•
Rating: Starting from the final thoughts, it could be said that the most exhilarating moments of the evening were the first and the last: that is, the first song played by Black Mountain - the opening band - and the last one, played by Dead Meadow. But let's go in order.
The evening is opened by Black Mountain, from Canada, who look like hippies out of their time; they take the stage and immediately start a litany backed by organ and bass phrases. A few moments later, a fast and dreamy piece starts, a kind of Neu!'s "Hallogallo" in a stoner version. Beautiful. The song goes on for several minutes and seems never to stop. When this happens, the music seems to crumble, leaving room for an even more beautiful colossal riff. The rest of Black Mountain's set unfortunately doesn't live up to the beginning: the tracks are good, for goodness' sake, but they lack bite, the original spark that excites the audience; everything revolves around a psychedelic blues by Quicksilver Messenger played conventionally. The verdict is still positive, the band needs to grow and will probably manage to capitalize on the talents they undoubtedly possess.
Midway through the evening, Dead Meadow from Washington D.C. take the stage, who (I don't know why) appear on stage as a trio. The conditions are set for a truly remarkable performance: blue and green lights projected onto the audience, lysergic lights hovering over the instruments, and the music: a psychedelic hard-blues made of compelling grooves and space wanderings. The new songs and those from "Feathers" are very beautiful, but something is off. The venue's acoustics are decidedly poor and penalizing: as long as the band plays hard, everything works just fine, but when the three launch into psychedelic wanderings, the sound that emerges is muddy and chaotic, perhaps due to an excessive volume for such a small venue, or perhaps due to the truly poor quality of the equipment.
Nevertheless, Dead Meadow live is a grand experience, as demonstrated by the last track on the setlist, the band's flagship: "Sleepy Silver Door." A track that starts powerful and thunderous like Black Sabbath played by Sleep: a rhythm that could move mountains, a martial and evocative riff that magnificently stretches for 7 minutes until the music changes and becomes something else. It becomes the dream of a river in flood: unstoppable and majestic. Immense and romantic. A quarter-hour monolith that echoes in the air even when the amplifiers have been turned off.
Dead Meadow, despite everything, are magnificent.
Loading comments slowly
