#travis foster

Give Me Back My Book (2017)

Story and Art: Travis Foster & Ethan Long

YOB

YOBOMANIA!

The beloved Oregon doomers return home from their journey across states and overseas

~ Review & Photographs by Stephanie Savenkoff | Films by Shelby Kray ~

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I arrived at Portland's historic Star Theater on December 9th to a stellar line up. Although friends in the music scene raved about Yob's live performances, the circumstances had never been favorable for me to catch a show. This was the last gig of the year for the hard-driving Oregon band, the finish to a month-long West Coast jaunt with Thrones and Khôrada, following Yob's exhaustive tour of Europe. I wasn't alone in my anticipation for this show. In fact, you'd hardly know it was a Sunday night in the heart of winter, as the concert hall was bustling with fans eager to welcome back the hometown heroes.

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THRONES

Slated to open this epic evening was Thrones, an experimental ambient-doom solo project of Joe Preston, whose long resume includes playing in Earth, Melvins, and High on Fire (to name just a few). He has been a strong artistic influence on so many Northwest acts and is regarded as an important figure in the scene. No surprise, then, that he played to a packed house.

Unfortunately, Thrones experienced some technical difficulties and the show to be cut prematurely short. As Joe's set depends on his backing track and pedals, if they are not working properly his performance suffers and thus he felt that he just couldn’t continue. The audience expressed their love and appreciation of him, just the same. I respected his decision to preserve the quality of his work, both for himself and his fans.

Sundries by Thrones

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KHôRADA

Khôrada took the stage next. Their album Salt came out last June, but we witnessed their third time performing it on stage together. Aaron John Gregory, formerly of Giant Squid, performed vocals and guitar along with Aesop Dekker on drums and Jason Walton on bass, both formerly from Agalloch.

Khôrada definitely performed with passion. The songs were relevant and immediate in their content. The music had sadness, pain and despair, all the hallmarks of Doom. Heavy, intense rhythms and riffs combined with poetic, storytelling lyrics created an evocative experience.

Their first song of the night, "Seasons of Salt," spoke to consumerism, the reality of the resulting climate change and the collapse of society as we know it. Their second song, "Water Rights," illuminated the raping of native lands for the oil pipeline.

“They know of your snake that burrows just beneath their lake afraid its steel skin will crack turning their water black with its venom and lack of regulation.”

The third song in the set, "Edeste," is another song about over consumption. It evoked images of a large snake enveloping its prey and asserting that Nature will conquer us before we can destroy her.

"Glacial Gold" speaks of finding something of value after tragedy and devastation. "Wave State" seems like a song written for and to a child, warning about the changes that are coming, that the earth will shrug us off and reclaim its dominance.

“I’ll try my best to explain how we are the mites we are the mange to be cleansed and washed away crops and culture civility and song Golden nation state battered by the waves swallowed and gone.”

The last song of Khôrada’s set was "Ossify." It spoke of the lack of bones left behind for future generations to find answers to happened to us, long after we have passed on from memory.

“It’s hard to fossilize that which has no spine they will dig through our plastic cocoons they will have to theorize how we died.”

Salt by KHôRADA

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YOB

Yob. Such a little word for such a giant of a band and its immense sound. While researching for this piece, I discovered that “yob” is actually a real word whose definition is: “a rude, noisy, aggressive young man.” With his punk roots, I can see how that word might have resembled Mike Scheidt in his youth. Today, the Yob frontman has evolved into an elder statesman of doom. More than that, he has grown into a kind of modern day Western world Shaman, his spirituality infusing and informing every work.

As I mentioned from the outset, this was my first live experience with Yob and, suffice it to say, I was absolutely blown to pieces. For only a three-piece band, Mike Scheidt (guitar, vox), Aaron Rieseberg (bass), and Travis Foster (drums) filled the space impressively with an impenetrable wall of sound.

I remember reading a review of Yob's 'Our Raw Heart' (2018), which stated that heaviness was used by the band as a tool, not an end product. I believe that is true. The music is very heavy but it is the vehicle that takes you places, not the destination. There was a depth of emotion and a gravity to their sound. The heaviness had a deep resonation. Words like “epic” and “crushing” are words frequently used to describe Yob’s music, too, though these adjectives seemed hardly capable of capturing the transcendent nature of Yob's sound.

I would also say that Yob's sound has a certain delicacy to it. They weave that delicacy together with crashing thunder and a cacophony of sound into something beautiful. They build in space and the notes breathe. There is a musicality with the heaviness and there was an intense beauty that I was unprepared for.

