True metal never dies, it just spends every other decade vacationing in Europe. Its life is a grueling one; being true metal takes a lot out of it, you know? So every 10 years or so, true metal drops off the American scene and heads over to the Continent to convalesce. After a while, some start to say it must've died over there, but the faithful know it's just not returning its phone calls — it's too busy repeatedly leaping from the speakers at a London pub-show, or maybe just standing outside some castle in Romania, soaking up the inspiration.Eventually, true metal begins to feel its evil oats again. When it does, it burns down a couple of churches in Scandinavia to whip its followers into an anticipatory frenzy. Then it creeps stealthily back into the States (often by way of Brazil) in the backpack of some crusty dreadlocked disciple, nestled between a shoe stuffed with hash and a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook. Meetings are held in slowly dying Midwestern towns and lethally monotonous Southern suburbs. The word goes out that true metal is back, and before long, there's a whole new batch of ominously indecipherable logos on long-sleeved black T-shirts everywhere.
Church burnings aside, it's a pretty good system. True metal gets the R&R it requires in order to continue producing decent bands, and fans get to love it all the more when it returns from each sabbatical.
There's only one real problem: Whenever true metal leaves our shores, Americans must inevitably contend with the slew of dull, dim-witted half-breed bastard subgenres it sired while it was in town. Some of them, like stoner rock, are tolerable, even lovable in their own dunderheaded ways. Most, however, are abhorrent, fit only to be babysat by young suckers until their extremely limited capacity for learning is revealed.
The wait can be trying. But the lifers endure, girded by the knowledge that true metal will return and devour its sicklier spawn like a big hamster in a small cage, to make room for stronger offspring.
Offspring like Bay area extreme-metal quintet The Absence.
In a scene currently medicating its nu-metal hangover with copious doses of crushing hardcore, The Absence doesn't stand out too much, visually speaking. Its members sport the facial hair, the black shirts and fatigue cutoffs, the body art. Its sound, on the other hand, is a different story altogether. The Absence doesn't approach crossover from the punk/ hardcore side of the fence; in fact, the band isn't interested in approaching the fence too closely at all. What it is interested in is taking some of the best and most traditional elements of brutal music's last two decades, and putting them back together in ways both familiar and fresh. The look might suggest the last two years of The Warped Tour, but the sound is about as comparable to something like Avenged Sevenfold as Metallica's Ride The Lightning.
"We don't necessarily look like your average long-haired black metal band, and people might see us and go, 'Oh, they're a screamo band, or a metalcore band,'" says Absence vocalist Jamie Stewart. "But the second we get onstage and turn our instruments up, there'll be no doubt."
"I can't tell you how many times we've heard people say, 'I didn't think they were going to sound like that,'" adds guitarist Patrick Pintavalle. "But looks can be deceiving."
"We'll just let the music do the talking," sums Stewart.
And the music speaks, unmistakably, in the language of metal — populist, dirtbag-embracing, hipster-hating, age-ignorant metal. All of the hallmarks are there. Ominous horror-cinema ambience. Lengthy instru-mental passages. Exhausting drum work, and sick-as-fuck musicianship in general. Lyrics, delivered in a barely discernible purgatorial howl, that reference demons.
That's metal, dude. But if you're still not convinced, consider these two facts: (a) more than half of their songs include two-guitar harmony solos; and (b) drummer Jeramie Kling was rocking crunch-prog legends Dream Theater on the way to rehearsal last week.
Yup. Metal.
The Absence guys have known each other forever. Stewart and Pintavalle originally formed the band in 2001. Unsatisfied with its sound and progress, however, they eventually put together a side project with Kling and guitarist Peter Joseph (who describes himself simply as "all metal"). Things clicked, and Kling and Joseph were quickly recruited for The Absence. Another friend of Kling's, bassist Nicholas Calaci, came aboard not long after.
With a solidified lineup and unified vision, the group scrapped all of its material and returned to local stages a year ago. Its crushing, frenzied mix of tried-and-true characteristics and new energy shortly made them one of the Tampa heavy-music community's most talked-about commodities.
"We'll play a metal show one night, and a hardcore show the next," says Stewart.
"At one show the kids will be doing spin-kicks," Joseph says, referring to the screamo crowd's penchant for bizarre physical spasms, "and at the next, they'll be headbanging."
Some fans are initially attracted by the act's contemporary appearance. Some come because they hear there's a band in town spreading the gospel of true metal. Some encounter The Absence on the almost unbelievably popular online community Myspace.com, and just dig the heaviness. Whatever the case, the outfit's unique ability to incorporate extreme metal's time-honored signatures without sounding tired is what keeps them coming back.
"I don't think we're a totally original band by any means," Pintavalle allows. "I mean, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel."
"If we're a band 10 years from now, we're still gonna be playing extreme metal. Obviously bands progress," says Stewart. "But we started off as a metal band, and we'll end as a metal band."
scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2004.