Dav Waldron's Blog

So it seems, contrary to popular belief, that Santy thinks I have been a good boy this year. I have received from him 2 most wonderful new toys which move my plans to unleash horrific music upon the world even closer to reality.

Tosh and Pod - a double act to be frightened of...

So what is it?

Well it’s a Toshiba Satellite LD350 – 214 which boasts an Athlon Dual Core CPU, 2 GB of RAM (soon to be upgraded to 4GB when I have some spare cash), 250GB hard drive and a 17″ screen! So it’s “portable desktop” rather than “laptop” territory which is great as I need to be able to take it to and from practice etc.

On top of that we have the Line 6 Pod X3. This is a guitar (and vocal!) multi-effects processing unit that can replicate the sound of many different amps, cabs, microphones and of course, effects units. It also acts as a MIDI device when connected via USB into a computer and after some fiddling around with stuff this afternoon, I managed to get it correctly installed on the Tosh.

Next remaining step is to install some manner of recording software and learning how the frak the Pod works I also need to get some manner of backpack or bag to carry both devices, their power supplies, cables, etc. Have had a few recommendations already in that regard, so no worries.

My current problems are two-fold:
1) my flat is WAY too small to set this stuff up in it.
2) my decent guitars are all out in storage since the closure of the BatCave.

So I’d already planned on moving house anyway, so that’s grand, all that remains is getting to the storage place and grabbing my axes.

Fun times ahead

Some of you are aware of a place I call the Bat Cave.  Some of you have even visited!  It’s where J-Cloth practices, or should I say practised…

The lads who own the place are closing the doors.   They’ve apparently been hit with a big rates bill that they just can’t afford and so have decided to wind the company down.  We’re all completely gutted.  The BatCave was a second home to most of us.  The studio bit we spent a long weekend (not to mention a fair whack of money) soundproofing and you could hear nothing outside the building because of that.  We often worked out there will 3 or 4 am and it bothered nobody.

Just last week we had got all our recording setup figured out after several long weeks of tweaking this and that and re-wiring both the sound desk and the ProTools PC attached to the DigiDesign desk.   I will now have to spend Wednesday (when I get back from the States) clearing my gear out of the Cave and trying to squeeze as much as possible into my tiny flat. I have my big amp, my effects board + pedals, 3 guitars, a computer, various books and DVDs (we have an extensive library built up over the last year).   We also have to find place for our PA, 2 bass-bins, 2 speakers, all the cabling that goes with that, 4 MASSIVE stage curtains that are used for sound proofing on the walls, various bits of furniture (tables, desks, couches), a TV, some computer monitors, another 2 PCs, all sorts of stage equipment odds and ends, etc, etc – the list goes on and on…

Miserable doesn’t even begin to come close to describing how I feel about this whole thing, but I’m trying not to let it ruin my holiday.

So if anyone knows of a warehouse/big room somewhere in the Dublin area that we could rent, please let me know.  As it stands, we have 24/7 access to this place which suits us well, so that’d be ideal, but not completely essential.  It has to be somewhere that’ll just be us though.  A shared studio is too expensive and restrictive.

I hate when shit like this happens

As if seeing Electric Wizard wasn’t good enough, the gods of metal decided that there should be MOAR horror unleashed upon the very appreciative Irish Doom scene.  What we got was a day long treat that was without doubt one of the finest single day metal events I’ve ever been to.

Dublin Doom Day (Chapter One) had been on a slightly bumpy journey as the original venue of “The Scene” has now closed down. Eventually Fibber Magees was the new venue – I wasn’t awfully impressed at that news as it’s not the most amazing place in the world, but do you know what? It was perfect for the day that was in it!

So the running order was as follows:

• DWELL IN SUN
• ON PAIN OF DEATH
• COUNCIL OF TANITH
• WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
• GRAVEYARD DIRT
• ESOTERIC
• SATURNUS
• THE LAMP OF THOTH

Esoteric were the headlining act of the day, but I believe that scheduling meant they were to finish by 11.

