Riding a New Wave to Blood Mountain and Happy Hollow

…Or: Saturday, May 12 at the Riviera with Cursive, Against Me!, and Mastodon.

It’s probably not the best idea to try to review a concert you were completely drunk at, but to lift yet another phrase from one of the bands (Against Me!), “we laugh at danger and break all the rules”. And when I say “drunk”, I truly do mean it; I started at about 2:00PM for a 6:30 show. My chemical dependence aside, the afternoon/evening got off to a solid start at the Uptown Lounge after a lovely spring afternoon stroll down Lawrence Avenue with Preka and Fonzy. It was there that we met up with Doug, whom Fonzy and I know from a message board populated by race baiters and people who rarely wear pants when sitting at their computers. Doug had his own posse there, including, but not limited to, his sister, his brother-in-law-to-be, and a cadre of other merrymakers. With a few rounds, several cigarettes, and a ceremonial shot of Jameson in us, we crossed the street to the Riviera.

We arrived just in time for the end of the set of AFI-wannabes Planes Mistaken For Stars, who follow Mudvayne’s footsteps as Peoria, Illinois’ finest musical exports to the rest of the world. The crowd was as eclectic as expected for a lineup such as this with very different acts. It was a fine mix of aging hipsters, punks, and metalheads, all of whom were none too pleased with the Riviera’s smoking policy.

Cursive took the stage in full eveningwear, with lead singer Tim Kasher in a tux with tails. The set focused on their faster-paced material, emphasizing mostly on cuts from Happy Hollow and The Ugly Organ. From what I heard, they only briefly touched on what I feel is their best album, Domestica, with the song “The Martyr”. Other highlights included “Dorothy At Forty” and “A Gentleman Caller”.

It was during this time that the empty beer cup total on the table began to mount. It was obvious that we had an engineer in our group, because a loose conglomeration of cups quickly transformed into a spire that would rival the one proposed for Chicago’s lakefront in height by evening’s end. This is important to the narrative because it was at this time that I crossed the threshold of being drunk enough to sing/shout along with the band on stage.

The fact that Against Me! was taking the stage shorly after this threshold was crossed was very convenient, as there are several songs of theirs that I enjoy shouting at the top of my lungs in the privacy of my own car. I was the only one in the group previously familiar with the band, and the verdict was a split decision. The dissention within the group did little to dissuade me from belting out “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong”, “Cliche Guevara”, “From Her Lips To God’s Ears”, and “Problems” with the band. There were a couple of new songs mixed in, but I was getting to the point where I really didn’t notice.

Soon afterward, Mastodon strode to the stage like the behemoth that they had once sung about on their earlier album with one single purpose: destroy the crowd. Mission accomplished, you crazy Georgian prog-metal playing bastards. They opened with “Iron Tusk” and didn’t look back. They blazed through the set with next to no banter with the audience, and drummer Brann Dailor is even more impressive behind a drumkit live than on album. In all honesty, the set was pretty much an alcohol-induced blur, but I do distinctly remember rocking out to “Crystal Skull” and the set closer, “Blood And Thunder”. The latter is the primary reason why my voice is the aural equivalent to the leather on a Wolverine work boot and my neck feels like I have a herniated disc as I type. In a final, emphatic display of Mastodon’s zero-bullshit, face melting performace, they ended the show abruptly at the conclusion of “Blood And Thunder” without an encore. However, even without an encore, there was no eardrum in the building left unshattered, which is exactly why we all paid decent coin to be there in the first place.