5ive
Hesperus
Tortuga
Their number is up
Years before most indie rocker Jesu fanboys had even heard of Godflesh, God or Ice, there was Boston’s infamous 5ive. Back in the early 2000s, this writer saw the stage melt and had the plumbing of my solar plexus permanently re-routed and cleansed at a NYC live show with this instrumental two-piece’s massively heavy and densely layered psych-metal. Not much like Jesu—though Justin Broadrick has done some bitchin’ remixes for the terrible twosome—5ive basically sound like a blown-out, psych version of Torche, alternately dipped in red-orange lava, then the deep blue ocean, and then flung into the expansive solitude of space. Rinse and repeat and repeat again.
Oh, but then there are those space-trucking, God-goo spraying, cosmic-chug jam-outs such as “Big Sea,” from their new and long-overdue behemoth, Hesperus. Hello, guitar pedal mind-fuckery! 5ive’s main-brain axe man Ben Carr tweaks his tone in one song more than most bands fiddle during a whole record, and his constant warble/chug, micro/macro, fuzz/crunch, smooch/pigfuck transformations are downright stately. And, as is rare for the laboratory, most of these “experimental” tracks are short little ditties—not counting the two-part epic closer. For variety’s sake, you gotta give a high 5ive (doh!) for the track “Heel” alone, which climbs up the slowcore white birch tree (Codeine or Seam, anyone?), and then chainsaws the fucker down with one distortion pedal stomp.
Other than some splits and remix EPs, 5ive have been a woodsheddin’ and this seven-song monster will not only seriously raise the bar for future Hydra Head-related releases (Tortuga is HH’s sister label), but will hopefully help find an exit strategy for many an avant-chug artist stuck in the metalgaze cul-de-sac. —Shawn Bosler
