Nequient unquiets quiescence at Silhouette Lounge on Monday, 27 March 2023.

Torn In Half acquiesces in the opening slot.

A bar with a resident dog is either the best or the worst bar you’ve ever been to.

If it’s your dog, and it’s a good dog, it’s the best bar. Rolling up to the joint with your Best Friend feels just like a homecoming. You might as well have a comfy recliner and pair of slippers waiting for you, along with your beverage of choice.

If it’s not your dog, and it’s a bad dog, it’s the worst bar. Trying to order a can of beer is like sneaking around the backend of a junkyard where some old junkyard dog is ready to rip off your limbs when it’s not busy feeding on rats, cats, and rusty nails. Buyer beware.

How to know if the dog is good or bad? Don’t ask the owner. If the owner owns the dog, it’s always a good dog to them. Otherwise they’d have “rehomed” the animal already.

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The proof is in the pudding with a good dog. Is it kind to friends and strangers? Is it even-tempered or a mercurial force? Does it mind its business, or bark at disinterested parties for attention? Is it in reasonable health and presentable shape? Or does it have open sores, pest infestation, and dripping chains of mucus hanging from its maw? Does the owner correct the dog if it makes a misstep – or does the dog correct its owner?

If a stranger walks away with good things to say about the dog, or can’t even remember there was a dog in the building, it’s a good dog. Otherwise, you’re starting to trend in the other direction.

Allergic to dogs or ever suffered a bite from one? You’ll see the plain truth of the words above. Otherwise, you’ll roll your eyes and slip back into the wooly and warm haze of 21st century pet-owning solipsism.

Next up…cats!

Torn In Half

On a nightlong bill of death metal where about half the listed bands were no shows, Torn In Half came through. The Boston-based black metal matadors growled and chopped their way through the opening set.

The four-piece band has been “Active” in “Boston, Massachusetts” from “2020-Present” according to the Encyclopaedia Metallum. Is that proper Latin?

The vast, submission-based EM is another testament – if you needed another – to the utopian principles animating the metal community. Strip away the black dross, illegible fonts, and growling, and you’re left with a subculture of musicians and fans that are a pretty chill hang.

Torn In Half helped usher the audience further along the path of full blow tinnitus with a set that took advantage of the Silhouette’s tower of power speakers. Shades of Ageotan flexing the black metal.

Nequient

Nequient pulled into town about halfway through a tour that started in Michigan, looped through the Northeast, and wound its way back home to Reggie’s Music Joint in their hometown Chicago.

No doubt a truckload of doomy grunts, howls, and riff wrecking unfolded during the tour so far. But there wasn’t half as much as you might have expected in Allston due to a late cancellation by Stone The Oracle. Member and show organizer (Cody?) had suffered a major medical catastrophe (some “serious spinal shit”?) at the eleventh hour.

The four-piece from the Land of Lincoln soldiered on. Death metal bills, like punk bills, have a high degree of interchangeability in most circumstances. Slot ‘em in, slot ‘em out. Which is not to say that the musicians involved lack idiosyncratic skills and abilities. But you need to screw your eyes, cock your ear, and look past the uniform band name fonts to pick them out.

Nequient, for example, offered a different species of death metal vocals. Whereas the doom grunts of Torn In Half settled in the popular bass hog register, Nequient’s frontman delivered a more alto bowser bark, supplemented by a soprano squirrel-like chitter in off moments.

To track these subtle differences requires the erudition of a musicologist and a zoologist combined. If you get lost, no worries, just consult the Encyclopaedia Metallum. Shades of Sons Lunaris at their most metal. Shades of POINT BLANK in terms of square footage covered by the roving frontman.