Black Lamb @ the Larimer Lounge
By Billy Thieme | January 14th, 2009 | 10 comments
How does that man open his mouth so wide? Black Lamb at the Larimer on Saturday. Photos by Doug Beam.
At the start of the dead of winter, there are times when nothing else but metal can offer the warmth we need to shake off the cold. Black Lamb’s set at the Larimer Lounge on Saturday night, with their signature style of screaming, thick magma carried more than enough primal heat to ward off a cold January night — they were hot enough to leave everyone there more than a little scalded. As an intrigued but uninitiated fan, I found myself happily succumbing to the band’s sound that night, and then feeling strung out and satiated after the show ended.
Led by singer Brian Hagman, the band played a 50-minute set in front of a meager but faithful crowd, full of what I’ve come to understand is their own brand of aloof fury. Hagman dominated the show visually as he traipsed around the stage seemingly in a stupor, looking like a mashup of the Russian mystic Rasputin and present-day short-haired Ozzy Osbourne, afflicted as he seems.
As the band played, Hagman at times attempted to help each of the players with their instruments, and occasionally produced a thick rope of drool that would swing down and cling to his t-shirt. He would then bellow vocals from a mouth so large that I came to believe his jaw was able to become unhinged, like a snake’s, threatening to swallow the entire room and the audience whole.
The lyrics were swirled in a howl that folded over upon itself, seemingly culled from a deep pit of desperation and solitude. Hagman could have been reciting Shakespeare, or Blavatsky, or incantations — it made no difference. His voice was as much an instrument as the guitars and bass, built for ferocious sound.
Black Lamb plays a kind of grunge that bands like Soundgarden and Nirvana wanted to play, but quickly realized they were afraid to get that dirty and grimy. Nirvana’s “Bleach” may have approached a glimmer of similarity, but still falls short.
The band is a tight, massive unit behind Hagman, blowing out a giant mudslide of metal that binds with the muck that’s gathered on your body and in your soul, then drags it off of you and down into the drain in the floor, leaving you feeling cleansed and wrung out.
They match the heavy style and cadence of early Black Sabbath with strong, noisy influence from more recent bands like Flipper, but they definitely forge their own metal sound.
It’s a sound that leaves the listener no choice but to succumb to the uncontrollable urge to bang his or her head in time, or pump both fists furiously into the air, and then to simply stand, limp and recovering as he or she waits for the next onslaught.
Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s giglist at Gigbot.
Doug Beam is a self-taught photographer and a sometimes writer. You can see a catalog of his music photography at doug-beam.com.
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