Killing Joke, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Corvus Corax, SunnO))), Miranda Sex Garden, Dog Faced Hermans, Disinformation, Aleister Crowley, The Boredoms, Tchkung, Tool, Black Flag, My Bloody Valentine, Joseph Campbell, Daniel Quinn, Darwin
Sounds Like
[INCENSE METAL] A great frontwoman is a rare thing to come across these days. Local poetic-metal outfit Aranya is led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Uta Plotkin, and she carries the group on a tribal journey featuring proggy song structures, crazy vocal theatrics, viola and, umm, a feathered staff. Tonight they join a bill also featuring DJ Nate C. and Epileptinomicon—whose drony, ambient textures would make for great soundtrack music. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER.
ARANYA, THE ATOMIC BOMB AUDITION, NORTHERN SWORDS, MICROTIA
(Plan B, 1305 SE 8th) A friend recently complained to me how today's doom metal—with its common characteristics of punishing low end, monotony, and harsh vocals—makes him feel "this small." He described it in ways I might describe power electronics or brass-knuckle industrial music: unrelenting, unnerving, impossible to enjoy. I don't share the feeling, but his impression has been hard to shake. Good, then, that local female-fronted heathen metal band Aranya is a clear deviation from what could be considered the grating status quo in Doomtown. Multi-instrumentalist frontwoman Uta Plotkin locks into vocal trances more reminiscent of mid-'90s Sky Cries Mary than Portland's caricature-worthy Southern Lord worshippers. Her tribal wail soars outside the proper metallic grit of a band that bravely tries Tomahawk-like American Indian music and European folk metal as well. Listening to Aranya, it is impossible to feel small. MIKE MEYER
Coaxing aether fibers from the earth while mourning those who move without heart, witnessing seers attempt to breath fire into this ashen tribe - beings lacking throat to scream through - ritual noise tearing back into parched lungs, latching onto that one tendon in their collective gut and infusing it with the sacred tone, a minute fragmentation and proliferation ignites...anticipate
