Author & Punisher
Industrial Doom Metal at The Underground
The Author & Punisher show last night at The Underground in Mesa was fantastic. It took more than a minute for everything to get set up, with sound check and all, but once it got going it got heavy.
Author & Punisher is known for gross and metal guitar like synth tones, and as a fan, I’m familiar with his whole catalog, and I was expecting it to be really gross. What surprised me about the live set was that it managed to be even grosser than the records. I use gross as a high compliment here. With everything being computer based, it was nice to hear it stray from perfection. With all his triggers being self designed, and programmed to single notes, the tempo is bound to wobble a bit, and I liked that. It was very cool to see. He has just an Ableton set, but because of how he plays it, it feels like there’s a full band behind him.
Being the underground, it’s a tiny venue, and it was particularly interesting to be up close, and watch him piece together his self-made setup before the show began. everything being solid metal, it looked as heavy as his music, and you could feel the weight of it during the set.
The sound was, as expected, a powerful wall of controlled noise. It was well managed for how intense his music is, and with that taxing of a load being pumped through the sound system, I was surprised nothing blew up.
The overall sound engineering was true to the recordings, and well suited the artist, as well as the setting. It was a very good show, except, one thing. One little detail had me just a bit disappointed: Tristan Shone, the one and only face of Author & Punisher, wore a Liverpool jersey. Go Wolves.
