Saturday night was the debut “Song Battle,” a competition among local bands who write and perform original songs based around a pre-selected theme. It was held at Geno’s Rock Club on Congress St., a small, intimate, dark and divey venue. It comes with a well-stocked bar, pool table, plenty of sitting and dancing space, and most importantly a long legacy of excellent heavy rock ‘n’ roll shows.
The event drew a substantial crowd of local music fans. The mood was decidedly familial with a healthy amount of regulars chatting excitedly while waiting for the first band to take the stage. Beneath their black-clad heavily-tattooed exterior, the crowd was very friendly and genuinely excited to hear brand new songs by some of the best bands in Portland’s close knit hardcore music scene. The competition is the brain child of Kevin “Boo” Leavitt, a USM alumnus and member of the band Covered in Bees, a longtime staple in Portland’s punk scene. Leavitt took on MC duties for Saturday’s trial run and added much enthusiasm to the evening proceedings.
The concept behind Song Battle is simple but unique. Eight local metal and hardcore bands were given the pre-selected themes “animals as weapons” and “the apocalypse” and three weeks to write two original songs that adhere to the night’s themes. The winner was then decided by audience applause at the end of the night, played an encore and selected the themes for the next battle. Apocryphonic, By Blood Alone, Vic 44, Pigboat, Hessian, Ghosthunter, Clubber Lang and Spawn of Man comprised the battle’s inaugural lineup.
“A lot of people think I started this competition as a reaction to ‘Clash of the Titans,’ and really that’s kind of true,” Leavitt said.
Clash of the Titans has become an extremely popular event in the local music scene, drafting musicians into local quasi super-groups who masquerade as popular bands, duking it out hit by nostalgic hit.
While the Clash’s debut certainly showcased the substantial chops of local musicians, Leavitt’s event tested the creativity and songwriting skills of the musicians. During his introduction Boo playfully articulated his dissatisfaction with Clash of the Titans: “I like original rock ‘n’ roll. How many times do we need to hear ELO vs. ELO?”
Vic 44 went on first with only an electric guitar and a laptop. He said something about his new album which boasted the glorious title “Vomit Party” before launching into some monster Sabbath-inspired riffs. His guitar playing was loose and feedback-heavy, punctuated with wild noise rock guitar squalls. Vic 44’s laptop provided crisp percussive beats that added much needed math to open ended songs like “Popular Song,” which he debuted. Unfortunately the vocals were so inaudible it was hard to tell how well he adhered to the themes of the contest in his songwriting.
Apocyphonic had no such technical issues. They played ear-splitting, down-tuned, straightforward hardcore. Their gravel-throated lead singer had the most entertaining line of the evening in their song “Bear Launcher” when he screamed, “Bears are falling from the sky and they look angry!” The ultra serious deadpan delivery of a song with such silly subject matter was funny and endearing.
It was the band Hessian, however, that stole the show and ultimately won the contest. The leather-clad, Satan-referencing front man, Angus Francisco McFarland, played up as the bad-ass metal frontman with a tongue-in-cheek glee — plus he had some killer rock moves. Luckily for me, McFarland was also very articulate about his band’s songwriting process and how the constraints of Boo’s contest affected it.
“We just went for it, and it was really fun,” said Salli Wason, Hessian’s lead guitarist. “Deadlines always get you moving.”
“Our songwriting process is very collaborative, we write the compositions as a band and I write most of the lyrics,” McFarland said.
“Both of the songs we performed tonight were ideas kicking around and the theme of the show gave me the impetus to finish some songs I had been working on already,” McFarland continued. “‘Car-wolf’ for instance was a song we had in the back of our minds and the theme of this show gave us the perfect opportunity to name it. Having topical constraints to work inside of can be beneficial to the creative process, because as a band you don’t need to spend so much energy agreeing on what to write about. When your thematic options are pre-selected you have a kind of springboard and you can just launch right into the creative process, and sometimes creative ideas that you probably wouldn’t have come up with normally begin to emerge.”
As Leavitt’s new live music experiment showed on Saturday night, challenging bands to work inside of certain creative parameters can force them to create inspired work.
So if you’re tired of seeing all the talented local musicians playing other peoples’ music, head over to Geno’s Rock Club and catch Leavitt’s next Song Battle. Saturday night’s winner, Hessian, got the honor of selecting the theme for song battle number two. With a little help from the audience they settled on “Christmas with Satan.” Judging by the high level of creativity and the excellent caliber of the bands who participated in the first battle, Leavitt’s contest may soon become another staple in Portland’s thriving live music scene.