"U.S.A.! U.S.A.!": Holy Grail and Cauldron at Great Scott, a night that will live in infamy or something to that effect

Published May 02 2011, 04:46 PM by Daniel Brockman

When I entered the doors of Great Scott at the end of the daylight portion of this glorious late spring Sunday, I didn’t expect that within the hour I’d be caught in the mosh of a gaggle of dudes chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Double unexpect, since I knew that the plan was to be serenaded by the dulcet squealy hair metal redux of Cannuck power trio CAULDRON, right? Well, as we know, and I think I’m paraphrasing Transformers 2 here, “fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing”. Oof, or rather double oof at that one, but that’s the way this whole thing works. And so it was that, upon seeing guitarist Ian Chains aggressively turn away from his full stack and force out of his black Flying V the opening salvo of “All Or Nothing” (from their newest and raddest album Burning Fortune, I entered into a strange night that would present some amazing modern creative-anachronist metal amidst a moment of political import that would render said music experience borderline hallucinogenic.

Oh right, Cauldon: if you’ve never heard them, picture, if you will, a Toronto vocalist/bassist who looks like a Fast Times At Ridgemont High (or insert Canadian equivalent) extra and sounds exactly like Geddy Lee at his most screaming-bird-of-prey-y, fronting the best kind of plod-rock-stripper-pole-soundtrack band, but with a guitarist who peppers each tune with nagging soloing that is continually brutal and show-off-y without ever venturing into that particular kind of 80s Randy Rhodes classicism that I always found somewhat off-putting of a certain type of showboat-y shredder dude. What that means is that Cauldron, in front of a scuzzy Sunday night crowd, aren’t afraid to play slow and steady and pounding when people might want something superfast-- and they get away with it, perhaps only because every song, at it’s climax, consummates in a frenzied burst of double-kick aggression that finds guitarist and bassist moving to the front, foot on the monitors, long hair waving in perfect unison. Each time they went there at the end of a tune, you (okay, “I”) thought “Not again!” only to get suckered in by the frantic beauty of it, as the twin kick pedals escalate the tension sadistically and gorgeously.

About fifteen minutes in, a dude in a sleeveless jean jacket covered in patches of bands that had all passed their classic period around 1983 looked up from his phone to exclain “They killed Osama Bin Laden!” Frontman Jason Decay took the info in skeptically, wanly reflecting “This is kind of similar to the way we found out that Dio had died.” For their next few songs, the jubilant (and previously mentioned) ejaculations of “U.S.A. U.S.A.” erupted, both obnoxious and naively gay, and somehow the fist-in-the-air awesomeness of the display fit in perfectly with Cauldron’s set. Just as the enjoyment of Cauldron’s music is often infused with the nagging feeling that the whole thing is a put-on (exhibit A: the retarded genius of their big single/closing tune for the night, “Chained Up In Chains”), so was tonight’s jingoistic display not threatening so much as amusing and fun. Of course, no one really knew whether the whole thing was real, which is the way big someone’s-died news announcement always arrive, right? Right.

HOLY GRAIL were up next, showcasing how varied the attack can be amongst two bands who are, on the surface, working within debatably the same genre of mid 80s recidivist-metal. The Grail, live, are kind of like if you took that old VHS you have of Priest, and played it on FF, with the sound on. The moves, the hair swinging, and the endlessly intricate soloing, all competently executed at full-on breakneck speed. Their debut long-player, last year’s Crisis In Utopia, is both awe-inspiring and intimidating in its sheer shredditute. Live, however, the whole thing was just pure flurry: frontman James Luna would lift his studded leather armband in the air like a conductor leading an orchestra through a particularly tricky Carl Stalling piece, as twin whiddly-whiddly leads violently assaulted both ears in unison.

It was, in retrospect, the perfect soundtrack to being about to find out that we had gotten ‘er dun w/r/t Bin Laden and that whole thing. As hordes descended on the White House and Ground Zero and Boston Common and a zillion other places to cheer... what, exactly?... Luna, catching his breath, led us into the band’s final tune, “Fight To Kill”, asking “Are you ready for war? To fight? To KIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL!?!?” Once more into the fray, as violence and beaming grins and directionless aggression blurred into a psychedelic allegory of triumph and its accompanying high; like all great rock shows, it would be all downhill once the lights turned on, heads turned towards the news on the tv in the back, and real life impinged on the fantasy that is true molten rock, forcing us all to confront our darkest impulses that only completely full-on rock and roll abandon lets out in us all.

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