(or "Burger, Boris, Isis!")

So last night I saw Isis, Boris and Oxbow at Koko. I say I saw Oxbow, but actually I saw two members of Oxbow performing an acoustic set as "Loves Holiday", which I can best describe as a ridiculous pseudo-cabaret, pseudo-musical y-front experience. Some of the guitar riffs were good the first time around, but got tedious, and a briefs-and-skinny-vest-clad singer storing his microphone with his family jewels is only funny for a limited time. But at least they were "bringing [us] fucking art".

The thirty-second samples on Last.fm don't do Boris justice. They push a lot of cliché buttons: female guitarist (for added mystique); a massive gong behind the drummer; e-bowing; headless double-necked five string bass slash seven string guitar, downtuned a semitone; etc. Also, their drummer is fitted with a boyband-style headset microphone so that he can scream "wooooo!" and "yeaaaaaaaaah!" at appropriate moments while rocking out. Anyway. They kicked off with some melodic post-rock-y joy, then launched into song after song of frantically-picked riffs and screaming solos. Lots of fun. I picked up Pink after their set, and it's pretty good.

After a pair of intense sets, I wasn't sure if Isis would be a bit of an anti-climax. (Wasn't helped by Martin saying they were pretty unremarkable last time he saw them.) Happily, they weren't. The cavernous venue works well for them. It's a shame that their singer apparently feels that in order for them to retain their doom-metal identity he has to occasionally do the whole death-metal growling thing. At no point did it actually add anything to the music --- they don't need some bloke wrenching his vocal chords to sound brutal or whatever, because they already build what might be described as "savage soundscapes" with their music. He should stick to doing the whole low-in-the-mix long notes thing he does elsewhere, because that works really well. Anyway. It took a few songs for the crowd to get really into it, but they played an excellent set. You should go see them at some point. (Also, their drummer was formidable, as seems to be standard for post-something-heavy bands.)

Also, beforehand we went to one of these ridiculous posh burger places. It was okay. Also, they had a wine list. I don't have much else to say about it.