As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, On Pain Of Death and Wreck of the Hesperus are friends of mine, and I really love the stuff they produce.  More on that later…

I was delayed in arriving and missed out on Dwell In Sun.  I caught them before in the Lower Deck before and I’m sorry I missed them.  One of the OPoD lads said they were excellent and reviews I’ve seen from some of the folk on Metal Ireland seem to suggest the same.  This of course just means that I’ll have to seek out their next performance

My arrival perfectly coincided with On Pain Of Death’s start and whilst it was a hot and sunny day outside, the atmosphere in Fibbers soon turned dark, bleak and heavy as their set progressed.  A sense of dread took hold and the audience stood still fearing that movement might single them out for an extra helping of punishment.  An excellent set over all and everyone who stood up to watch it took something from it I’d say – even if that was just the impending sense of a week of nightmares…

Council of Tanith followed – they’re simply not my cuppa tea, so I went outside with the lads to watch the soccer.  They seemed very well received though as they tend to be.  I heard some fairly big blunders from the guitars and a solo that seemed to be completely out of tune which was, to be honest, dreadful.

On then to Wreck of the Hesperus.  I am very much a WOTH fanboy, and make no apologies for it!  Once again they delivered a filth spawned tide of sewer-rot.  They started with a really long sample and I remember turning around to Hick (OPoD) saying “it’d be fucking hilarious if the whole set was just this sample and they didn’t play a note!”  Didn’t take long for things to kick off though and the assault began.  Andy’s screaching lyrics and howling feedback makes for an uncomfortable experience.  Rodge’s Bass thumps along and keeps you standing – just.  Ray’s drums beat the very essence of humanity out of you though and turn you into little more than a shell waiting to be filled up with the afore mentioned screaming and heavy dread-riffs.  We were all left shadows of our former selves by the time the last note rang out.   Once again WOTH had abused us and we thanked them for it.

This was to be the end of this half of the day’s activities…

I wandered back outside in tatters to try and get back to normality.  There  was soccer on which certainly helped.  The outdoors part of Fibbers is rather good – it seems to me that this is a venue who had the ability to do well out of the smoking ban – it was jammed with us and with people from the hotel.  After some sport, I decided I was in need of something’s flesh.  Long story short, I went to Burger King and arrived back in to hear Graveyard Dirt.

Traditional Doom is very hit and miss for me.  It lacks the misery and weight that I find so appealing on the more extreme end of the Doom scale.  Graveyard Dirt made a bit of a dent on my psyche though and I liked some of what they had to offer.  I shall have to seek out some of their music I think to forumlate a better opinion.  They had good stage presence and the crowd seemed to be liking it, so fair play to them.

It was at this stage that I figured I might just indulge in something I hadn’t done in quite some time – I got a bottle of Buckfast  Esoteric were coming and it seemed criminal to tackle a performance of theirs with a completely clear head.  It turned out to be the right decision…

It began…

…it carried on…

…it ended.

I simply cannot put into words how amazing this set was.  It was one of the best live music experiences of my life.  Found myself in front of the stage for the majority of it and totally lost in the thick fog of noise that rolled off the stage.  When it all ended, I found myself talking to the front man, Mr Greg Chandler, about all the multi-effects he has for both his guitar and vocals – fair play to the man, he’d just finished a set and was trying to pack it all up, but was good enough to give me a basic idea of how his set-up worked.

And so it was, at 23:15, I figured nothing that remained on the line-up could have topped the experience I’d just had with Esoteric so I headed off  By all accounts Saturnus and Lamp of Toth were very good, but I got what I’d come for.  It was a day that showcased the power of music as a medium to deliver horror and misery straight into the brain.

I wanna say a big thank you to all the bands and the organisers, not to mention the staff at Fibbers (who for some reason had only one man on by himself during the day and he worked fierce hard to keep us all thirst free).

Last week, I went with the members of J-Cloth (and a couple of other friends) to see Electric Wizard at Whelans. It’s not the first time I’ve seen the Wizard (5th actually), but it was their first Irish gig and I was damned if I was gonna miss it given it was on around the corner from where I live!