Yob opened their set with "Ablaze" which came out of the gate firing on all cylinders. It was a powerful intro that was very tight, with all of the members contributing equally and powerfully. Mike’s amazing, soaring vibrato and deep, guttural growls were positively thrilling. "The Screen" came next, which was heavy to the max. This anthemic song filled me with surging energy as the bass line marched ahead in a steady trudge that pulled me forward.

"Our Raw Heart," truly the heart of the album, was perfection. The song title fits the music perfectly. The album feels triumphant and Yob truly did put their raw heart out there. I doubt I am alone in feeling connected to the music. They express real emotion and everything feels true and meaningful. This time there is a gentle intro, soft, sweet and light, then it deepens and intensifies. The poetic lyrics reflect the experience that led to and shaped the album.

“Leaving nothing left behind breathing through my dark inside the raw within Ayni sent reverence for what has been given in this shared life, the raw within.”

Yob also performed "Ball of Molten Lead," "The Lie That Is Sin," and "Breathing from The Shallows" in their set. They were all great pieces and I enjoyed them, each one a unique gem to be treasured.

Mike had two broken guitar strings right before the last couple of songs and he saved the day by replacing them right on stage and faster than I would have dreamed possible. I am beyond grateful that I he did so because otherwise I would have missed out on their epic closing song, "Marrow."

"Marrow" had a stillness, a quietness and a gravity that pulled me in. It started with a trance inducing guitar picking rhythm which went on for a while, lulling me into a peaceful nod and sway. I found my mind wandering, slipping over thoughts of things going on in my life, like water over river rocks on its way downstream.

Then the bass and drums joined in and deepened the sound and expanded the feeling. The crashing crescendo a couple of minutes in pulled me out of the lull and shocked me with its intensity and power. My focus returned to the music again and to Mike’s voice that pierced through the wall of sound they created together that filled the space around us.

The music was unifying and I felt like the audience was connected. That is something I have never experienced before. It amplified my response and I found myself moved to tears. Though the lyrics aren’t overtly sad I felt an ache and a despair as I listened and I felt the grief of losses in my life that I hadn’t faced. I try to be tough and strong when facing adversity and loss and the music broke me open and let me feel everything I had been pushing away. Instead of making me sad it actually felt healing and made me feel whole. It broke down my walls, but it made me feel stronger, not weaker for it.

It felt like Yob poured everything they had onto that stage, opening up and giving it all to us. After the show I discovered that I was not alone in my response. Many people felt that connection and were moved deeply. Trying to articulate the experience is like trying to describe a rainbow to someone who can’t see. How do you fully describe the beauty, the emotion and the passion? The only way to truly understand the magic that is Yob is to experience them live yourself.

Voivod at the Juno Awards 2019 – Photo by Julia Pittman / Sony Music Canada

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Here at SILY, we’ve covered Eugene, Oregan doom metal band YOB plenty and will recommend their live shows to the end of time. Their latest album Our Raw Heart was an emotional masterpiece and one of our favorite records of last year. The band just released an Amoeba Green Room session where they perform Heart’s title track and a couple The Great Cessation standouts. They’re an amazing band. 

But this time around, it’s Canadian thrash metal titans Voivod, whose latest album The Wake just won a 2019 Juno Award for Metal/Hard Music Album, for whom we’d be most excited if we were going to this show. The Wake is, yes, a prog metal concept album, and it has its “of course” moments. Opener “Obsolete Beings” is about a society obsessed with--you guessed it--technology and phones. But on every track, including the most cliche ones, Voivod’s instrumental mastery takes over, the band’s tempo changes and complex time signatures acting as transitions between moments of pure ripping riffs. The distorted bass on “Orb Confusion” effectively drives the chugging imagining of post-apocalyptic chaos. “Always Moving” features syncopated distortion in between fast-picking thrash sections. (Some measures are in 15/4, because why not.) Closer “Sonic Mycelium” is a whirlwind mix of psychedelic, thrash, and prog. And even some moments of narrative are rewarding. The unexpectedly moving “Spherical Perspective” is delivered from the point of view of someone contemplating suicide, while “The End of Dormancy”, on the other end of the mood spectrum, describes an enemy from outer space, rendering the band’s militaristic instrumentals more welcome than they would be otherwise.

Voivod co-headlines with YOB tonight, and the band’s contrasting paces should make for a great double bill. While if recent setlists are an indication you shouldn’t expect Voivod to play any of their previous record, 2013′s great Target Earth, they should perform most of The Wake and material from their at this point legendary discography.

Belgian metal band Amenra opens.