Engineer and Fuck The Facts in Syracuse, 7/28

Would you folks like coffee? Real coffee? From the hills of Syracuse?

Engineer and Fuck the Facts played a coffeehouse last night. That’s right. A coffeehouse. Tides and Oak & Bone played too, but that isn’t so ridiculous. I could definitely sip a latte and bob my head to their mellower brand of post-hardcore. It’s kind of hard to rage while holding cup or scalding liquid though.

In all fairness, Recess Coffee is about as grindy as a coffeehouse can get. It’s co-owned by Jesse Daino, drummer for grind kings Ed Gein. Furthermore, the show was in the basement. It could’ve been any basement in any house on the Eastside of Syracuse, and believe me, I’ve been to a lot of keg parties in a lot of basements on the Eastside.

Oak and Bone opened up – their momentum seemed a bit off compared to the other time I saw them. Could’ve been the new bass player, could’ve been that the guitarist broke two strings on two separate occasions and had to stop the show to replace ‘em. I like how they, like Engineer, have a knack for making gross, sludgy chords work in a bit more uptempo, rocking context than you’d normally hear them.

Engineer was next and they fucking killed it, as always. They played a bunch of new stuff (didn’t announce any titles unfortunately) and it all slammed, particularly the last song and the one they called “two” (by holding up two fingers at each other beforehand). Some they played a few weeks back at the Westcott Theater across the street, but the sound got swallowed up by the size of the venue. This was a much better setting, sounded like it must have sounded in their practice space when they wrote it. Big ups to vocalist Bobby Gorham for dancing with the mic stand and pointing his finger at everybody.

This footage is not from last night. I did not charge my camera before the show. Oops.

Tides was Tides, doing their Isis/Mouth of the Architect type thing. They sounded like they did last time I saw them, with Engineer, on Westcott Street, but I wasn’t totally high this time, so it didn’t hit me quite as hard. Cool dudes though.

Last night was my first time seeing Fuck the Facts, as well as my first time seeing a high-caliber grind band in a basement. I have to make a point to do that more often. Stigmata High-Five was cool, don’t get me wrong, but it suffered from that dry, processed sound that holds back records (as opposed to the overblown, silverware-in-a-blender sound that can also mangle records). That shit cut through down in the grime. Vil played crisp, clear, and loud – without mics or triggers on his drums! The Disgorge Mexico (haha) material came off well, though “The Sound of Your Smashed Head” was the higlight of the night. As Canadians tend to be, they were very polite and played a two song encore. As foxy vocalist Mel Mongeon said “Thumbs up for basement shows!”