So got to the venue, met the rest of the gang, handed out tickets and got money and all was well. I was expecting a big crowd in the venue, so I said to everyone that we may as well chill in the main bar and catch up with one another as there’d been some time from when some of us had last seen one another. It was particularly great to see Ty cause he lives in Bettystown and doesn’t get into civilisation as often as we or he’d like. I had also heard that the support band, Blood Ceremony weren’t great. This turns out to be not true – we caught the tail end of their set when we wandered in and it was pretty good. Unusual in that the singer was also a flautist and it worked rather well over the very 70′s style heavy rock (Sabbath / Jethro Tull inspired). I’ve been listening to some of their stuff on their MySpace and it’s still decent, but lacks the punch that a live performance delivers.

Blood Ceremony

So after some chat and wandering around (and happily bumping into my mate Alan who’s now playing bass with Natty Wailer he tells me) and asking the J-Cloths what they’d thought of the opening act, Wizard took to the stage. It was a familiar set for anyone who’s seen them recently – they’re a bit lazy in that regards in that they’ve never really changed the set list since they started touring the Witchcult Today album:

• Witchcult Today (Witchcult Today)
• Dunwich (Witchcult Today)
• We Hate You (Dopethrone)
• Satanic Rites of Drugula (Witchcult Today)
• Return Trip (Come My Fanatics)
• The Chosen Few (Witchcult Today)
• Funeralopolis (Dopethrone)

(Album name in brackets)

Electric Wizard begin...

A couple of points about the surroundings and venue: its not very big and it wasn’t as loud as one might have expected from the Wizard. It wasn’t detrimental to the evening as a whole, but I really missed the feeling of the music pulsing through me that I’ve experienced at previous Wizard gigs. The crowd were well up for it and there was just about enough space for everyone (where as Gojira who I saw there earlier this year had about 30 or 40 people too many). Now that the negatives are out of the way, onto the band!

They played very well, tighter I thought than the last time I saw them (at Hellfest in France earlier this year). Jus rarely opened his eyes only to turn around and take a swig from his can of Bavaria. Liz looked like she always does – astonishingly beautiful and happy on a stage playing her SG. Tas who’s a more recent addition on Bass (replacing Rob Al-Issa) was well into his bit and played well and Shaun on drums beat out a beat to keep the head rolling. I occasionally looked around to check on my friends – it was their first time seeing (and hearing in some cases) Wizard and everyone seemed to be getting into it. Johnny po0k in particular really got into the vibe of it all.

Electric Wizard at the end of their set

And so as good thing things must end, as the last wails of feedback made sure we’d have less hearing than we had at the start of the gig upon the band’s completion of Funeralopolis I turned and saw a very happy gang of campers in the form of J-Cloth and friends. Mission accomplished But that wasn’t to be the end of the evening…

A trip was made to the BatCave and an after party was had Turns out the BatCave’s an awesome party venue too, but we suspected that was the case all along. Was nice to have guests out (some of my friends from Mayo who were up for the gig and the afore mentioned po0k) and I even got to horrify some of them with the vocal stylings of the Doom tune that Neal, The Dragon and I wrote!

Three of us were out in the BatCave last night having put in some time practicing and even writting a new tune.  We were chilling out and watching and listening to some random stuff on YouTube.  Neal stuck on some Big Black and in the related links there was an interview with Steve Albini entitled “DIY or DIE” which you can watch now.

You may never have heard of him, but you’ve quite likely heard some of the stuff he’s worked on.  Steve Albini has produced albums for The Pixies, PJ Harvey, The Breeders and Nirvana amongst others and if you know what you’re listening for, you’ll easily pick out his distinctive style in a lot of these bands and artist’s work. Unfortunately, the business people he’s told you to beware in the video above got a hold of In Utero after saying his production wasn’t radio friendly enough and it was re-mixed.  To it’s detriment I feel.  You can scour the tubes for his mixes of some of the In Utero tracks – for me they were more raw and rough around the edges which is precisely what they should have been cause we’re talking about Grunge here, not some generic radio guitar rock.

Not content with that, he’s also been in several bands himself including Big Black, Rapeman and currently Shellac (who’re fast becomming a favourite of mine).

So I’ll leave you with this ten minute long video all about the man himself and a recommendation to check out Shellac and Big Black.  I hope you enjoy and in the man’s own words: Be Prepared!