I bet I’m the only person in Columbus stuck in a quandary over which Monday night show to attend – Julien Baker at the Big Room Bar or Warbringer at Ace of Cups. The struggle is real!
At one end of the spectrum, you’ve got the 19-year-old Julien Baker whose debut album, Sprained Ankle, is a haunting and emotionally-charged deep dive into the life of somebody who has already had more to deal with than somebody twice her age. Depression and substance abuse are just two of the heavy topics Baker exposes through gripping lyrics and sparse instrumentation – she’s often backed by just a single guitar or piano. Baker performed in Chicago this weekend and, as one might expect with music of this type, the audience was described as being “quiet as church mice”. I have a feeling this is going to be the type of show that sticks with attendees for a long, long time.
There’s nothing delicate about the music that the throwback metal four-pack (Warbringer, Enforcer, Cauldron, Exmortus) will be performing in front of rabid fans at Ace of Cups. As metal has progressed over time, newer bands tend to want to out-extreme their peers. I’m okay with that but there’s something glorious about bands paying homage to the New Wave of British Metal the way Enforcer and Cauldron do with their traditional metal riffs (ala Iron Maiden, Saxon, Raven) – these are bands that would have been on arena stages in the ’70s. Warbringer’s got an ’80s west coast thrash metal sound that, when I first heard them, made me think I was listening to early Slayer demos and Exmortus is sort of conglomeration of all these styles (thrash, NWOBM, death metal).
What to do? WHAT TO DO? I’m thinking it’ll probably be a game-time decision – too bad the two shows aren’t at venues closer to each other so I could run back and forth.
