The streets above ground were calm and quiet in downtown Mesa last Sunday night. Down below, though, beneath the pavement and piping, in the Nile Theater’s underground basement venue, the guttural rumble of GATECREEPER shook the upper level. The crowd was packed, pushed wall to wall by the mosh-pit void that had opened. The people moved around it like particles pulled by the gravity of a black hole.
The metal band from Arizona started off the night with a sharp set of songs mostly from their debut album, Sonoran Depravation, released last year on Relapse. Singer Chase H. Mason, with the black and white GATECREEPER flag behind him, stalked the stage, crutched by his microphone stand. Something jumps inside him and dies before a performance and the fumes of death rise up and spew from his esophagus. He was flanked by the rest of the band and their drone metal gnashing came like solar bursts to earth. Their last song, “Patriarchal Grip,” started with its spellbinding lull and ended with a hammer to the head.
Youth Code perform at the Nile Theater. Photos by Eli Jace.
The second act, Youth Code, out of Los Angeles, arrived without guitar. Only a tabletop of pedals, controlled by Ryan George, were set up with Sara Taylor desecrating the mic. Their sound is a ferocious mix of Nine Inch Nails industrial scuzz and jacked up, panicked death metal. Commitment to Complication, their second full-length, was released last year.
Their set started with a deep bass pulse and then Taylor took over. She explodes as a frontwoman. She tosses her body to the ground, her white hair whipping around. When the distortion gurgled to the surface in loud roars she’d bend down and throw a few fists to the floor.
Apparently the teetering crowd was in a trance and didn’t know how to react. She kept shouting for everyone to dance or at least show some life. At one point during a mechanical breakdown, she thanked George for letting her scream about her problems. Whatever those problems are Youth Code make a good case for their audio equivalent.
It was clear a majority in attendance were there for Code Orange. Even George couldn’t tamp down his excitement to see them when Taylor brought it up. The Pittsburgh group is one of the new growing warts of hardcore. Their sewer-scorching third album, Forever, was released last month on Roadrunner Records.
Code Orange perform at the Nile Theater. Photos by Eli Jace.
Front and center I was ready for the beat down. The stage for the Nile Underground is about two feet high. Shin-level. A constant tripping hazard when the people behind you move like they’re on bath salts. Eric Balderose and Reba Meyers, on guitar, and drummer Jami Morgan all claim vocal duties, but it wasn’t always easy to tell where the carnal yells were coming from. Each lasting scream dissolved in the dark. In addition, two different vocalists jumped up from nowhere for a song each.
Their set was stuffed with new songs. “The Mud” with its tar-melting interlude halfway through brought an eerie calm to the basement for a moment that did not last long. The slow-crushing brutality of the album’s title track sideswiped everyone.
Joe Goldman, on bass, took up the middle of the stage looking like an outcast Street Fighter character. His presence was alarming. He threw hook-armed fists into the air, spin-kicked and left no distance between the front row. Before songs he’d lift servants up by the shirt collar and scream in their faces to get up. Miraculously I avoided the bent end of his guitar colliding with my head.
The Nile put on a great line-up this night. GATECREEPER, Youth Code and Code Orange, three ripening groups that each attack metal and hardcore from three different angles.
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