Vaital Deul with Megaton Leviathon (abbreviated version), Hawthorne Theater 10/3/13

You know what, fuck Jesu for a moment (but just a very quick, infinitesimal moment). My inaugural post is dedicated to my friend's project, or should I say one of his MANY projects. It would be rude as hell of me to not start out with a friend's material.

Check out this big shit on the marquee with Alcest, Anathema, and best of all TWIZTID! Rollin' with the big dogs.

One of my best friends Mort pulled together a little show in the lounge of the Hawthorne Theater which despite the poor reputation of the larger venue, the lounge is a pleasant little joint for small shows.
The lineup included Vatial Deul, Andrew of Megaton Leviathon (acting as a one-man band), Actuary and Conscious Summary.  The latter 2 acts are noise acts and I'm just not really into straight-up knob-tweaking noise, so I didn't stick around for them. As such I won't write about them because it would be unfair to try to talk about music from a genre that I'm not into and was hearing from outside while fielding some drunken rando's comments about the Czech Republic patch on my sleeve. If you guys read this, my apologies! I didn't even anticipate doing a writeup on the show so this might not be the best job. Hey man, I'm just tryin' to pimp out my friend's badass tuneage so DEAL, yo.

First up was my friend's solo project, Vaital Deul. I recall him playing for what seemed like 30-40 minutes. At this point, it's just Mort with a guitar and backing tracks. This is typically a dynamic I'm not terribly impressed with, especially when my friends are behind it. I have a lot of musical people in my life, but very few of them create the kind of music I would listen to on my own time. Mort is one of them. He opened his set with what he told me was "a cover/mashup/reinterpretation of two video games songs "The Choice" from The Last of Us and "Leaving Earth" from Mass Effect 3." Sir, you are speaking another language, but it made for a rather good low-key, anticipation-building into to his set. In addition to a number of clearly heartfelt original pieces, he played a cover of Coil's 'Restless Day' (you can hear his studio version of it here). Coil are not one of my favorites acts... but I must say that I loved his version of it, partly because he sings in a lower, less monotone voice, and vocals are often a very important aspect of music to me. He often ends up doing a lot of covers just for shits n' giggles, it seems. Check out the brutal acoustic cover of VAST's 'Pretty When You Cry'. The stripped down nature of it really amplifies how fucked up Jon Crosby's lyrics are. You might want to find one of those full-body condoms though because it's pretty soul-raping.
Vaital Deul is a possessed, acousticy, doomy slowcore weirdout experience. I hear heavy influence from Swans and JustIn Broadrick. I briefly participated in the genesis of one of Mort's projects and we made no bones about our flagrant Jesu-worship, it was truly repugnant, rather like this personal superfluous ego-stroking and plea for street-cred that I just engaged in. Over the last 2 years, I've observed his music really come into it's own stylistically and also technically. You can hear Mort's influences, but his music is HIS and his stank is smeared all over it. That's a fantastic trait to have and I think it's one that will take people places because they stand out among the peers as unique rather than just another Godflesh ripoff or whatever. Vaital Deul is big, scary and more than a little soul-wrenching. These are all things I personally look for in music. I've given sufficient links and will allow the music to speak for itself. It seems a little nepotistic of me to go on and on about one of my OMG BESTIE'S music, but like I said, I'm not into my friend's music. I'm probably a harsher critic of their output than I am of any established artist because I have a low tolerance for amateurs. It's nothing personal, but there's a lot of music in the world and I can't give a lot of time to people who don't have to together and produce quality material.

He told me he was going to wear a veil. I said "man that's dumb don't wear a veil." He said "fuck you you're not my real dad" wore it anyway and I said "ok fine the veil is really cool i'm sorry." 

I brought my younger sister along to the show with me and I love watching her enjoy live music. I've taken her to see Mort's other project when it was a two-piece. It was the first metal-style band she'd ever seen (then I took her to the front row at Napalm Death...) and she just kind of sat there looking happily stunned. It's the kind of wall-of-sound extravaganza shit that will do that to a person.

Moving on, Andrew from Megaton Leviathon took the stage with essentially the same setup. I am regrettably unfamiliar with the music of Megaton, though every time it comes on at random at a friend's house, my ears perk up and I always exclaim "Woah, what is this? This is bomb as fuck!" Alas, I am but a slow creature and I do things in my own weird time frame, which may or may not become evident over the course of this blog's evolution.
That said, He pretty much tore the place apart too. Perhaps a little less frightening and little more shoegazey. I'm sorry, it's the term du jour, but i don't say shit just to say it and make things sound hip. That wavy, spaced out element was there for sure. My only complaint with his set was that his vocals might have been a bit louder. I couldn't hear him sing at all.
I wish i could wrote more about his set, but it's difficult when I had no notes and am almost totally unfamiliar with his work. Go check out the links, I know I'm going to because I was quite taken with what I heard from only half the band.

You see, this post is mostly aimed at directing people to my friend's music.  And that's ok. I'm not sure when his next public gig is with either Vaital Deul or V.I.I.R.L but I will post links and details when I hear of anything.

And that has been the first installment of The Same Old Sauce.
Novak thanks you for reading and for listening.