Pallbearer. // photo by Nick Spacek
Pallbearer
With REZN and The Keening
The Bottleneck
Friday, June 28
Literally a year to the day since Arkansas metal band Pallbearer debuted two new songs from their forthcoming album at RecordBar, the band’s Temporary Spaces tour in support of said album, Mind Burns Alive, hit the Bottleneck. Despite impending tornado warnings and a possibility of hail, many black-clad metalheads packed the downtown Lawrence venue on Friday night.
Opening with Forgotten Days‘ “Silver Wings” and immediately following it with the title track to their new album meant that Pallbearer was kicking off with more recent material, but the audience was immediately receptive. The opening acts had seen a lot of chatter toward the back, but the Arkansas metal act and the sheer volume emanating from the stage meant the band had no distractions, and the audience was in the palm of their hand from riff one.
By the time Spencer Ouellette from REZN guested on Mind Burns Alive‘s “Endless,” the fact that the audience had just made it through all ten minutes plus of Foundation of Burden‘s “The Ghost That Used to Be” was irrelevant. In a live setting, the new material blends effortlessly with decade-old tracks, and their fans are just as excited to hear the new stuff as they are to hear the old although, to be fair, set closer “Foreigner” is always going to be the high point of any Pallbearer show from here until their demise. Sorrow and Extinction‘s opener will remain forever their closer, and the beauty of the first song most folks ever heard being the last most hear live is a beautiful bit of cyclical resonance.
REZN. // photo by Nick Spacek
When you see a band member futzing with a modular synthesizer with a saxophone on a stand next to him, you know you’re in for a set that will push limits, or at the very least hope so, and REZN did not disappoint. The synths leant an eerie effect to the band’s doom metal, ably abetted by the fact that if your vision wandered during the rather static performance, you could see lightning flashing above you through the Bottleneck’s skylights. By the time the sax came into play halfway through the band’s second song, the audience was fully into REZN’s atmospheric, droning sounds of the end times. Whether they’d been fans beforehand (and quite a few were), they certainly were afterward.
The Keening. // photo by Nick Spacek
Opening act The Keening’s sound was not metal, per se, but their vibe certainly was. The four-piece features both keys and violin, with high, keening harmonies and songs that feel immeasurably sad. It’s a mix of dungeon synth, Myrkur, a slew of downer indie folk, and drumbeats which hit like thunder rolls. A set from The Keening is a slow, ominous ride where everything is a warning, except for frontwoman Rebecca Vernon dedicating a song by saying, “This next song’s for Palestine, because Palestine does not belong in a cage. Free Palestine,” offering up a sense of hope and resistance.
All photos by Nick Spacek
Pallbearer
Pallbearer setlist
Silver Wings
Mind Burns Alive
Fear and Fury
Where the Light Fades
The Ghost I Used to Be
Endless Place (with Spencer Ouellette from REZN on saxophone)
Signals
With Disease
Foreigner
REZN
The Keening
