recollections of a stabbing at Belsize Park

Going to work on one of the last southbound Northern Line trains.  Job starts at 00:30.  A throng of young revelers enters at Hampstead.  Dozens of them on a group outing.  They spill and partially fill two carriages.  I am surrounded.  They are singing simple pop songs that everyone agrees to remember the melody to after the initiator takes an informal poll (bing! bang! walla walla bing bang!).  Still feeling a bit lifted and not sure if this is the infectiously energetic entourage I want to engage myself in as I silently meditate, mentally prepare myself for physical labour and slide my phone (GBA emulator engaged) into my work pants pocket.  You know what?  I was young once.  By a lot of measures I still am.  Let them have their fun, and I will smile and nod along to the off key chorus and I won't even shy away from drunken good time eye contact.  Life is too short to be a grumpy old man on the tube before 30.

The next station is Belsize Park.  "There is no smoking allowed on the London Underground" is being repeated constantly.  A faint waft of nicotine smoke drifts in from the boisterous carriage next door.  Slowing now.  Platform drifts rapidly into the periphery as limbs flail towards the ceiling next door.  The doors between carriages ("emergency use only") spring open.  "Somebody got nicked, yo!"

Everybody screaming.  Sounds of bodies slamming against each other in a frantic mosh as people push to the tube doors waiting for them to open.  Screaming.  We're in the last two cars, towards the end of the track.  No way to go except into the stabbing area or up the stairs past the too-slow lifts to the exit.  Drunken brawl?  Chinese-style knifing terror attack?  Gang confrontation?  Part of me is desperate to find out, to watch the deadly drama with my own eyes.  The majority of me is swept up in the crowd.  Surrounded by dozens of strangers, all screaming and running for the exit.  Who could resist? 

100+ steps, racing past other scared passengers.  Waiting outside the station.  Checking bus schedule.    Is there a convenient bus to jump on or should I wait this out?  Police, one van and two cars peel into the station.  Confront the crowd immediately.  People screaming on their phones, "we need an ambulance!" "My friend's lost tons of blood!" "Everybody needs to get out of here NOW!"  Police sprinting after shady characters who realized this too late.  A throng of drunk and potentially underage, potentially drug possessing potential stabbing suspects.  At least four cops sprint after the group that attempts to escape the moment they pull up.  Two were arrested so they got somebody.

Back in the station.  Platform closed.  Have to catch a northbound, switch at the next station, get back on track.  Going past Belsize Park once again, this time the train won't stop.  One victim sprawled on the bench, young dude, long hair, shirtless, oxygen mask on, paramedics and police surrounding, gently splattered in blood.  No fatalities.  Fifteen minutes late for work.

Sonance / Torpor / Of Spire & Throne / Terra

Live @ The Unicorn, London, UK

September 27, 2014

Bleak metal tonight.  Thin crowd early on.  DSBM?  Post-hardcore?  There was a time when I might claim to be able to draw a line here between the two.  Tonight I am not sure what, which side of that dichotomy I am to expect.  We begin with melody, gentle blast beats, tremolo picking, almost soaring, but unmistakably bleak and depressive.  Vocals on the post-hardcore side, which is really the only safe characteristic to orientate oneself about.  Fashion is increasingly meaningless in these scenes, especially in a cutting edge fashion epicentre like London.  Here it just doesn't matter - you can dress like whatever flamboyant caricature or zoo creature you like, and unless you start screaming or physically accosting people, no one will pay you any mind.  Strongbow, Okocim and MJ on the menu tonight.  Feedback.  Not as blatantly suicidal as some genre mainstays over on the black side, like Xasthur and Leviathan.  Nobody is screaming in pain as if locked in the agonizing throes of suicide in progress.  Terra could approach hardcore - the drumming is active and varied enough, the vocals fit, but the guitarist's rhythm hand never stops moving.  Blasting semi-darkness, rather than blackness.  Depression and contemplation, no hint of revenge or masochism or evil for its own sake.  DSBM in all its melancholy tends to show traces of the horrid path taken to reach this place, and so this band cannot bear that label.  They show no sign of evil, only a devastated realism crafted during a strictly temporal existence.  A populous plane where ample ammunition can be found to destroy a soul, riddle it with the searing lead bullets of daily life in the western world.

Guitarist pulled back from his plodding, relentless assault to apply a delicate touch, gently striking the six strings at the fifth fret, evoking every note of the open position chord.  This moment of reprise does not represent Of Spire & Throne best - for most of the duration, a pummeling downpour of the lowest order of power chords.  Single notes, groped at in dissonance.  Gospel Of The Future comes to mind as an exemplar of countless bands employing the same approach.  Sleep by way of Incantation, perhaps.  The speed never quite gets past mid-gallop and the dreamer is never awoken.  So it pummels and plods in ten minute segments.  The thin crowd grows over the last hour, and most are captivated midway through the set.  The bassist wears Hawkwind.

The evening's selection of house music was largely indecipherable.  Unshazaamable, even.  From bleak DSBM to honest 50's style rock.  Moody all around.  Probably no major chords all night.

Did I mention the bells of Of Spire & Throne?  Funeral bells, tolling for thee and we.  To my recollection only seized upon in a single (albeit ten minute) song.  Aesthetically perfect.  Why not incorporate them more readily?  It's a distinctive sound but not one so far removed from the top of the high hat that it distracts from the combined (doom) metal cacophony.

The cleanest vocals or monotonous, emphatic sighs of disaffected emotion.  For the most part, growls.  Noisy in note selection but clarity in aura.  Chugging.  22:05 and the crowd thickens.  Spike in attendance for gender disparity.  Coincidence?  If not, more bands and women should be taking advantage.  Nothing like Kylesa, even Swallow The Sun.  Bleak, relentlessly bleak.  Torpor breath moaning dissatisfaction.  Stella working its way into the bloodstream.  Applause and gratitude, well deserved.  There will be a fourth artist, it seems.

Another band coming momentarily, surely.  Already wondering if I've written anything on the band previous.  Turns out I have.  Carry on stringing the strongbow.  Shazaam continues to be useless.  Fortunately my brain matter sniffs a familiar signal and informs me: "In a white room, with black curtains..." directly precedes the headlining band, which is...

Sonance.  I could live in London forever and no one would ever notice me.  Unicorn bustling at this point.  Not packed, but a healthy Saturday night crowd.  Doom, death, black, or will the headliner hit the post?  Vikings everywhere, can't wait for that Archagathus show.  Something melodic has been flirted with but not fulfilled.  Sweating profusely, t-shirt and jeans is overdressed in this thus far balmy English winter.  Chips or meat or both to follow, surely.  Not pizza, too pricey this time of night.  This act lies definitively on the (post) hardcore side.  Singer wears Neurosis.  Guitarists decked in grey and plaid from my left to right respectively.  Bleak.  A bit less fresh than earlier acts, now shades of Swallow The Sun, playing at a bigger atmospheric presence than they project.  Heavy as ass, but at this point the evening climaxes predictably: have the opening acts explore the extremities of your stylistic limbs and tentacles, and you may be left wanting in the testicles.  That sort of cool space metalcore comes to mind.  They do exude something extra-planetary, shads of space metal.  The most consciously terrestrial of tonight's offerings.  Off we go before the tube ceases business and the chip shops turn off the lights.