THE BODY
9 p.m., Juanita’s. $5.
When the opening track of The Body’s new album, “All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood,” changes from a delicate, seven-minute choral piece to a brain-rattling shock of cymbals and coyote shrieking, it’s a jarring announcement that you’re in for a proper, auditory brain liquefier. And does it ever deliver. The album is 50 minutes of huge noise. Expansive noise. Painful noise, rounded out with sawing feedback, looping gibberish and vocals that I can’t fathom ever coming from a human. It sounds closer to a sustained dog-whistle or a GTO peeling out down the highway to hell than any other shriek around. The music itself is a beat-heavy, psychotic experiment in sonic intensity more in vein with scary Scott Walker or Sunn O)))) than, say, Dio or Iron Maiden.
Now based in Providence, R.I., drummer Lee Buford and guitarist Chip King are bringing their assault to Little Rock for what should be a strange homecoming show; the two callused their hands in town, playing in vaulted local acts like Hundred Years War, Class of 84, Generation of Vipers and other Towncraft-era thrashers. And these hometown boys? They’ve done well. “All the Waters” has been met with near-universal praise everywhere from dorm room blogs to Stereogum and Pitchfork. I’ll join the choir, too: three days into the album and it’s already a cinch for my own “best of 2010” list. The Body is set to be joined by Conway downtempo metal trio Crankbait and the relentlessly loud, heavier-than-heavy Times favorites, Iron Tongue, .
“All the Waters of the Earth Shall Turn to Blood” is streaming in its entirety here.