Mouthus and the Magnet

This post is not so much about Mouthus as it is about the Magnet. This show is now over a month past, so my recollection has dimmed severely, simply fuzzy frequencies left in my head. From what I can remember the Mouthus live performance can be likened to living within a nitrous balloon. They wasted no time, took no divergent trails of slow, building, atmosphere to get their message across. It was overdrive from the start. Echo after echo, screech after screech, solo after solo, even a rhythmic feedback loop was tied to their ball of bombast, it got to a point where we (those of us in the crowd) were asking ourselves if that was part of the act or a technical malfunction. I suppose that's the allure of noise, never knowing exactly what comes intentionally and what comes naturally. My only gripe -- that omnipresent feedback stole the show from the guitarist's attempts at infinite shredding. Perhaps the kids at the North Six get a better mix.

Ahem...back to the Magnet, the stench-ridden center of this story. They're not really called the Magnet, they're called Sword Heaven, and on any given night they are the greatest band on the planet, considering you're constructing a planet in your head during the minutes prior to when they crest.

Why have I dubbed them the Magnet you might ask? Well, my boss, who we'll call Jed (to protect the innocent) had been waiting months to finally see Sword Heaven.

Long story short, he and his son, who lives with his mother, had been experiencing a bit of father-son discord/distance. Son starts his teenage years with a guitar and lessons, but soon is entranced with the noise scene, trades in his guitar for oscillators and contact mics, dreams of attending really expensive art college. In his senior year of high school, son writes a theme for english explaining how Sword Heaven has changed his life. Jed, wanting to understand his son, shows me this theme, asks me plenty of questions, and makes it his mission to see the band one day.

Fast forward a year later. His son has developed a solo stage show, consisting mostly of his voice and an echoplex, and has an opening gig with Sword Heaven. Jed decides to attend, to support his son, but mostly to see the Magnet. To understand why I call Sword Heaven the Magnet, you must understand Jed. He's the ultimate red-blooded American; a die-hard NASCAR fan, a Bush supporter, and his favorite band is Blackfoot. The kind of guy that tells off-color jokes with a chuckle and prefers we turn the Middle East into glass. We've had our differences, especially concerning politics, but his heart is made of gold, and for the most part we have become good friends over the years.

Seeing Jed standing five feet from Sword Heaven was a revelation. He crossed a threshold few of his kind could withstand. I would never be caught dead at a Toby Keith concert, no matter how much you paid me. But Jed held his own, even when the Sword Heaven stench-bomb was released. Which brings me to my point...I do have a point.

Sword Heaven have the power to change the face of music. Pure hyperbole, sure, but what they do night after night, is re-invent the drum, re-invent the tribe, re-invent music. These are the new cavemen. They make thunder and lightning out of sheet metal and snares, the ocean and the forest out of throat strains and rusted pipe, the mind's constant conflictions with a guitar and a sampler. These are the new cavemen, this is the new jazz.