wmmberger (Curator)

What is metal, or rock for that matter? While others scramble for last-minute sub-subgenrefication, I am happy just to watch those umbrellas widen, and the envelope swell and burst. Occultation are such a band, one that tastefully mines not-immediately-recognizable influences, and much like that pre-job interview adage, "just be themselves, they'll be fine." Fine they did do, having grown leaps and bounds since the impressive Somber Dawn demo, to a sound that defines itself throughout their debut full-length, Three and Seven, on Profound Lore.

That first demo, and an early, related live video clip, led to their My Castle of Quiet invitation, and it was an easy call for yours truly that the band was indeed a perfect fit to the horror-gloom purveyed weekly on the radio program. These complex, richly haunting songs marry almost to an absurd ideal with the essence of MCoQ, such that it was an easy decision to host a live performance, positioned to promote their groundbreaking first release.

Here's their set, short, sweet and brimming with power >

A heap of cobwebby thanks to Bob Bellerue, creator of the Ende Tymes Festival (this weekend!), who engineered the session with his usual aplomb and almost empathic understanding of the band's sonic goals and emphases. Thanks also to Tracy Widdess of Brutal Knitting for smashing up my gritty iPhone captures into a thing of beauty.

So it goes with "heavy" bands nowadays; it's the ones that defy easy genre-fication that are closest to my heart. Sure, black metal is amazing, but it's the projects that don't let the sound play them that really shine. And so it is with punk-noise bands like Drunkdriver, Tinsel Teeth (ed., avoid name dropping), and our guests a few weeks ago, Wretched Worst.

Wretched Worst appeal to me in the same way Flipper does, that feeling of almost falling off the building, as though things might get reckless in the room at any moment. And they carry on the tradition of anything-goes experimentation, forged by the Subterranean Records scene in the 1980s, where one can just grunt, or make one very sparse, metallic noise with great earnest, or let a good, collective drone just go, for five or more straight minutes. Noise-brut, one might call it. These indefinable, maniacal songs are regardless quite pleasing to the ear.

But make no mistake, one could also hear Wretched Worst and get none of what I just wrote, and just find their head swirling in heart-jarring thrusts, very sexual and wildly human. Hard as hell. L'humian désenchaîné.

So before I take on airs even more, let's just get to their set, and let that be the proof in the pudding. Quite righteously engineered LIVE by Diane Kamikaze.

Thanks to singer Matt (Matt Minter, WW vocalist), who does most if not all of the band's record-and-tape packaging art, and is a unique talent; maybe the closest references I could cite would be Raymond Pettibon, and 80s, L.A. punk-flyer art in general, but with an ultra-modern, disturbing-horror angle as well. Thanks also to the band—Aaron, Thad and Brian (who will join us again on The Castle, playing drums with The Gate on April 27), and thanks to Tracy Widdess for mashing up my (and possibly Diane's) captures of the band, to create the glorious portrait that accompanies this article.

Dig it! Wretched Worst on bandcamp.