#legendsedinburgh

Hundred Year Old Man - Codespeaker

Date and Loc: Nov 26, Legends Edinburgh

Who: HYOM and Codespeaker are two flavours of a particular niche - atmospheric post-metal. Maybe slightly blackened unless that's some static in my speaker. They're Godspeed You! Black Emperor meets, uhh, death metal.

Why am I here: I'm here for two reasons - actually three reasons. 1 is that Codespeaker are on my radar because the fella from Iron Altar - who deposited one of the best sets I have ever attended directly on my head when they opened for Mastiff back in March, did so while wearing a Codespeaker t-shirt.

Second is because my gf works with two members of the band so it seems only polite to go.

And then third is because HYOM are in that very large category of bands who I know nothing about but on paper i'll like them because my first ever metal album was Cult of Luna's eternal kingdom and i am able to look at their graphic design choices and map that back onto an obvious and agreeable artistic lineage.

Solo: No im with beautiful girlfriend and we're rocking matching full of hell t-shirts (both mine).

Was it good: If you've ever been to Edinburgh microvenue legends - if you have ever walked past and smelled Edinburgh microvenue legends - you've got the vibe of this thing down pat. That was the gig.

Metal exists on a spectrum that runs from moshing to nodding. This was absolutely a nodder, which was always gonna be the case because post-metal. But Codespeaker frontman gave it a good go getting out and about and shouting at people in the crowd, which made things feel more lively and I think anyone who had their personal space violated was game for it really.

Going in knowing nothing, I learnt a lot about Hundred Year Old Man through the course of the show. Most importantly - there is no old man - the vocalist looks to be about 35.

There are actually several men and a woman - their combined ages are definitely more than one hundred. So I think it is more about having the hundred year old man vibe - slow and heavy but also wise - maybe with a really long beard - rather than a literal description. I hope there are some elderly gentlemen out there who would feel this band had done them, as their namesake, proud.

I spent some time during the instrumental passages of which there are a fair few reflecting on what rachel berry and kurt from Glee (I think with Wicked being out atm, the episode in which they have a battle of wills over who can better nail the defying gravity highnote has been up top in my mind) would make of all this. They would be initially shocked but the obvious attention to technique would win them round and we would see, in subsequent episodes of the show, the pair of them start to incorporate screams and growls into their rep and ultimately we would see them continue to explore the scene, perhaps ultimately covering 'waco horror' by burner in a halloween special.

Finally a shout-out to 'carthage' which was joint song of the night alongside something HYOM played which had a very nasty riff in but I don't know what the song is called (it was about rising as one or something).