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Archive for the ‘The Slaps’ Category

[DID NOT ATTEND: November 21, 2025] Stinking Lizaveta / channls (album relase) / Deathbird Earth

For reasons I don’t entirely remember, I’ve added Stinking Lizaveta to the list of bands that I’d like to see.

I think what inspired me to check them out is that they are an instrumental band who play complex music.

And this is the third or fourth time that I am not seeing them.  But for some reason I didn’t really feel like going to this show.

channls is a heavy post rock band from Philadelphia.  This show was an album release show for them, although they weren’t the headliners.  Their bandcamp page says

Formed in 2023 by drummer Jay Yachetta and guitar player Steven Rosplock – veterans of the progressive outfit Phantasm – channls is rounded out by two key figures from the Philly music underground: bassist Vincent King (In the Presence of Wolves) and guitarist Jace Miller (Alright Junior). In a move that borders on poetic irony, the band boasts three frontmen in a project where vocals are conspicuously absent.  The band’s sound, rooted in post-rock but unafraid of distortion-drenched aggression, occupies a liminal space between beauty and brutality.

I’m now thinking that this would have been a really good show and I should have gone.

Deathbird Earth are a dup from Philly (BJ – BASS, SYNTHESIZERS, VOCALS; DAVE – DRUMS, PERCUSSION, SYNTHESIZER).  I really enjoy watching two people make a ton of noise and their recording has a lot going on.  They note:

Deathbird Earth’s sound tends to eschew typical genre classification but is made from a mix of heavy drums and distorted bass layered with keyboard sounds that may or may not be lifted from your favorite classic science fiction films.

I guess you’d call them heavy metal, but there’s a lot going on in this heavy metal. They’re the only band with and singing tonight.

 

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[DID NOT ATTEND: October 12, 2025] Post Animal / The Slaps

I saw Post Animal open for Temples back in 2023 and they blew me away:

They came out on stage–all five of them–and proceeded to blow me away with a fusion of what I heard as Rush meets King Gizzard.  The Rush component came in some of their extended, prog-like songs that ended in chord patterns that were very much Rush adjacent.  The King Gizzard part came from some of the frenetic guitar soloing.  And what was really really fun about them was that every song was really different.

I was really excited to see them again and thought Johnny Brenda’s would be a perfect venue for them.  The show had sold out.  I listened to their latest album and it was pretty mellow and straightforward.  I was surprised and lost interest in going to the show.

Since I had a show the night before and the night after, so I blew off the show.  Although looking at the setlist, I gather they did play a lot of their earlier weird stuff too.

The Slaps play a quiet soft folk sound with some quirky elements.  It did suggest that Post Animal would be more mellow. Although perhaps they are louder live, as this review from DC says “a three-piece from Chicago, who cross that great divide between long jazz-inspired passages and straight ahead rock.”

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