The backdrop to the Market Hotel’s stage is a huge window that shows the rumbling M and J trains as the elevated subway hugs the second floor of this building at the Myrtle Avenue stop in Brooklyn. While anyone who has ever ridden NYC rails can attest, the noise can be deafening, but no screeching tracks could be heard over the crashing metal and furious sounds emanating from the speakers inside the club on this Friday night (9/9).
The Portland Oregon-based three-piece Peace Sign started the show with their revving punk playing. The outfit had touches of Motorhead sitting in with the Meat Puppets as they banged and growled through their angular tracks like “Plastic” and “Sex Death Power”. Closer “Outer Space” was a highlight as the band kept their intensity but stretched out a bit, previewing the style which was about to unfold.
The headliners Earthless were up next and the San Diego trio of guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, bassist Mike Eginton and drummer Mario Rubalcaba were in top, mid-tour form. While the band always brings ferocious energy, their newest release, Night Parade of one Hundred Demons (which they played in its entirety), finds the group adding more textured soundscapes to the mix. Opening with “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons Part 1” the mallets on cymbals rattled out the shimmering sounds around very pretty/spacey pedal work from Mitchell and Rickenbacker bass plucks from Eginton, creating a “Maggot Brain” like feeling to start the song.
Things kicked into heavy metal slamming six minutes in, using a punishing deep groove as a backbone before kicking up the tempo after fifteen minutes, that is when the true shredding started peaking, leading into a galloping finale after about twenty minutes of straight excellence. The start of “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons Part 2” allowed the crowd to catch their breath but also wandered for too long and was adrift before the band locked back in via Rubalacaba’s huge drums and cymbal hits, using the slow Black Sabbath-like groove, which allowed Mitchell to go insane with layers of sounds and solos.
The drums and bass picked it all up and pushed things forward on “Death to the Red Sun” as the propulsive track delivered eardrum smashing power as Mitchell’s wailing wrapped up the instrumental excursions on a thunderous high note. The trio didn’t let things slow down though as they powerfully ran through their short burst of punk power via “Volt Rush” before the outfit played a metal/blues, heavier-than-lead cover of “Stoned Out of My Mind“ by the Japanese group Speed, Glue & Shinki, marking the first time anyone sang any lyrics in over an hour of straight-up blistering rock.
The night of adventurous psych, metal, and blues-based grooves concluded with another cover, this time the trio fired up a chugging version of The Groundhogs “Cherry Red” finding Mitchell singing around his descending riffs, as the band synched on all crunching cylinders to wrap up their exhilarating tour stop in Bushwick.
