The Scala, London
20 November 2007
This has been a long time coming. Last time I tried to see Jesu (supporting Jarboe, in this very venue) it got scaled down to a Justin Broadrick solo perfomance as Final, which consisted of him hunched over his laptop making incredible noises. Now, while this may have sounded awesome, on every other level there was little to distinguish between the experience and watching a young Paul Weller playing World of Warcraft. And when I say young, I mean very young indeed. Considering Mr Broadrick’s pushing 40, and the album which really made his name as King Of Distorted Guitars, Godflesh‘s Streetcleaner, is nearly half that old itself, he really does seem to have the fresh-faced, shy yet intense demeanour of a high school shooter. Drummer Ted Parsons, on the other hand, is his polar opposite, looking more like what I’d imagine Anton LaVey would have had he been a professional wrestler, and he does his Swans/Prong heritage proud by not so much playing the drums as slowly beating the shit out of them. Diarmuid Dalton‘s bass grinds through the whole thing, like Big Black reincarnated as a mammoth or something equally huge.
Now, I know it’s lazy journalism to describe a band as sounding like being on (insert drug of choice here), so I’ll compound that laziness by stating simply that Jesu sound like being on drugs. All the drugs. All at once. Exactly like that. Which is kind of handy, as I’m too cheap to have bought any before the gig. Turned out nice again! When they lay into “Old Year” two songs in, what had up until now just been damn good-sounding psychedelic noise actually slips into something a lot more transcendent. When people get really fucked up and God talks to them, I kind of imagine Him sounding something like this. With a bottom end that resembles Swans and a top end recalling My Bloody Valentine, this is the best musical example of full spectrum dominance we’re gonna get until someone convinces SunnO))) to record with Skullflower. Layers on layers of feedback, and discordant harmonies to die for. At times it sound like there are fifty guitarists on stage. Not bad for a three-piece.
Simultaneously relentless and uplifting, Jesu have managed to make the nastiest of sounds beautiful, nowhere better than on set closer “Friends Are Evil”. Managing to come over somehow even more brutal than the album version, and simultaneously more gorgeous than ever, it’s a thing of beauty and terror, ending only when the rest of the band leave the stage and Broadrick is left alone, wrestling every bit of feedback he can out of his poor amps.
In short, THAT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. Like being punched repeatedly in the face by an angel. Yeah, that good, and that indefinable.
-Deuteronemu 90210, while playing Battletoads-
