I was reading an old review I had written many years ago after watching a nascent Impaled Existence turn their amps up to No.11, and it got me thinking...
There are two great tribes in live music. Two warring factions who have spent decades proving that moderation is for accountants and people who bring earplugs. On one side: the drum machine disciples. On the other: the guitar maximalists, whose life’s mission is to make sure the drummer exists purely in theory.
Let’s start with the drum machine crowd.
There’s something oddly tragic about a band with stadium-sized ambitions but a suspiciously empty space where a human rhythm section should be. When faced with unemployment, you might reasonably consider retraining as a drummer or keyboard player. It’s a stable profession, provided you don’t mind being replaced by a small grey box with a start/stop button and the emotional range of a microwave. These bands don’t just lack a drummer; they’ve eliminated the possibility of drummer-related excuses. No cancelled gigs due to mysterious wrist injuries. No dramatic fallings-out over tempo. No late arrivals because someone “lost a cymbal”. Just cold, relentless, perfectly punctual beeping.
And yet, for all the reliability, something is missing. Drum machines are technically flawless but spiritually unemployed. They never rush a chorus in excitement. They never hit slightly too hard because the crowd is bouncing. They never look like they’re about to pass out halfway through the encore. They simply exist, dutifully tapping away like an accountant doing cardio.
It’s rhythm without risk. Precision without peril. Bollocks without… well, bollocks.
Still, you have to admire the practicality. A drum machine never demands a bigger share of the van. It never eats the rider. It never breaks up the band because it wants to explore jazz. In the ruthless economy of touring, it’s the perfect employee: silent, obedient, and incapable of forming a side project.
Then we cross the battlefield to the other extreme: bands whose guitars are so loud the drummer might as well be miming in a different postcode.
These are the young, enthusiastic, slightly feral outfits who arrive onstage with fourteen guitars, three working pedals between them, and the firm belief that volume is a personality trait. The drum kit is technically present, often barely mic’d, bravely attempting to exist beneath a tidal wave of distortion. Somewhere back there, a human is working incredibly hard, but the guitars have formed a conspiracy against him.
The result is magnificent chaos. A rampaging herd of amplified chainsaws. A sonic avalanche that flattens everything in its path, including rhythm, melody, and occasionally structural coherence. It is loud in the way thunderstorms are loud: impressive, slightly terrifying, and not particularly concerned with subtlety.
And yet it’s still entertaining as hell.
The guitars thrash and roar as if they’ve received reliable intelligence that the apocalypse is starting in the car park. Every riff sounds like it’s trying to outrun the end of the world. The attack is relentless, breathless, and completely uninterested in pacing. Which, ironically, is the one thing both action films and music desperately need.
Because the best action films know when to slow down. They let you breathe before throwing another explosion at your face. The same goes for music. If everything is maximum intensity all the time, the intensity eventually becomes the baseline. The sonic assault stops feeling like an assault and starts feeling like the furniture.
But here’s the thing: sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes chaos is the point. Sometimes the joy is in the sheer commitment to noise, the glorious refusal to turn anything down, and the absolute certainty that subtlety is for cowards.
So here we are, stuck between two extremes. On one side, bands so precise they’ve automated the drummer out of existence. On the other, bands so loud they’ve accidentally done the same thing with amplifiers.
Somewhere in the middle is probably the perfect live sound.
But where’s the fun in that?
