Low Places at Vacation Vinyl Friday March 2nd, 2012

The members of Low Places played only one long number during their performance at Vacation Vinyl on Friday night, but it may have been several songs they played without even really stopping. It was an earthshaking hardcore sound, which resonated like a loud and painful agony, a violent number which took the longest time to start up, slowly building up in a sludge-doom instrumentation then bursting in an aggressive and drawling scream accompanied by a throbbing rhythm.

Their music had a way to make you feel uncomfortable, as if you were living an endless and hellish nightmare, the singer constantly balancing from one foot to another, and the five of them in attack-assault mode during the whole time, while curiously making a sort of circle and turning their back to the audience most of the time.  

If my references about hardcore/hatecore are quite limited, I would say that their metallic-punk-noisy long howl was more hateful and vengeful than that of many other bands I have heard, and the distortion of the guitars was roaring in a more sinister mode than usual. Well, it is true that the cover art of their album ‘Spiritual Treatment’ could give you recurrent nightmares and their ‘Listen’ facebook page is decorated with swastikas, so obviously they had announced their beast-from-hell colors. 

Their performance was short but efficient, all of them ending crawling on the floor, playing with their distortion pedals for some time,… may be the beast had died after all.