From Iceland — Misery Index

Misery Index

Published April 4, 2008

Misery Index

By the time I arrived at Organ, Celesine had already fired up the heavy machinery and set out on their path of destruction. It was a somewhat misguided journey. As awesome as this post-metal band sounds on record, they face a problem on stage. They sorely lacked stage presence and failed to engage their audience. Admittedly, the crowd was tough and made it a hard sell, but Celestine were still largely at fault as they seemed incapable of making the audience care that they’d even shown up, despite drawing the night’s biggest crowd.

Even with their faces covered behind a thick curtain of hair, Severed Crotch did a better job of engaging the audience. Their technical death metal is a great display of dexterity and the band proficiently adheres to their chosen genre, but ultimately falls a tad short of distinguishing itself from other like-minded bands. Their delivery is impeccable, but they don’t add enough to the formula to stand out from the rest. That being said, the occasional attempt to mix it up did a lot for their performance and their second song of the night, Spawn of Disgust, showed that the band is capable of great things.

Death metal bands that draw their names from economic indicators are in short supply, but Baltimore’s Misery Index proved that a good dose of metal is the best cure for recession. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived, but I was not prepared for this. Their coreridden deathgrind was as fast and heavy as anything I’ve witnessed recently, but what truly set them apart was the sheer intensity of their performance and the joy they took in executing it. Their performance floored me and despite the rather unreceptive crowd, I managed to forget completely about Iceland’s free-falling currency.

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