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.