Chris Smith’s blog

In the latest issue of San Francisco magazine, I review the new album by Kowloon Walled City, the city’s best new metal band. These guys combine the aggression of Black Flag (sans Henry Rollins’ petulant moaning) with the sludgy grandeur of the Melvins, producing the aural equivalent of a primal scream. Check it out.

A band’s name is usually a clear indicator of its sound. (Really, could Cannibal Corpse play anything but metal?) This holds true for Kowloon Walled City, though you might not realize it at first. The San Francisco metal band takes its name from a famously dangerous Hong Kong neighborhood run by killers, drug dealers, and pimps–a sort of hell, in other words–and the group sounds satisfyingly like its name. Banging out a symphony of down-tuned guitars and turned-up amps, KWC harks back to similarly heavy forebears, like the Melvins, Helmet, and Oakland legends Neurosis. The band’s brutal debut EP last year earned it a spot at the gene­rally metal averse Noise Pop Festival, and its first long-player only improves on the formula. The opening track, “Annandale,” sets the tone, with front man Scott Evans’ sandpapery croak slicing through the barrage of low-end riffs and hammer-fall drumming. A keen sense of dynamics keeps things interesting all the way through: “Paper Houses” swings like an undertaker on his way to the boneyard, and the cathartic closer, “More Like the Shit Factory,” features a chiming guitar that could almost be called pretty. But the idyll doesn’t last long–these guys have a name to live up to, after all.

1. Fittingly, the band came on just as the sun was going down.

2. The pit on the lawn was huge, and in the golden light it looked like a Tibetan mandala. A really violent mandala.

3. Frontman Tom Araya was exceedingly polite throughout the set, repeatedly thanking us for coming out then dipping into a growl to introduce the next song.

4. Guitarist Kerry King sported an incredibly long beard that was braided into a knot stretching down to his solar plexus. With the lighting just so, the effect was that of a desert monk, maybe. Purity of the faith.

5. The other guitarist, Jeff Hanneman, played a guitar sporting a Heineken graphic. We wondered how much money that brings in. (On a related note, Slayer hockey jerseys were on sale for $90.)

6. Shoreline, with its bright, Disneyish colors and Pirates of the Caribbeanesque wooden footbridges, is a weird (though not unpleasant) place to see a metal show.

7. There was an old guy on the lawn in front of us wearing a shirt that read, “Everything louder than everything else.” There were a lot of kids wandering around carrying branded shopping bags full of the swag they had bought.

8. It was tough not to be reminded all over again exactly how influential Slayer is. Every other band in the world has stolen at least a little something from them.

9. When their set finished, it seemed like the entire amphitheatre rushed for the parking lot. Marilyn Manson might have been the de facto headliner last night, but this was a Slayer crowd.

(Update: I added one more thing after the post went up.)

I don’t know about you, but heavy metal always gets me thinking. Things like, “Damn, this is some deep stuff–I had never considered the possibility of  a sword coming up through the toilet. But now I’m scared.”

There’s a problem, though. In our harried, time-challenged world, who’s got the time to really soak up the nuances of each and every song on their iPod? If only it were possible, I thought, to condense these profundities into a simpler form, giving them a platform at once more concise and, perhaps, a shade more delicate.

Then it dawned on me: the haiku, the short poetic form that originated in Japan and frequently muses on the changing seasons, might just be the ticket. With that in mind, I bring you Heavy Metal Haikus, a blog cataloging some of my favorite lyrics along with their pithier, haiku-ish offspring. There are a few posts up already; I’ll add more as the mood strikes, so please check back often.