Orange amplification

There was an eastern invasion at Orange Art Gallery last week. Superheavy duo ZAUM, from New Brunswick and Gothenburg, Sweden doom titans Firebreather played crushing sets, while The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol started things off. Blueish tint comes courtesy of accidentally adjusting my camera's settings to incandescent lighting.



Rhythm section action with John and Nate! The art on the wall is courtesy of Anita Utas.



Jason adjusts!



Guitar and trumpet action with Dave and Scott!



Symbolic action!



Guitar action with Bill!



Firebreather really crushed it - I detected a definite High On Fire and Sleep vibe from Mattias, Axel and Kyle.



Axel hits!



Hair-tossing action with Kyle!



Guitar action with Mattias!



Riff-worshipping action!



Firebreathing action!



Mattias sings! And wears an Iron Giant shirt! Whatever happened to those guys?



Well, here's one of them: Chris was the vocalist with IG when I caught them destroying Mavericks twice way back in 2005, now he's drumming and singing with ZAUM.



Here's Kyle, the other half of ZAUM.



More Chris!



The whole lot!



Chris hits!



Bass action!



Guest vocal action with Mattias!



The band also had dancer Nawal Doucette with them.



And so on!



Thundering action!



Extra Nawal and Chris!



Everything sounded great - hopefully the gallery will step up their musical offerings.

Twice as heavy

Thursday I popped over to House of Targ to catch of notably hefty (musically, that is) duos. Moncton's Zaum and sort-of-local Flying Fortress are both doing the base and drums thing, and both are taking it in completely different directions.

First up, Flying Fortress, who I also caught at the House of Targ in mid-December.



Brandon shows the Vertigo love (the band is signed to the store's record label., Uncle D).



Steelrider sings and hits!



The whole lot!



Come to thing of it both bands are kind of hefty, period.



Flying action!



Closeup action!



On to Zaum, who provide quite a counterpoint to Flying Fortress's thrashy style with longer, meditative tunes, visually abetted by a lot of smoke and many, many candles. I got their record Oracles earlier this year, and it's killer.



Drummer Lewis gets in the zone.



Kyle rocks the low end.



Lewis hits!



Kyle sings!



Fuzzy action!



They're in there somewhere ...



Both really fine sets.