Show Report: Angel Fury (3)/Celestial Force (2) @ Slipper Clutch, 12/27/2024
Piso metalico, plus ruminating on Hollywood Nights on a Hollywood night
You know the metal is properly metalling when it shakes the building so hard a pipe starts leaking. That burst pipe pissed into a bucket that my friend inevitably kicked while walking down the stairs. Despite living out a literal version of kicking the bucket, he's still alive. The Slipper Clutch's flood insurance? A different story, perhaps.
The reason a healthy contingent of LA's trad-leaning metalheads braved the drips is to catch a glimpse of Angel Fury during its first music video shoot. The heavy/speedy metal quintet is on the brink of something big. Fronted by Luna Salvaje, previously of Sirenhex, Angel Fury makes good on its surname, absolutely blazing with a traditional metal energy. It's a high-powered heavy metal engine fueled by Warlock, Original Sin, Messiah Force, Chastain, and the like. However, one of the closer comparisons might be the ghost of another Angeleno: Hellion, Ann Boleyn's sadly still underappreciated ass-kicker.
This is what I've grown to love about going to a ton of smaller shows: seeing bands on the come-up. That might be Celestial Force in the future. The power/thrash four-piece is a little rough around the edges, but the guitarist can wang a solo, and the singer has more stage banter than a fortune cookie factory has fortunes. (There was a rambling one about how metal is our morning coffee. 10/10.) A thrashier Agent Steel comes to mind; back before that band was John Cyriis's descent into full-blown psychosis, or a tax write-off, or both. Celestial Force just does the metal stuff, and in a few years, you can see it getting love from one of those mid-tier Euro imprints.
Angel Fury's time is now. If this band doesn't land on a label like Dying Victims, No Remorse, or Nameless Grave, I will eat my battle vest. Maybe the video will make it happen. Caught in a sea of juiced-up metalheads, a cameraman bravely held his camera aloft. "We need you to go fucking crazy," Salvaje screamed. The crowd acquiesced. Fists were raised, heads were banged; I'm somewhere in the throng in a Encyclopaedia Metallum shirt. And Angel Fury seemed extra fiery, the members putting their backs into one of their best tunes. That set the intensity level for the rest of the set. Of the three times I've seen the band, this was its best show by a mile. Hopefully, this won't be my last time hearing people screaming that I are not, in fact, angels but sinners.
I caught a song from one more band, Dark Insanity, before taking off due to residual fatigue from a week of chaotic personal stuff. May you never find out how much a garage door spring costs, among other domestic terrors. Dark Insanity sounded like Jungle Rot, so I knew right away that wasn't my thing. Same goes for Thicc, which I missed entirely. Not to name shame, but...yeah...I think I'm good on that one. I took my leave, trying not to slip and fall down the stairs like Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. It was the rare early show night for ya guy. And then I got stuck in traffic on the 101. California, baby.
***
Stray Thoughts With Your Host, Wolf Rambatz
At the risk of immolating my metal cred, I listened to Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's Greatest Hits during a couple commutes down to shows. Now, I'm not going to go to bat for the entirety of the Seger catalog, but I think "Hollywood Nights" and "Turn the Page" are 10/10 songs. This, however, is not about that. No, I was thinking about why Seger's music continues to reverberate in the public consciousness unlike many of his peers'. Yes, it's the voice, that entrancing instrument of strong sweetness with a gravely grit. But there's something else there to these songs.
Falling in love is easy, but starting a relationship is hard. The unfortunate fact that most relationship IG accounts, matchmakers, dating apps and other purveyors of "attachment style" and "love language" garbage don't want to contend with is that relationships come down to a lot of luck. It's less that you're fated to meet the "one," or you can attract your perfect partner via a series of tests or snappy prompt answers, it's more of a right place, right time proposition. Sometimes, the timing is bad. Sometimes the surroundings are bad. These are people you're perfectly compatible with, who you could spend the rest of your life with in blissful contentment, but luck isn't on your side.
Here's the thing: Not being able to enter into a relationship isn't your fault, unless you're a raging dickhead, unbearable asshole, or unrepentant scumbag, then it is your fault. This is also far different from growing a healthy relationship once you're in one. That takes maximal effort, and is more elbow grease than luck. But a myriad of caveats aside, I want to keep to the larger point. Normal people tend to beat themselves up on why they're not "doing the right thing" to attract a partner when, in reality, what that thing comes down to is a coin flip. Like, you can make your own luck to an extent by putting yourself in the right situations, but if it doesn't work out, and you're attempting to enter a potential union in good faith while being honest, I can't stress this enough to all of my fellow struggling singles out there: It's not your fault. Similar to how happiness is not a guarantee, love is something you can only pursue.
I think Bob Seger's tales of requited and unrequited love do a better job of making that clear than most other '70s rock composers, or at least the couple songs I've decided to cherry-pick do. Don't fact-check me on the rest. I don't need the 'well, actually's about "You'll Accomp'ny Me," or whatever. With that out of the way, take "Hollywood Nights," a song about two souls from different classes lucking out and meeting each other:
He'd headed west 'cause he felt that a change would do him good
See some old friends, good for the soul
She had been born with a face that would let her get her way
He saw that face and he lost all control
Yeah, he had lost all control
This isn't about the narrator exerting his will and courting "the one." It's about a chance encounter. It flips the tropes of the traditional blue-eyed doo-wop love song — and, as someone else put it, the wearing-leather-in-the-rain, fiending-for-that-ass R&B of the next couple of decades — by recognizing that when it comes to love at first sight, one's locus of control is limited. The heart wants what it wants, and you're just along for the ride. That's more relatable to a lot more people, I think, because it's not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy, and it doesn't romanticize romance. Bob Seger sometimes gets knocked for presenting a workingman's worldview, the blue-collar idealism of standing like a rock, but this is an instance of regular-Joe-ism that hits very close to home.
The pre-chorus of "Against the Wind," a beautiful song I never really got until I crossed the threshold of middle age1, examines the bad luck of when a relationship ends, not because the two parties are at fault, but because people grow or don't, and what once was can't be again.
And I remember what she said to me
How she swore that it never would end
I remember how she held me, oh-so tight
Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then
Seger's narrator is drowning himself in work, trying to find value through professional validation that leaves him stranded in a land "surrounded by strangers" and "guess[ing] I lost my way." The Hallmark version of this song would castigate the narrator for his choices, demanding him to give it all up for love. Run back, Bob. But "Against the Wind" passes no judgment. He misses Janey, but he's still running against the wind, choosing the hard way instead of the easy way because that's what his soul calls out for. He can't be there half-invested. He needs to be whole. He clearly loves Janey, but the place is bad, the timing is bad.
I think that's why Seger's music endures: the thought of bad luck in romance is an idea for all seasons. The cry-in-your-beer country songs, while great, and I love them dearly, hit the hardest during the low times. The I'm-in-love, Three Times One Minus One R&B songs, which I also love, hit the hardest during the high times. And even those songs that fall under the Sucking On Chili Dogs Effect, when a song taps into a false sense of nostalgia, exhibit an in-their-own-time ephemerality. But Seger's music is for all those other times, and there's a lot more of those times than the highs and lows. Because, really, living life is a lot of luck, and Bob Seger seems to know that better than anyone.
Thanks for reading.
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Couldn't find a place to work this in, but at risk of using the well-worn music writer cudgel of "lenses," all of Seger's Silver Bullet Band music is seen through the lens of middle-age, even when exploring new love. It's usually looking back, suggesting some advancement on the narrators' parts. I think that's also why these songs resonate, because there's a lot more life after the puppy love phase.