On Feb. 1, the Duke Coffeehouse welcomes Brooklyn black metal band Liturgy for a performance that may well cause James Buchanan Duke to roll in his grave.
Without question, the Methodist forefather of Duke University would have qualms with black metal, a genre often associated with the murders and church-burnings of its Norwegian pioneers. But among black metal bands, Liturgy might be least conflicted with Duke’s institutional values. With the band’s cross-disciplinary mindset, Liturgy sheds both the grisly black-and-white face paint and the cult mentality of most black metal bands. Whereas black metal musicians tend to ignore other genres, Liturgy guitarist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix welcomes lessons from post-minimalist rock, medieval chants, even techno and hip-hop.
“Liturgy understands the sound of traditional black metal, and they can play it,” said Grayson Currin, music editor of the Independent Weekly and writer for Pitchfork. “But black metal can sometimes be tedious—bands grinding away at one idea for an hour. Liturgy builds tension like a post-rock or math-rock band, and that tension is missing from a lot of black metal.”
“It’s not really a matter of trying to bring outside influences into black metal” Hunter-Hendrix said. “I want to make music that incorporates all of the things that I love. Black metal becomes the container in which I express that sound.”
Liturgy’s genre-blurring approach is often controversial. Orthodox members of the black metal community call the Brooklyn group pretentious. Others call Liturgy the hipster’s black metal band. But Liturgy’s music has found acclaim in prominent sources. The New York Times has written a piece about the band. Pitchfork gave Aesthethica a glowing review, and SPIN ranked the band’s 2011 album number 24 on their year’s best list.
“Blogs are letting college students know about a band and a genre that many would not otherwise access,” said Adelyn Wyngaarden, booking manager of Duke’s Coffeehouse.
The Coffeehouse concert will be without drummer Greg Fox, who left the band in October. Fox had a vital role in Aesthethica—performing Liturgy’s major stylistic innovation, the burst beat—but Hunt-Hendrix expects the band to progress without him.
“In the past two records, we pushed Greg Fox to do some awesome stuff—definitely on the outer limits of what a human can do on the drums” Hunt-Hendrix said. “But the burst beat is always something I thought it would be impossible for a living drummer to do. With a burst beat, beat transforms and becomes pitch. Accelerate a beat at a certain frequency and tone becomes introduced. That’s not something any drummer can ever do.”
On Feb. 1, and throughout Liturgy’s upcoming tour with headliners Sleigh Bells and Diplo, Liturgy will perform with two guitarists. The lack of a live drummer should change the dynamic of their performance.
“This tour will have a totally different arrangement: electronic [drums] and guitar” Hunt-Hendrix said. “There will be material from the last record, but it has been reformatted as a sort of tribute [to Aesthethica].”
“It is a really gutsy move to go out on their most high profile tour as a duo,” Currin said. “That’s perfect Liturgy. Metal fans might find it weird. But they are okay saying, ‘Let’s just be this noisy guitar duo.’ Liturgy makes unexpected moves, and it is fun to watch.”
Touring with Diplo and Sleigh Bells should allow Liturgy to access audiences even further outside the traditional black metal community.
“Playing for an audience outside the black metal community is nothing new for us,” Hunt-Hendrix said. “But we have never performed for people this far outside the black metal community.”
At the Coffeehouse, Liturgy will perform for students who have little experience with black metal.
“Liturgy is the first black metal band to perform here,” said Wyngaarden. “Other metal bands have played, but black metal is something that Duke has not had an opportunity to see.”
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