my teenage self never dreamed of, but they've become a normal part of my everyday life.
Just sayin'... this is good fortune.
Though the bill featured a good band from Utah and a cheesily flamboyant band from L.A. (a contest between the two guitarists determining who was the better wanky lead player? Seriously?), Phalgeron were the highlight of the night. Again, this isn't preferential treatment to a local band, because I truly had an epiphany with them that night: I'd always liked them, but I'm still kicking myself... I ought to have loved them well before this specific night.
Phalgeron are almost perfectly my kind of metal. They're technical and articulate, but not cheesy or overly flamboyant about it. They mine heavy, heavy grooves, too, and have a tight, true-to-death metal moshability. Finally, they're metal as metal can be, but their stage presence plays massive pronouncements and edicts delivered from God-On-Stage as profoundly silly... which is to say, Phalgeron are fun to see, a million miles removed from the pompous asses that can pop up on metal stages. Phalgeron aren't just better than the egotists that populated the Candlemass stage, they're the antidote to it.
That kind of fun-and-loose personality only boosts the stunning gestalt of the music. Guitarist Tyler and bassist Lane have a kind of Jeff Walker/Bill Steer interplay on their dual vocals, and Lane will often hold down the groove while Tyler's guitar hits the British Invasion/power metal technical top end. The songs will evolve and change, find different riffs, different grooves... interact, react, and play off one another... the highlights of what intelligent metal riffing is capable of.
This doesn't even mention how Michelle and I spent our night: watching Ian, Phalgeron's drummer. The drums in Phalgeron don't have any limits: Ian blends easily from the hardcore influenced drumming of early thrash to the double-kick drumming that dominated the Slayer era of metal to modern blast beats. Big, rolling fills come in where the songs peak and hit their harder corners, but, like the rest of Phalgeron, the drums are exactly as flashy as they need to be... the fills and rolls fit the songs and work within the songs themselves. The drumming is massive, technical, and executed with exactly as much panache as fits the songs... but isn't a show-off session. Everything is dexterous; nothing is in excess.
All things considered, I consider Phalgeron one of the absolute best metal bands in Seattle-- I haven't reviewed any of their contemporaries (yet), but I see them as Top 5 (probably Top 3... I can only think of two other metal bands in Seattle I like nearly as much as them), and I tend not to mention bands I can't link to.
By my measure this is a world-class metal band, exactly the kind of group I used to listen to obsessively before I moved to a city where I could see Phalgeron every other month or so. I am lucky to have them, and so is Seattle... and if you're not in the Pacific Northwest, then buying their record puts you in the shoes I was in when I was listening to Carcass tapes all those years ago.
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