Saturday, I went with my lady-partner and a couple of friends to Easy Street Records in West Seattle to see Olympia-based black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room. We enjoyed some food and beers beforehand a couple of doors down, then stood in line for the show.
Easy Street Records isn’t your normal venue. The astute reader might guess that it is, in fact, a record store, and that would be an accurate assumption. They often do after-hours shows, however, and the area of the store that is normally a café works pretty well as a small venue for music. It certainly isn’t your typical metal show location, however, and I really appreciated that. The crowd was, moreso than other WITTR shows that I have been to, very diverse. There were the typical metal guys (like me, arguably), but also some crust punk kids, Seattle hipsters (probably rode to the show in their hipster death machines, aka fixies), and just… “normal” people. Wow, normal folk at a metal show?! I think that’s pretty awesome, and I while I have seen “normal” people at other metal shows, this one had a higher percentage to be sure, but there were only maybe 100 people (probably less, even) that showed up.
WITTR played an awesome set with no commentary as usual. They just came in, rocked our faces off and left. Their set was much longer than their disappointingly short one opening for Pelican a month or so ago. It was the first time that I have seen them that they really had the time to do what they wanted to. They played material from all of their albums, though it was a little heavy on the newest album which I was excited to hear live. Everything was spot-on and it was a really good time. I didn’t keep track of their setlist, I was too busy having fun!
And the best part? Tickets were $5 at the door. Cheapest show that I’ve been to in years.
