BLANCK MASS / FRANS GENDER & VIOLET GRACE | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Tue 3 Dec
Are you seated uncomfortably, or alternatively pinned nervously towards the back of the room? Then drag queen double-act Frans Gender and Violet Grace will begin, delivering a crash course in how to vogue, the art of the wickedly barbed insult and ways to tell if your husband is secretly gay. (Hint: if he likes guacamole, you should be worried.) Suffice to say that you get less simulated masturbation and fewer songs about fucking your own son from the average support act. Violet’s acrobatics are indeed “wince-inducing”, to quote a fellow scribe, but her bitchy comments sting too. “Are you proud of me now, Dad?”, Frans pouts into her phone as she livestreams the end of the show. “You don’t know your dad,” comes the immediate quip from across the stage.
No sooner have people peeled themselves off the walls than Benjamin John Power has plastered them back again. Attempting to justify his grand claim, in a recent Guardian article, that Sunn O))) are “the most influential metal group of the decade”, John Doran cited Blanck Mass as evidence that the doom duo’s impact has been felt far beyond the conventional boundaries of the genre. He had a point – and ‘felt’ is the right word, because to witness Power’s electro-terrorism live is to experience the music physically as much as aurally.
Doran went on to argue that for a modern secular audience Sunn O)))’s appeal lies in the transcendental nature of the music they make, and in the quasi-religious ritual and ceremony of their shows. While once upon a time – as one half of Fuck Buttons, and on his debut solo LP – Power promoted the positive, cleansing, euphoric qualities of noise, now Blanck Mass live up to their name, serving up relentless scorched-earth nihilism rather than spiritual succour to a congregation made to feel like they’re at a rave in a nuclear bunker.
From brutal new album Animated Violence Mild come Death Drop, a Satanic Doctor Who theme, and Love Is A Parasite, a sonically savage remake of Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. With its big beats and bright, bold synths, House Vs. House is the LP’s sole concession to pop, but even then it’s pop perverted and fractured almost beyond recognition. Even better is Please, from 2017’s World Eater – a Club Classics anthem corrupted by Aphex Twin, essentially.
The show ends with punishing black metal pair Odd Scene and Shit Luck – or at least I think it does. By that point, to be honest, my ears are useless appendages, merely the means by which the mushy slop that was my brain is leaking out of my head.
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos NOEL GARDNER