Seeing Metz at the Casbah tonight? Prepare for a rib cage rattling.
The noise-rock power trio, rounding out the last few stops of its tour before charging through the European festival circuit, brought a gravely, blisteringly loud set to Houston’s Fitzgerald’s on Friday to promote its latest release, the unassumingly named Metz II. It was hardcore. It was heavy. It was where the angry go to find peace and joy.
Metz unleashed upon the audience with a handful of high-pitched, runaway guitar licks, the vibrating mirage of hi-hat cymbals, and chunky, Motorhead-esque bass. Alex Edkins vocals screamed out angry mantras faster than you could stuff in your ear plugs. Heads banged, horns hooked, and Fitzgerald’s somehow managed to contain an uncontainable sound.
It didn’t take long for the audience to erupt into a mosh pit, inspired by the quick, strangled riffs of “Get Off” and the menacing, sophisticated new track “Spit You Out.” As drummer Hayden Menzies lead the march of mayhem with the strike of his snare, bodies moved fluidly off and against each other in a dance of carefree destructiveness.
The pushes and shoves would ebb and simmer with the radical transitions of “Nervous System,” only to explode again with the unsurprisingly crowd pleasing “Wasted.” Off to the side, stuffed in my own head with day-glo pieces of foam, the pit became an unexpected site of meditation — each shoved elbow became a catharsis; each reckless, pinballing body a breakthrough.
Metz is a thrillseeker’s band. Songs like “Wait in Line,” full of all the banging discord one would expect, abandoned more standard punk tropes for eerie, foreboding crescendos and creepy distortion. And songs like, “Headache,” with its almost tribal strained quarter notes and refrain of “I gotta get away,” invites its audience to push beyond its own sonic limits.
If you don’t get lost in the noise, Metz has a cultivated sound that’s worth listening too closely. No one displays this more readily than Menzies, whose masterful control over complicated songs made the whole noisy endeavor look messily easy. On “Acetate,” a crunchy drop-D masterpiece, he perfectly delivered countless time changes, hiding the song’s orchestration behind the full-throated guitar and bass. It was hard to mosh to such a testament to composition, but the crowd did so in spite of itself.
Sophomore slump critiques aside, Metz is a hardcore talent in a music landscape that favors studio production over the stage and electronic affectations over stripped-down standard instruments. Their brand of punk rock purity might not rattle well in everyone’s rib cage, but they keep the candle lit for hardcore fans aching for a dying, hardcore sound.
Doors at the Casbah open tonight at 8:30. Tickets are still available here.