Medicine Horse + Slumbering Sun + Surus
Soundpony
July 26, 2023
It is fitting for a state ranked 49th in education to become a bastion of doom.
Not just the “fear of rising Covid cases and anti-LGBTQ laws” kind of doom, but that slow metal fruit from Sabbath’s tyrant-blood-fed tree: doom metal. Born from Tony Iomi’s fingers in gloomy and industrial Birmingham, metal has always taken on crumbling social structures, evidenced by Black Sabbath’s own paean to pacifism, “War Pigs.”
Lately, Whittier Bar and Mercury Lounge have played un-shrugging Atlas to the influx of lumbering riffs, with full sound, stage and lights. But Soundpony holds history as a pivotal place for live music in Tulsa in the years when the Arts District was an industrial ghost town.
Last week, Surus invoked visions of that chain-link past. The “no stage/play on the floor” setting of this iconic Tulsa space put one’s chest right in punching distance of their closed-fist sonics. Neurosis seem to be a chief influence for this trio, as do the Western-Drone albums of Earth. Their riffs alluded to rural blight, with tempos oppressive as cicada-tracked heat waves. Surus' lugubrious rhythms evince our own Okie brand of rust. The snare never quite hits where you’d expect, as uncertain as the crumbling ground in Picher.
Austin’s Slumbering Sun followed Surus. The group’s lineup consists of members from Temptress, Monte Luna, and Destroyer of Light, all of which have played Tulsa multiple times thanks to their Dust Lord connection. Where Surus conjured creeping despair, Slumbering Sun served the inverse: This music is gorgeous.
Vocalist James Clarke possesses a haunting croon reminiscent of Ozzy and Peter Steele of Type-O-Negative. The labyrinthian architecture of their song structures slowly revealed increasing ingenuity, but remained a solid foundation for heads to bang upon. Hearing the morose yet lush melodics was like stepping right into the oils of “Et in Arcadia Ego.” Their lone cover song—a funeral dirge mashup of Neil Young’s “My My Hey Hey” and Black Sabbath’s “Into The Void”—was a fractal of their overall aesthetic.
The rising local titans of Native vengeance closed out the packed-for-a-Wednesday show. As the Soundpony rotisserie spun hot dogs, Medicine Horse turned earth with riffs.
While classic doom metal is an offshoot of Black Sabbath’s stained glass and gargoyle riffage, sludge takes on the dopesick and crumbling infrastructure of malignant modernity. In Medicine Horse’s recent single “Turning Tide” (which debuted on Decibel’s website), all the elements of their sound are on equal display.
Nico Williams—frontwoman and member of the Cherokee Nation, as well as the force behind Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness—initially employed melancholic clean vocals as she detailed the prelude to colonization: “The beast arrives / On golden shores / Belly full of souls in chains / With chains to spare.” In an instant the tempo shifted and the brutality got turned up as a drain-circling riff twisted the song into pure revenge and blood lust: “Voices rising / Walls fall down / You forget you are on / SACRED GROUND.”
Williams’ venomous proclamation reverberated over the band’s rhythmic assault. This is crucial music in a time of reckoning, plunging with the energy of plates shifting in our fracking-ravaged, once-sacred land.
The Pickup's reviews are published with support from The Online Journalism Project.
