About El Cerdo
[METAL] I have a vivid mental snapshot of El Cerdo vocalist Josh Greene holding both arms straight out and staring wild-eyed at the audience of about 25 in a basement in Southeast Portland last month, taking a few deep breaths during an instrumental break before dramatically bringing the microphone back to his mouth to finish pummeling onlookers with a scream influenced by Carcass' Jeff Walker that the 20-year-old has been perfecting since he was 13.
So it comes as a surprise to me when, over lunch at Vita Cafe, El Cerdo guitarist Jayson Smith tells me that all the movement and crowd interaction I saw "isn't something [the band] is doing on purpose." Greene adds, with a hint of disdain on the last word, "When we get up there, we don't have the intention of 'we're gonna put on a show.'" He goes on to explain that his band's practices probably look pretty similar to what I saw at the basement gig. "I just love the music and I feel it," he continues. "And when you feel it, that's what happens."
The first thing you're likely to "feel" at an El Cerdo show is the rhythmic stampede of drummer Nick Pugh's low, rumbling floor tom and bass drum. Having recently switched to a classic single-pedal kick, Pugh now does half the work of the band's complex beats formerly played on a double bass drum with his hands. Smith's description of Pugh as "an octopus" is apt. The heavy 4/4 doom-metal parts of El Cerdo's often seven- or eight-minute songs stand out and feel particularly warm compared with the unpredictable, uncomfortable 5/4 or 7/8 riffs that often pound off of Ben Joner's bass at top speed. There's rarely a recognizable verse-chorus structure; rather, the band writes in a linear fashion, building each of the dozens of changes onto the one before it. The songs themselves are exercises in instrumental complexity, anchored in constantly morphing time signatures.
In fact, the increasing technicality of El Cerdo's instrumentals led Smith, who used to handle vocal duties as well as guitar for the group, to seek out a new throat to front the band. After a short stint with a vocalist who Smith says had trouble making it to practice, they tried out Greene whose old group, the Hordel, performed with El Cerdo and he immediately fit in perfectly. A listener would not guess he's been in the band for only six weeks.
Its stylistic diversity and honest approach make El Cerdo a band that can play a doom festival, as it did this fall in Austin, Texas, or with Northwest power metal gods 3 Inches of Blood, as it will Sunday at Sabala's, and with underground hardcore/thrash up-and-comers Lords and Ed Gein, as it will Monday at Food Hole. Unlike a couple of its favorite local bands, Black Elk and Tragedy, El Cerdo is not really exploring new territory within the metal genre, but the performers' disinterest in artifice, earnest passion and artful synthesis of influences makes the music accessible and infectious.
-JASON SIMMS
Willamette Weekly
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