Dead Meadow

There’s a mist in the air so thick it’s as if Dead Meadow are playing in a Blackadder-style medieval swamp, not on the first floor of Camden’s premier toilet. Of course, the mist isn’t entirely natural (well, it depends how you look at it, really): we’re in stoner rock territory, and the stoners are making their presence smelt.

A colleague, content to sup on a weak lager, nevertheless mentions that a “large bong” wouldn’t go amiss. Well, perhaps, but to sell this DC trio (for the night – new member Cory Shane isn’t on board for the band’s sole UK date of this European jaunt) as a mere stoner outfit is to sell them dangerously short. Anyone that’s heard one of their four records to date, particularly Matador releases Shivering King And Others and the recently released Feathers, will tell you that Dead Meadow are a band that span rock sub-genres; who mix a savage intensity with repetitive stoner riffs and a weighty saturation of feedback to create music that’s not heard so much as felt in every bone of the body.

Steve Kille’s bass work is fuss-free but rampant and frolicking; Jason Simon’s vocals slurred and short on discernible words; Stephen McCarty’s drumming precise and powerful – this is a band who only really come alive in an environment such as this, their on-paper capabilities eclipsed by their staggering stage presence. This is post-rock for snotty punks; sludgy and unhurried epics for aged Woodstock hippies and freshly tattooed hardcore oiks alike. The Shivering King… tracks receive the firmest nods of approval from the punters playing sardines for the night, but the newer material is equally euphoric. Of course, such feelings may well stem from the fog that clogs our lungs; it hovers above throughout, no air conditioning available to cleanse our airspace.

Then again, perhaps these feelings needn’t be attributed to the greenery: for once, we have a ‘stoner’ band – in a loose sense – that can be appreciated sober. I know, I am. Wait… I am?

Where’s that bong already?