I go to a lot of shows. Like, a LOT — hundreds a year, thanks to my propensity for touring for months on end, traveling to festivals, and just going to gigs at home or elsewhere. I get burnt out sometimes, but invariably I find myself down front (or at least by the bar) several times a week. These past few days were a bit more ridiculous than usual, given that I was bouncing from the Netherlands to the UK to Ireland within the space of a week. I still managed to catch some amazing performances, though, several of whom that once again reaffirmed my firmly-held conviction that live music is the lifesblood of the metal scene.

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Okay. So. On Friday night Vince, Kip and I went to this freaking incredible Cynic/Intronaut/Dysrhythmia show with our number one homies from Metal Injection, and then we all went to this other really awesome show, with My America and Keelhaul at The Acheron in Brooklyn. And, yeah, I totally missed My America because I was socializing outside the venue, but I hear they were awesome, and Sean “Spleen Latifa” Gresens has posted some good footage on his “Belly Full of Hell” channel on Metal Injection.

BUT, I did see Keelhaul, and they were excellent. I mean really, really killer. You’d kinda think that anything following the aforementioned Cynic/Intronaut/Dysrhythmia show would seem totally weak in comparison, but Keelhaul really kicked ass.

So I hope you don’t take it the wrong way I tell you that the most memorable part of the show involved a loogie.

See, at some point during the first or second song of the set, vocalist/bassist Aaron Dallison (also of Ringworm and a bunch of other Cleveland outfits) hocked a HUGE loogie right into the air… and it stuck to the very low-hanging ceiling. And it hung there. Like, forever.

I got seriously distracted as I watched it, fearful that it might fall on Dallison or guitarist Dana Embrose, who was also standing pretty close to it. Ever heard Alfred Hitchcock’s definition of suspense? It’s when you’re watching a movie, and you know there’s a bomb ticking down in the room somewhere, but the characters on-screen do not — in other words, dramatic irony = suspense.

And this was suspenseful as all fuck. It shook, it swayed – but it would not fall.

I was so obsessed with watching to see if the damn thing was gonna fall or not that I actually snapped a (admittedly very shitty) picture of it on my iPhone:

Look at the size of that fucking thing!!!

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Unsane’s 1995 LP Scattered, Smothered and Covered is a classic in the Amphetamine Reptile discography, and one of the truly essential noise rock recordings. Surely you remember the “Scrape” music video! So when the band announced they’d be performing the album live in its entirety for a select series of North American shows, I finished in my pants. Having witnessed Unsane decimate a sold out Union Pool in Brooklyn some months back, I can’t stress enough how powerful and loud this savage trio are after all these years.

Even better, Keelhaul open nearly all the dates, which is awesome since their latest Hydra Head album Keelhaul’s Triumphant Return To Obscurity fucking rules nations. (If you like aggressive and slightly weird metal, this is your bag, baby!) Other openers (depending on the date) include Unsane member Dave Curran’s side-project Pigs, and fellow noise rock legends Today Is The Day. The New York City date, which takes place on Thursday August 5 at Andrew W.K.’s Santos Party House (tickets here) also features a set from Disappearer, the band that topped my Top 20 Albums of 2009. The tour culminates in an appearance at the opening night party that precedes the sold-the-fuck-out Amphetamine Reptile festival in Minneapolis. Dates and details are below.

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Here’s how Keelhaul drummer Will Scharf introduced himself and the band via e-mail: “I understand you’re doing research on senility, bad potty habits, and coping with walkers and Metamucil. We are the perfect subjects.” Old and incontinent Scharf may be, but he’s also hilarious, and a motherfucker of a drummer. There’s heavy jams and scrumptious fills a-plenty on Keelhaul’s new album Triumphant Return to Obscurity, out August 4th on Hydra Head, the Cleveland math- metallers’ first release in six years. It offers the kind of ultra-tight, largely instrumental ass-whuppin’ that just doesn’t come around that often anymore. Scads of Keelhaul’s contemporaries have blown up while they’ve triumphantly returned to waiting tables and running soundboards in their hometown, time and time again. The self-effacing Scharf doesn’t seem too bitter about it though. While it probably doesn’t take much to please a guy that describes corndogs as the “greatest invention ever,” I discovered that Scharf has a pretty healthy perspective about Keelhaul’s lot.

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It’s been a doozy of a year for metal releases already, hasn’t it?

After the jump, the records I’ve been jamming the most so far that might or might not end up on my year-end Top 10.

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Last night I had the privilege of attending the latest in the monthly series of Pitchfork’s Show No Mercy metal shows in Brooklyn, featuring Stats, Defeatist, Unearthly Trance, and Minsk supporting Keelhaul. I arrived a fan of Minsk — who certainly did not disappoint with their epic blend of doom, prog, sludge and punk — but I left a newly converted fan of Keelhaul, whose razor-tight set of angular post-metal riffs justly lived up to show promoter Brandon Stosuy’s description as “muscular.” Keelhaul absolutely fucking killed it, their furious Coalesce-on-steroids onslaught leaving me wondering how this band had slipped beneath my radar for so long.

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I forgot my earplugs last night when Vince and I hit up The Faceless show here in NYC last night. This was kind of a terrifying realization. I am finally at a point where I honestly feel like metal shows are almost too loud. It’s not that I hate the music – I obviously love the music – I’d just still like to be able to hear it in ten or twenty years (I plan on dying shortly thereafter, so that’s really as far as I need to make it.). Luckily, my man Vince had an extra pair for me, but guess what? When I got home, my ears were still ringing. My point being: it seems inevitable that I will someday suffer from hearing loss in some capacity.

D.X. Ferris recently wrote an article on just this topic for The Cleveland Scene, which includes interviews with such metal luminaries as Keelhaul and Soulless. Here’s an excerpt:

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