"Witch house" pin-ups
SALEM are an altogether perplexing proposition, particularly aboard a boat lurking above the murky waters of the river Avon. Tonight's proceedings are drawn to a rather abrupt end after around forty brain-pulverising, pulsating minutes of mangled apocalypse in musical format, concluded hours before any sort of supposed witching hour. Despite the set's concision however, tonight, the Michigan trio comprised of John Holland, Jack Donoghue and Heather Marlatt are equal parts bewitching and bewildering, a bestial Cerberus occasionally coming across as a grimly enlivened open mic session in Dante's Inferno. Amidst drop-D guitar washes, whacked-out dubstep backing track and woozy MicroKorg synths, whilst Donoghue's enthrallingly lethargic rhymes are overtly engaging, Sick stripped of baritone autotune and sounding cataclysmic enough to engulf Broadmead, the vacant glare and ethereal coos of Marlatt are revelatory tonight (to which Frost vehemently attests), as a somewhat meagre throng lumbers lifelessly upon creaking floorboards.
When not cowering in the corner behind drum machines and samplers, dilapidated guitars and a jungle of cable a menacing John Holland looks as awkward as Elton John in an Iceland, flicking fingers at the front row, rocking back and forth, hooded. Augmenting such awkwardness, the front row gyrate, squeal and affirm undying affection incessantly throughout as if in the resplendent presence of The Wanted as ambiguous silhouettes of cloaked shadow bob in slo-mo shade, intermittently permeated by blue hue spotlight. Thekla is thus transformed in a ghoulish ghost ship, emanating a gruesome aural aura, all set to haul up the anchor and set sail for Hades, King Night rattling speaker stacks and plastic pint glasses all the way. Sacrilegiously divine at times (Redlights, Traxx), whilst shrouded in impermeable shoegaze swathes at others (Killer, Asia), there's little evidence here to dissuade witch-hunters that SALEM are anything but the genuine, grotesquely haunting article. The sound of the future, it seems, should sound like the end of everything, albeit at about 20 BPM, at 6 frames per minute; the impending doom of 2012 has its sonic accompaniment.
