One More Time

Gorch Fock

Emo's Jr., Sunday, March 16 Just how loud was Sixth Street early Sunday night? Still belching enough live rock & roll noise pollution that even with the front hatch of Emo's tree fort thrown asunder, you still couldn't hear Gorch Fock down the street. A street mostly deserted, the dead and wounded from the previous night's Roman bacchanalia carted off, and yet bands blared from every fifth doorway even though only two Red River dives (Beerland and Emo's) were still SXSW showcasing. The cacophony was such, in fact, that it wasn't until you stepped inside Emo's front room that you were thrown against the back wall of the club by this new Austin mastodon. There, in the darkened corner, as if unearthed from the Club Foot strata of Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers, was a roaring beast straight outta Austin's glory hole. The two guitarists posted sentry on the floor, unleashing a lava flow of molten metal, almost went unnoticed in the shadow of two full drum kits on the small bar stage, not to mention the pair of yetis hammering out a mutant jungle beat like the Allman Brothers bulldozing the rain forests in hell. There may have been a keyboardist -- there is on the group's thunderous debut -- but the trombonist climbing the rafters and screaming into the mic just outside the range of two film projectors and their midnight propaganda stole what little spotlight there was. It was all one obliterating avalanche, "Shirts vs. Skins" and a half-dozen others broken up every six or seven minutes by brief band inhalations, but the punishing air mass being tsunamied by the band was torrential. They just wanted to fock, fock, fock, fock you. A soundgarden from the Lost World.