Got a tip? Send it our way
Share your music news — big or small — with the Austin360.com team by sending us an e-mail.
Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > March > 14 > Entry
SXSW Review: Sex/Vid
As was suggested in these pages earlier in the week, Beerland has pulled off their non-SXSW showcases with aplomb. I regret that I have not had more time to spend there, but man alive, the time spent in that little bunker was just killer, thanks mostly to Sex/Vid.
Sex/Vid are sort of the Vampire Weekend of hardcore punk. Many doubt the accompanying hype and cannot believe the praise that is heaped upon their heads. Such doubters would be silenced (or at least certainly should be, by force if necessary) after witnessing the band’s devastating set at Beerland at midnight Thursday.
Sex/Vid hail from the very proud and shamefully underutilized tradition of ur-hardcore act Void - lots of guitar feedback linking songs that seem to go everywhere at once.
Such chaos is tempered by a genuinely sophisticated sense of melody (or at least riff-logic), a smart sense of how to put parts together and a singer whose voice will probably be completely gone this time tomorrow. Riffs ascended and descended like a serial killer transversing the stairs, knife in hand. Everything swung harder than most Stones tribute bands. The gulf between what these puds do and what nearly everyone else in their genre is vast. Sex/Vid, in all their sweaty, balding glory, reminds you just how emotionally inept and formally rigid the vast majority of hardcore punk really is.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: SXSW
Comments
Click here to report comment abuse.