Pagan’s Mind – Underworld, London – Friday 20th May 2011
“Reflection belongs either to the moment after, or to the moment before, the taking of action. During the time of action we are guided by reflections already past and forgotten, which have been transformed in our minds into passions. I was acting; therefore I was not thinking. I knew that I should think later, when action was over.”
Alberto Moravia, Contempt
First move: pull off the many webs that have settled upon the memories. Nay, rather, drag the webs off. Use myriad midgets, if necessary, harnessed and under severe cock oppression. Then start to revive the memories, preferably without resort to the proddings of depth psychology or any carnivalesque Tom Hanks young is old/old is young mind-fuckery.
Many months have elapsed and still the memories live. Twelve minutes of alleyway banter – the spit dampening the ground, the hate-filled invective darkening the sky – followed by a night of Metal: Neonfly, local London boys rising energetically from the womb of the circuit, and headliners Pagan’s Mind, Norway’s finest purveyors of Progressive Metal. It was a May-blessed time of jollity, a trip to the Underworld to watch the emergence of the new and the continuation of the good.
The hastening on-rush of Camden’s descent into drunkenness was ever-present, but then again isn’t it always, Friday or otherwise? And so, as we kick the amputee into the corner for being too easy a victim, we reach the impasse that is time’s relativity. Strike these memories down, or at least those that have no pertinence.
Time has all the malleability and indeterminacy one would expect from a concept locked irretrievably between our heads and our watches. It can be slashed apart and battered together again, finesse and consistency be damned. Time has the knack for wrenching free from the minutes and the seconds, alighting upon cushions of memory or an external pivot.
In Christopher Priest’s Inverted World, time in a city perennially pulled across the land on tracks is measured by distance travelled: six miles since I last wept at the mediocrity of the new Morbid Angel album, and so on and so forth.
In the musician’s conception, it could be asserted that time loses its conventional subdivisions. Instead, one gig, one tour, becomes the substance of time. Then, to the fan smitten by the sway of this action, the one gig represents itself not as one more speck on the fading patchwork of the past, but rather a composite of images glowing as if experienced three days ago, not three months ago.
Which leaves us idling at the rear of the World’s End. Once again. Hearing the muffled chimes of soundcheck echoing behind iron doors. Guessing which organs are being sold at the den across the road. Evaluating thighs and all else as North London trundles past. All before the forked-tongue of Metal unfurled and lapped us up, or rather down, deep down into the Underworld.
Neonfly were just about to hit the stage when we touched down. The passage ahead, perhaps distorted by dilapidation of mind, had the noxious quality of too much pink, too much leather, too much gin. Past several rows of breasts that were confused into thinking the gig had glam overtones, past the giant arsehole that would later throw his faeces at others in the mosh pit, into the cradle, that heart into which we regularly drain our own of their omnipresent blackness – the actual gig.
Neonfly had impressed us before. Their strain of Power Metal, mixing catchiness with a set of balls – steel lashed to the hook – enchants those of us open to their call. These flows and contrasts are assembled with the expertise of a Maiden aficionado, or at least a Tobias Sammet subscriber. The lead of chunky riffs into soft vintage verses, the soaring chorus decelerating to a dreamy keys-led conclusion, the pinch harmonic intro segueing into a divergent cleanliness, all kinds of focal points populating the music.
Live they delivered, just as they had before. With debut album Outshine the Sun only a few months from release, the band had the impetus one would have expected, all the vigour of a paedophile parolee at the school gates. Hours of toil had passed, sweat and fluids spilled in the name of music, a February spent in Italy crafting the album.
They clearly relished the chance to deafen London once more. The songs that are now almost classics – ‘Ship with no Sails’, ‘Morning Star’, etc – provided the set with plenty of excellence, the crowd seeming to perceive them in the same way. Neonfly’s popularity is steadily growing, and the Underworld’s mishmash of humans gave the impression that that rate of growth will only increase. In short, they liked Neonfly. Even the vocalist’s admittance of an AOR fixation was put so buoyantly that the crowd could not but cheer loudly.
Now, with Outshine the Sun due next week, we are able to bookend this stretch of time using the image of Neonfly. If we had monoliths, we would etch the band’s name into their sides and leave them as symbolic eyesores on the Southbank. But alas, we don’t.
On to Pagan’s Mind.
A lot of Prog Metal bands are merely weak Dream Theater clones. Their instrumental proficiencies, demonstrable as they may be, are thin veils that cannot hide the fact that they are as dull as buying socks. Pagan’s Mind, however, have always stood out from the substandard fold. Through dedication to songwriting, a trait frequently missing from their peers, they have forged a unique place in the Metal universe. The harmony struck between sing-along choruses and technicality provides the crucial element of the band, their ability to summon a hook that melts itself into the listener’s brain and marry that to mesmerising levels of fret and percussive brilliance.
In May we witnessed that balance exhibited to perfection. Pagan’s Mind have lived for many years, plenty of time to hone crafts and discover comfortable niches, and it showed: all the elegance of the consummate musician clear for the Underworld to grasp. Like their support band, they too had the momentum of a new album. In fact, this was something of a launch party for Heavenly Ecstasy, complete with champagne and celebratory plastic cupfuls passing through the crowd. The atmosphere was jubilant.
The setlist was largely drawn from the new album and its predecessor, God’s Equation. While we would have liked to have heard more early material, particularly one or two cuts from the first album, the strength of these renditions smacked away any talk of dissent. And when songs like ‘Enigmatic Mission’ and ‘AegeanShores’ played, that yearning for the past dissipated in an instant.
Here was the passion of the present, sutured to a grand performance, a totality mesmerised by the magisterial vocals of Nils Rue. The latter’s Geoff Tate-esque quality, his phenomenal skill in singing innumerable high notes, steering each song forward, was a highlight of the night. The other highlight was the instrumedley put on by the guitar-keyboard-drums nexus, a mix of sections torn out of various instrumental tracks, with the finale of ‘Back to the Magic of Childhood’ reaching orgasmic proportions.
How many days after Pagan’s Mind did we realise that action had finished and reflection was now due? How many days did Bill Murray relive Groundhog’s Day? Indeed, the number is unimportant. After the act of spectatorship, when the numbing eased and the auditory grip loosened, we could think again, throwing the assorted thoughts into the roiling muck of the brain. Out from that came one conclusion: the potency of the performances that night – at the risk of death by hyperbole – continued on, prolonging an act that had in actuality finished, captivating the mind beyond the moment.
Sufficient time has now elapsed. And like that time with the vat of whiskey and the boatload of harpoon fatalities, we will let the memories settle, always open to a quick riffle through on a dull afternoon.
suicidescriptures1.wordpress.com 