Saint Vitus played Middle East Downstairs – 10/15

It was an particularly heavy Tuesday evening at the Middle East Downstairs this week, as the club paid host to doom metal pioneers Saint Vitus and their pummeling trio of openers in Pallbearer, The Hookers and Gozu.

Opening the show and providing the hometown representation for this particular bill was Boston quartet Gozu. Though they hardly resembled a metal band in most respects, Gozu sounded the part with a confident set that laid down driving grooves and riffs galore.

Up next were The Hookers, a band seemingly in constant struggle with itself to play faster, louder and more maniacally with every passing second. They tore out of the gate with hyperspeed guitars and breakneck drumming that rarely let up. Vocalist Adam Neal’s quip about preferring cocaine to pot seemed an apt metaphor for The Hookers’ stylistic distance from the more trudging pace of Pallbearer and Vitus. Out of place or not, the band still put on a hell of an entertaining show. Neal got in the crowd’s face to howl tales of witches, the devil and the undead, while bassist Pat Smith departed the stage entirely to play on the floor whilst partaking in an audience member’s beer.

Pallbearer adjusted things to a statelier tone with their spellbinding set. The Arkansas band specializes in doom that’s simultaneously traditional and progressive, with lengthy, lumbering songs that blend exploratory fretwork and an ultra-heavy low end. Their 2012 debut Sorrow and Extinction garnered plenty of attention last year, but they broke out just one song from it during this set. The bulk of the performance was made up of new tracks, several of which didn’t even have lyrics yet. No matter though; the band’s latest epic-scope compositions were still wholly enthralling in instrumental form. The sound was massive and crushing, and they positively dominated the room. Pallbearer are the type of show-stopping opener that threaten to steal a headliner’s thunder if they aren’t on their game.

Luckily for Saint Vitus, this was hardly the case. The legendary group, whose initial run lasted from 1978 to 1996 and who reunited in 2008, can still put on a show worthy of their illustrious reputation. Five years into the reunion, and with a well-received 2012 record under their belt, Vitus are simply in top form. They remain steeped in the traditional doom sound they helped to invent, with guitarist Dave Chandler’s huge riffs and the stomping rhythm section of Mark Adams and Henry Vasquez (replacing original drummer Armando Acosta) converging into a headbanging splendor. The distinctive vocals of Scott “Wino” Weinrich sounded as good as ever atop it all.

Weinrich bore a quiet intensity on stage that lent additional gravity to his alternately despairing and defiant lyrics. He spent much of his time gripping his microphone and staring intently toward the ground or into the distance, as if lost in thought. An instrumental section during “Clear Windowpane” saw him walk over to Chandler’s Marshall stack and simply rest his head on it. Chandler himself, on the other hand, offered many a maniacal grin and enthusiastically shredded solo, and sang along to every lyric off-mic with hands outstretched between guitar strums. The two balanced one another in the glee and the gravitas of great heavy metal.

Vitus’ set pulled from most every part of Weinrich’s tenure with the group, including tracks from reunion record Lillie F-65 that didn’t sound the slightest bit out of place next to their established classics. An intermittent mosh pit broke out during “I Bleed Black,” and wound up consuming the first several rows of the audience by the time an encore of “Dying Inside” and the anti-conformity anthem “Born Too Late” rolled around. The band seemed to draw off that energy, and the show only got better as it went along. Weinrich closed that final song with middle fingers aloft toward its oppressors, as Chandler quite literally tore into one last guitar solo with his teeth.

Don’t let the band’s age fool you – Saint Vitus are very much on point in 2013. This was the tight, heavy, energetic show that one would idealize for the band; impressive through and through.

Complete photo gallery here.