Jesu/Oxbow/Intronaut @ Spaceland, 2/20

This show was unceremoniously cancelled due to issues with Jesu's Visa (doesn't that sound like a term straight from the Roman Catholic liturgy?), so let this preview stand as an epitaph for a fantastic lineup that never was. You can still see Intronaut and Oxbow at a free show tomorrow at the Mountain Bar.
Please, if you care for the preservation of your eardrums, stay far, far away from Spaceland on February 20th '' and if you or anyone you know is pregnant, you might suggest they move to another city lest the earth-shattering rumble of Jesu liquefy the feeble tissue of the gestating fetus. With Jesu, extreme music visionary Justin Broadrick (pictured at left) tunnels down below the street-level grindcore sound that he helped define with Napalm Death in the mid-80s, aims higher than the billowing smokestacks of his industrial doom metal band Godflesh, and achieves something far more powerful than either. Given the right speakers, Jesu songs can choke the air around them with thick, buzzing, oppressively dense atomic riffs, as sonically magnificent as My Bloody Valentine, slow and beautiful as Sigur Ros, but heavy as all fuck... Jesu'''s appropriately-titled new album Conqueror comes out on Hydra Head on February19th '' pick up a copy after the show if you haven'''t spent all your money on the commemorative Jesu hearing aid. And it must be mentioned that this show has a spate of opening acts that are supremely worthy of the headliner. Labelmates Everlovely Lightningheart set the mood with their eerie, formless sonic abstractions, should-be-labelmates Intronaut (the best metal band in Los Angeles) bring a nobility to death metal with a set of incredibly well-constructed and emotionally varied opuses, and Oxbow splatter their avant-rock psychodramas all over the stage. When Oxbow played last year'''s OvrCast Festival, their menacing leading man Eugene Robinson ended the set by unleashing his member and massaging it while he walked offstage. So, ummm, wear goggles. (ER)
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