Witch / Earthless / Quest for Fire
Horseshoe Tavern; Toronto, ON

Lingering near the back of a capacity Horseshoe Tavern with Fucked Up’s Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham, J Mascis peered out onto a crowd eagerly anticipating Witch’s Toronto debut. Three hours later, the view must have looked much different to him.

Locals Quest for Fire opened the night with their own brand of sludgy stoner rock. It was very well-received. They manipulated standard tropes of the genre with ease and exhibited a strong sense for creating contrasting soundscapes of drone and screeching high-end. Added late to the lineup, there was probably no Toronto band more suited for the slot.

Next up, Witch’s Tee Pee labelmates Earthless erupted in front of two gigantic Marshall and Fender stacks. It was clear from the front and center drum kit that Mario Rubalcaba was the pounding heart and crushing soul of the San Diego threesome, but he didn’t dwarf his bandmates. Isaiah Mitchell and Mike Eginton’s slodging cascades of overdriven guitar and bass created a pulsating backdrop to Rubalcaba’s precise yet chaotic drumming. They fully exploited the Horseshoe’s notoriously loud soundsystem; their little-pause set contained a sonic presence that seemed to rival the now-legendary MBV 26-minute closing holocaust. It didn't of course, but in the cramped Horseshoe, it really seemed to.

Of course, most of the crowd was there to see J Mascis, a man whose reputation seemed -- on this night -- to supersede the presence he brought to the stage. The Dinosaur Jr. frontman and Witch drummer began the night with one arm figuratively tied behind his back. There were wild expectations of how crushing his newish band’s sound would be at the Tavern, but like most high expectations, the reality fell short.

Witch had the pot-addled crowd handed to them on a platter, but they just failed to deliver. As they began their skraunchy but lackluster set, the venue slowly cleared, leaving a two-thirds full bar behind. It's not that Mascis wasn't great on the drums, he was just overshadowed, and the rest of the band seemed thin in comparison to their opening counterparts. I’d give you a setlist, but I could honestly no longer distinguish the reverberating tinnitus in my ears from the music coming from the stage after experiencing the auditory face-stomp that was Earthless.

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