Live Music Seattle: Beer Metal Summer Camp

Showing posts with label Beer Metal Summer Camp. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Crop

Beer Metal Summer Camp

07/20/2012

Who:

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Crop are heavy. Heavy as hell... heavier than you think... However heavy you think they are, you're still nowhere close. Their limited online presence offers a 2009 demo recording, and it sounds (not to be insulting) like a demo.

I don't review demos-- I write up live shows; seen live, Crop are absolutely crushing. They're born of the thick, saturated density granfathered by Black Sabbath and grown into the vital and present Desert Rock and Stoner Rock cultures. Crop stomp, blast, and groove as well as any band I've seen.

As a three-piece, all three members of Crop have microphones and contribute to the growling, roaring vocal style of the band. Scotty's guitar churns out super-thick chugga chugga, but also pulls back for lighter, reverb laden atmospherics and transitions. Waylen's bass (a sweet Rickenbacker that I am very, very jealous of) provides driven, dirty low grooves that can go high and dexterous, especially when the guitar backs up in the changes. Mikey's drums are massive, usually holding the big beats of the slower tempos and saving the big fills for when the band speeds up and lets loose.

And they do speed up-- Crop plays a lot of heavy, stoney, slow jams, from dripping southern rock to monolithic doom (Crop plays Sleep better than Sleep does; no one who's been to a Crop show disagrees with that statement)-- but they know that Loud is louder after Quiet, and they know that Slow is slower and heavier after Fast... conversely, Fast is almost unmoored and kind of threatening after the swampy, thudding heavy riffs that make up the main body of a Crop song. They can transition into anything from banging, straight-ahead Motorhead style speed rock to full on grind. Better still, the transitions are well built and perfectly timed: the fast parts are dropped right were the pit is most likely to explode. The slow riffs come in right where they'll knock a crowd down.

They're not afraid of a bit of flash, either. There's no excess wankery in Crop, to be sure, but Mikey can bang out fills and beats in a variety of styles, Weyland can take basslines into high-register melody territory, and Scotty is a hell of a lead guitarist. More than just splitting octaves and playing higher-end rhythmic variations above the bass' main riff, Scotty can genuinely provide fast, solid rock 'n roll lead guitar... something you don't hear that often in Crop's peers.

Most recently, I saw Crop out in the woods, and it was a hell of a show. Aside from their songs being awesome, it's a blast to see them-- they're fun, powerful, have a great time, and always play to the outside limit of their energy. They can have a powerful effect on the mosh-prone, so if you don't intend to get into the pit, you may want to stand back or to the side (or find an otherwise defensible position).

And-- time sensitive side note-- they're playing at the Josephine this Friday (they're listed on the show calendar at the bottom of this page). If you like heavy music and haven't seen Crop, you need to see Crop. There's not a lot of Crop on the internet; they don't do a lot of advertising, they don't have a band site (or even a Facebook page), and they don't have much recorded or uploaded. If you want to know Crop, you need to go out and find them. It's worth the effort, I promise you.

Crop on Bandcamp

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Beer Metal Summer Camp

Beer Metal Summer Camp

At Lost Lake

About 2 hours east of Seattle

Beer Metal Summer camp is an odd beast-- It generally takes place the same weekend as the Capitol Hill Block Party. People start showing up out in the woods on Wednesday, staking out camping spaces and locking down the stage area. The Beer Metal crew is a pretty fun, friendly, gregarious bunch, and people will generally be hanging out around campfires for a few days.

Music starts on Friday, and a ton of bands flood the stage. It's out in the woods, so the stage is a naturally elevated riser under a small covering. The PA meets its paces, but it's definitely the kind of gear you'd take camping... which works for the aesthetic, because everyone sounds a little different out in the open air without the walls of a club reflecting sound around the room.

Beer Metal actually sounds amazing. Assuming a band's amps have enough force to keep up with drums and the PA out in the the open, I've always heard bands amazingly well at a great distance, from different camps around the lake. For not mic'ing cabs or drums, sound from afar carries well enough that I can always make out the unmic'd kick drum better than a lot of venues in Seattle.

It's the woods, so everything comes off a generator... which just got an upgrade, and a band would be hard pressed to strain it (and this from a guy in a band with two power guzzling bass amps/bass cabs). A couple 100w Marshalls aren't going to make a dent.

No matter the announced line-up, bands (or members of bands) will be arriving late due to work schedules, complications, and traveling a couple hours out of Seattle. Generally, you step into the spot where you're needed; the prime spots are between when the party kicks into high gear (probably around sunset) and when the attendees have started to pass out.

The Beer Metal Olympics are held on Saturday afternoon, and should not be missed. Events tend to include chugging a beer and performing a physical task. Last year I competed, this year I didn't-- it is hilarious to view the events without participating, especially as the MC has to repeat the instructions more frequently as the contestants become less capable of comprehending them.

The event is basically camaraderie-fueled: no one's getting paid, and everyone's just hanging out. There will be tons of bands that run a wide spectrum of tastes (though the word “metal” is in the name, the line-ups have never been exclusively metal), and for a few days, a large crowd of people exist within campfire culture, and they do it with an abundance of joy.