Live Review: Pallbearer, Lizzard Wizzard, Hobo Magic

For all the love Pallbearer have attracted from so-called ‘cool’ publications of late, it’s surprising how little of the hipster set seems to give a care about the Arkansas four-piece rolling through town. The crowd is all leather jackets and hesher devotees — nothing like the Deafheaven trendhopper fiasco that came to town when those dudes toured.

Hobo Magic seem plenty comfortable with the crowd that has assembled early for the evening. And the crowd seems plenty comfortable with what Hobo Magic have to offer. Their Sabbath worship sounds particularly potent this Sunday night, the big, bluesy stomp of their self-titled record sounding more and more powerful as the dudes continue to play their shit live. If they keep up this rate of improvement, who knows how tasty their jams could end up sounding. Maybe one day they could be the aural equivalent of the zinger fillet stacker. Wouldn’t that the dream.

Lizzard Wizzard are in front of audiences seemingly every time a doom band rolls through town, which is fantastic, because they rule exceedingly hard. And the dudes seem really conscious of not outstaying their welcome, so they keep coming up with new jams to keep the crowds interested. Or maybe it’s just that the reefer-addled brain of the average doom fan is entirely free of the facility for short-term memory. No, it’s definitely the former, because the new stuff LizzWizz hits is sternum-rattling doom brilliance.

When a single guitar chord rings out for about two minutes, you know you’re in for something special. When it’s the first note in a band’s set, you know that the hype surrounding them is entirely justified. Pallbearer waste no time showing Crowbar what’s up. What’s so captivating about their tunes is how they manage to hybridise the vintage Pentagram/Saint Vitus doomy goodness with the Isis/Cult of Luna post-metal business. They are tunes that are simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, tunes that kick a fair amount of tukas. Cuts like The Ghost I Used To Be, off Foundations Of Burden, sound positively monolithic and Crowbar responds in a furious sea of head nods to these tukas-rocking tunes.

The textured heaviness is unrelenting and awesome, Pallbearer doing little to separate one song from the next. In doing so, they create an ethereal, face-melting jam that would be the kind of thing that would have you saying we haven’t seen a band this good since (insert doom metal band here) but thanks to the efforts of the Life Is Noise touring company, we don’t even really need to fetishise these shows. There’s going to be another brilliant one rolling through in a month or so. But that next show isn’t going to detract from how kickarse Pallbearer are tonight.