Talk about extremes: we arrive at the venue complex to find it absolutely packed with screaming teenies who've turned out to see Cheryl Cole and some wannabe making a PA ahead of the X Factor final. Meanwhile, one of the darkest and heaviest and most sonically challenging bands on the planet are about to play in Hall 2. Rarely, if ever, do such diametric social cultures coexist in such proximity. So while the thousands were baying 'Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl!' we got pints of Landlord and made our way into Hall 2.
Skullflower are a band I've been aware of for years, but I haven't really heard a great deal of their work. The clips I'd seen on YouTube looked right up my street, though. The absence of a drum kit suggested that tonight's set wouldn't be one of their rockier sets. They took to the stage as a three-piece - two guitars and an upright bass - and proceeded to churn out a continuous stream of feedback over a blizzard of white noise for twenty minutes. Just when a change of frequency was overdue, it was over. A little disappointing, then. If only they hadn't looked quite so bored on stage I might have felt differently. Still, that's the chance you take with avant-noise bands playing improv sets.
The venue's plunged into darkness and thick with smoke long before Sunn O))) emerge. We were all expecting volume beyond volume, and earplugged up, along with much of the audience. But when three cowled figures finally did become apparent in the shadows, a series of loud pops are followed by feedback like I've never heard before... and then... the first chord is struck. Every molecule in my body's vibrating. My hair's quivering, my jeans (which are by no means loose fiting) are shaking, my internal organs are being slowly realigned in my abdomen and chest cavity. My face is trembling. The note is held for an age before the next chord follows, an earth-shattering bulldozing sound from which another sustained note eventually crawls and hangs in the smoke-filled air for an eternity. It's aural annihilation on what feels like a galactic scale, and I find myself wondering if the room can contain such immense sound for long before it crumbles and falls.
They don't simply play their guitars, wielding them aloft like spears or ceremonial staffs pointed skywards waiting for some divine - or otherwise - signal, or perhaps a bolt of lightning the power of which can be channelled to create more chthonic waves of sound on sound, building to a crescendo while maintaining a tempo of approximately 1BPM, a percussion-free sonic quake. Each guitar is played through six amp heads atop of three seven-foot high stacks. The immense volume means that are frequencies which simply don't exist under any normal circumstances bleeding from the speakers as they howl for mercy. It's an immense shuddering force, the sound of a cosmic-scale collision of noise, which has to be experienced first-hand to truly appreciate.
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About ten minutes in, a fourth shrouded figure is delivered to the stage in smoke so dense it's virtually impenetrable. A towering, commanding figure - Attila is a big man with an enormous stage presence - he utters esoteric mantras in a voice that comes straight from the bowels of hell while smoke appears to stream form his body and through the holes in his tattered robe.
It's rather difficult to convey the sheer force of this show, and mere description risks reducing the theatrical elements to the comedic. But no-one's laughing, and at this volume one can only take things seriously. People are covering their ears. People are agog. People are in awe. The four figures on stage - three of whom have long black beards - perform with solemnity, as though this were an ancient occult ritual rather than a gig.
Attila vacates the stage, and returns, his face obscured not only by his hood, but also by a strange webbing. He delivers more unintelligible vocals that range from cavernous growls to eerie whispers to eardrum-splitting screams as the dark ceremony continues, the bass substituted for a second guitar tuned so low as to be every bit as sonorous.
The high priest departs once more, leaving the remaining trio to crank out more punishing power chords and feedback, before the bass is reintroduced in time for Attila's third and final appearance for the closing act. This time, the transformation - or transmogrification - is complete. Half man, half tree, monastic liturgies combine with anguished screams against a backdrop of quiet, sinister chimes, before the crushing volume returns. The effect is devastating, shaking the building to its foundations as tectonic plates are heaved in all directions by the sheer weight of the band's sonic impact.
We leave in a daze. The world will never be quite the same again (and nor will my hearing).
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