What we’re listening
to is From Wisdom to Hate by the Canadian death metal band
Gorguts, who fuse brutality with grace better than pretty much anybody.
The title track of the album, which is what’s playing as lead-off
hitter Jose Vidro steps up to the plate, is as good a death metal
song as you’ll hear anywhere: completely representative of the
genre (you could play it for somebody and say: “When I say ‘death
metal,’ I mean stuff that sounds like this”) yet utterly
its own bizarrely graceful beast. When Gorguts decides to change the
tempo, as they do several times each song, they don’t pause longer
than they need to or put up Wile E. Coyote-style signs that say “look,
tempo-change here!” all over the place. They just do it, you
know. And the chords formed by the interplay of the guitars and bass:
these things are like giant sequoias, great ponderous constructions
that must have been around since before time, singular and imposingly
gorgeous. Coming through the unimaginably savage PA here at Lip of
the Glacier Stadium somewhere in the middle of France, it sounds like
the birth pangs of God. For a moment -- the sort of endless moment
we often enjoy in dreams, wherein we are able to experience an entire
alternate reality in its totality within the space of a few breaths
-- we see the game about to commence unfold like a panorama before
us: the Expos running up an early lead, the learning-under-pressure
Cavemen fielding with bare, bleeding hands and showing incredible
tenacity along the basepaths; the score going back-and-forth once
or twice before the inevitable winning-out of experience over desire;
the ornate, careful sound of Gorguts’ unique take on death metal
lending a sort of savage ballet feel to the whole thing, riffs leaping
up from the cavernous chordal structures and drums throwing in Gene
Krupa-style fills that you’d almost miss if the feel of the Dance
weren’t so suffusive of this entire game.
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