Dazzling Killmen, Rhododendron (The Flenser), Praying
7:00pm, $20 adv., $25 door. 21+
"In 1994, Dazzling Killmen, a quartet from the St. Louis area named after a line in an obscure, grotesque 1963 short story by Lucas Samaras, put out a record called Face of Collapse, their second and final full-length. By the following year, they had broken up. Face of Collapse is a milestone in '90s underground extreme rock and should be experienced by fans of everything from Slint to the Dillinger Escape Plan to Rush. In fact, there would be no Converge, Today is the Day, or Dillinger Escape Plan without this essential blueprint. As former Rolling Stone senior editor Hank Shteamer wrote, “No other music that I know of can deliver what this [music] delivers, either emotionally—its specific combination of creeping dread, frantic anxiety, and seething rage —or sonically: The grand, gothic power chords at the outset, sounding like some horror-movie overture. The thresher-like riff that follows, and then, the onset of one of the greatest sequences of aggressive rock music I’ve ever heard: a sort of hypnotic death waltz...broken up by racing, scampering full-band interludes and giving way to a deranged, writhing climax —with the guitars stabbing at oblique angles over the rhythm section’s lockstep convulsions —that feels at once vise-tight and completely unhinged. When the whole band kicks into the next breakneck triplet riff, the effect is one of complete information overload.”
For the first time in 30 years, you’re going to be able to hear this music live.
https://dazzlingkillmen.bandcamp.com/
Rhododendron (The Flenser)
Formed in 2019 while the band’s members were still in high school, Rhododendron’s Ezra Chong (guitar, vocals), Gage Walker (bass), and Noah Mortola (drums) set out to push their musical limits without regard for genre boundaries or audience expectation. Over the past 7 years, the trio has developed a sound rooted in technical precision and repetition. Drawing from the angular experimentation of underground rock in the 1980s and 1990s alongside elements of jazz, ambient, and progressive music, their compositions are deliberate with intensity. Riffs fracture and reform, rhythms lock into patterns only to break apart, and extended passages build pressure before shifting direction. Performing regularly in their hometown of Portland, OR, Rhododendron have cultivated an intense and loyal local following. The live setting hardened the material, and songs grew heavier, sharper, more physical through repetition and high volume.
Transformation, growth, and rebirth drive Rhododendron's forthcoming LP Ascent Effort (out May 15 on The Flenser). The title points upward, but not toward arrival. The record documents a period of change defined as much by instability as progress, where confusion and renewal unfold at the same pace.The material that became Ascent Effort was tested on tour before entering the studio. Written largely in sequence, the album traces a period of personal change and internal friction. Growth is not always clean; sometimes it grinds forward. Nothing resolves without cost. Confusion and strain do not sit outside the songs, they shape their architecture. That is what Rhododendron has accomplished with Ascent Effort, a work that is not always clean but well-shaped by struggle and growth. The Pacific Northwest lingers in the background of the record, its long winters and brief summers echoing the album’s shifts between abrasion and restraint.
Ascent Effort does not offer catharsis in the traditional sense. It allows tension to remain. In that unresolved space, transformation takes form and a band in motion is revealed.
https://rhododendronpdx.bandcamp.com/album/protozoan-battle-hymns
https://www.instagram.com/rhododendronpdx/?hl=en
Praying
Snowflake sludge from Oakland.
https://praying.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/praying_420/?hl=en
