Live review: Shrinebuilder @ The Viper Room

Al Cisneros, Dale Crover, Scott Kelly Photos by Alysa Pakkidis

I don't see River Phoenix. Or Kobe Bryant, or Paris Hilton, or any of the women from The Hills. Ace Frehley played here recently, and Slash made a surprise cameo. I missed all that. Tonight the Viper Room is a regular club. I wait in line like everyone else. When I get in, the only celebrities are onstage.

They're celebrities to me, at least — and to approximately 250 other people that have packed the place. The bouncer points out a space in the human wall, and I slot myself in. I don't mind the close quarters, because I've zeroed in on the stage. Wino is stage right, Neurosis' Scott Kelly is stage left. Om's Al Cisneros is in the middle, and the Melvins' Dale Crover is drumming. Together they are Shrinebuilder.

And, man, are they together. This is immediately evident. Each of these guys is a giant in his own right, and their bands don't sound anything alike. So I expect this "supergroup" to be not super. Their album was not super. It wasn't bad, but it was the exact sum of its parts: Cisneros' motoric bass lines, Crover's propulsion, Kelly's counterpoint to Wino's harmonic smarts.

Pyramid of the Moon (excerpt)

Live is another matter. This is their first show ever, but these guys are playing like they grew up together. I hear no clams. They even turn Joy Division's "24 Hours" into a stoner rock rave-up. I've never seen any of their bands live except for Neurosis. But that was on New Year's Eve, and my mind was busy exploding from the fact that it was Neurosis on New Year's Eve. Now my mind is exploding from seeing these giants up close. Eventually I worm my way up front. If Kelly swung his axe around, he could chop off my head.

He's wearing Keen shoes, I think. No-nonsense ones with big caps over the toes. I always notice the shoes rockers wear. They're often at eye level, after all. Cisneros wears sneakers. Crover wears beat-up black things that could have come from Payless. Wino, biker to the bone, is wearing cowboy boots. His pedalboard looks like Skylab. He is the Space Cowboy.

Wino is also Shrinebuilder's quarterback. He handles the leads and does much of the singing. For someone synonymous with heavy music, his playing is surprisingly delicate. He uses vibrato a lot; it's lithe and shivery. When the band bangs out unisons, he looks like he's chopping onions: brisk, measured.

Wino

Kelly, on the other hand, throws his body into his playing. Cisneros' head never stops moving. It goes round and round in circles, like his bass lines. Crover is the star of these all-stars. His playing has unreal power and control. I spend much of the night parked near his snare. It sounds like cracking skulls. I'll have to reassess the Melvins now.

They finish their first set around midnight. Much of the crowd leaves. An "improv set" is supposed to follow. This arouses my morbid curiosity, so I stick around. To my surprise, their second set is a repeat of the first. It's not exactly the same, though. Since people have left, there's room to move around. The band is warmed up, and the songs feel even more fluid. Everyone loves it when the band jumps into big doom riffs. It's not the notes, it's how you play them.

I look around. The eyes tell the tale. People are rapt. They're feeling it. Even the non-fanboy types are feeling it. There are more beautiful people here than I've seen in the last year combined. I'm pretty sure I saw the waitress stuff tips down the front of her shirt. There was lots of room there. Welcome to Hollywood. It ain't for everybody.

- Cosmo Lee

For YouTube footage of this show, see here.
For a gallery of photos from this show, see here.