Shrinebuilder converged upon a packed house of metal-minded citizens at (Le) Poisson Rouge Sunday night, Rwake and Liturgy in tow. The new group is composed of indie-metal heavyweights Scott “Wino” Weinrich (the Hidden Hand, the Obsessed, Saint Vitus), Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om), Scott Kelly (Neurosis) and Dale Crover (Melvins), and made a number of mostly East Coast appearances earlier this week during its incipient mini tour.

First, a word on Liturgy, the evening’s opener. This visionary black-metal outfit could not have emerged at a better time. Its latest record, Renihilation, is precedent-setting in its rapturous din, and casts new light on the heretofore grim and hallowed landscape of its genre. Liturgy summoned it all for a chaotic set on Sunday, nicely augmented by (Le) Poisson Rouge’s excellent acoustics. Look for this band to build on its already swelling reputation as heavy hitters in Brooklyn’s metal scene.

Relapse Records sextet Rwake slowed things down a bit with a heady, polished doom set. Vocalist “C.T.” growled and hollered mighty verses that locked in nicely with the classically inflected, off-kilter ax work of the band’s two guitarists. How nice to see a band of this genre allowing itself to eschew the Black Sabbath worship and forge its own compositional steel. Brooding and forceful, yet in the pocket—and only a little shreddy.

A wise man once noted that doom metal relies on anticipation—of the downbeat, the resolution of the chord, often both. Brand-new doom fraternity Shrinebuilder capitalizes on this concept of delayed fulfillment. Of course, given the band’s ridiculously experienced lineup of players, it’s not surprising that these guys know their way around a sludgy tritone. Shrinebuilder’s sound is meaty, progressive and, in a live setting, nuanced in a way that doesn’t shine through on its recently released, self-titled studio effort. Guitars seemed to literally swarm around its rock-solid rhythm section, building up to crushing chorus licks played in unison. Four-way vocals (even drummer Dale Crover kicked in a few background croons) served to supplement the thick jamming.

With all the “supergroup” hype about these guys circulating in the underground metal scene, Shrinebuilder’s NYC debut was itself anticipated to an insane degree. The reality is that Sunday’s set probably produced mixed reactions from devoted attendees. The bottom line: It would be hard to say that the band brings anything truly fresh to the table, yet harder to argue that Shrinebuilder’s collaborative mastery of tried-and-true rock conventions isn’t still totally badass.—Luke Teegarden

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Photographs by Sebastian Mlynarski; review by Luke Teegarden.

And…scene. The aural mother lode of a weekend that was ATP New York 2009 wrapped up early Monday morning. I’ll refrain from referencing The Shining to describe its ample venue, Kutsher’s Country Club. Eugene Mirman captured its essence perfectly when he deemed it, in his Saturday evening comedy set, a place “where homeless ghosts throw bar mitzvahs.” Or, in this case, where indie-rock nerds throw no-bullshit music festivals. Read on for a whirlwind recap.

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As much of a Melvins freak as I am, I was oddly not all that psyched for the oddball-metal powerhouse’s 25th-anniversary show at Webster Hall last night. A lot of that probably had to do with the gig’s gimmicky conceit: Guitarist-vocalist King Buzzo (left, in a long-ago high-school photo) and drummer Dale Crover, along with guest bassist Trevor Dunn, would play 1993’s Houdini in its entirety, preceded by a “Melvins 1983″ set with Crover on bass and original member Mike Dillard on drums.

Fortunately, the show surpassed my expectations in every single way. The 1983 intro was fun and brief, and the Houdini portion benefited hugely from a shuffled song order. The band dispensed with classic tracks “Hooch,” “Night Goat” and “Honey Bucket” early, placing the spotlight on deep cuts like “Joan of Arc,” which sounded absolutely gut-churning live. During that tune, a showgoer next to me muttered, “This is the heaviest thing I’ve ever heard.” Amen, I thought to myself.

More impressions of the show after the jump!

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Sonic Youth

This weekend is going to be fun. Especially if you go to No Fun. The annual noise gathering takes place Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Be sure to read our breakdown with mastermind Carlos Giffoni here and our conversation about the noise community with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore here.

So what else is going on?

Friday
Dan Deacon flips the dance party switch to the “On” position at 979 Broadway in Bushwick. He also plays two shows at the Bowery Ballroom tomorrow. (Read our review of his new one, Bromst, here.)

Melvins do Houdini at Webster Hall.

Azita harkens back to ’70s singer-songwriters at Bruar Falls.

The Brooklyn Folk Festival kicks off at the Jalopy.

Saturday
Head over to the Brooklyn Armory for a huge Mexican bash: Los Tigres del Norte tear the place up Saturday.

Freak-folk forebear Henry Flynt plays his second show in a quarter of a century, at the Stone. (Read our show preview here.)

The legendary Leonard Cohen hits Radio City Music Hall tonight and tomorrow.

Sunday
Sam Beam plays from his new rarities collection as Iron & Wine at the Abrons Art Center.

The Vaselines play a rare one tonight (and tomorrow) on the back of a deluxe career-retrospective release. The show to end your weekend is at the Bowery Ballroom.

Fire up that Speak & Spell, because today kicks off NYC’s annual circuit-bending extravaganza, the Bent Festival at The Tank. Running from today through Saturday, it’s an art and music fest that celebrates DIY electronics in its many forms—so you might find a serious electro artist making a circuit from scratch, right next to a kid playing a Game Boy. If you’re wondering what circuit bending is, we asked Peter Edwards, an electronic-instrument-making whiz, to come into the TONY office and tell us. (Edwards has worked with Mike Patton and the Melvins, and has made a customized Speak & Spell for Danny Elfman!) He’s teaching a beginner’s workshop on Saturday at noon, which is free and open to everyone. “There isn’t some stringent code of laws you have to understand before you can play,” he says. “It’s like, you don’t need to understand the physics of paint before you can make art.” Right on! Oh, and there’s a free beer happy hour every evening from 7 to 7:30pm. Take it away, Peter!

When the Melvins annexed Big Business a few years back, they proved that grafting one heavy band onto another can be as awesome in practice (e.g., Nude with Boots) as in theory. We’ve just received word of another metal union that, while a good deal more esoteric, holds every bit as much potential. As reported on the Dysrhythmia MySpace blog, two members of that outstanding local math-rock trio (from right to left in the pic: guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and bassist Colin Marston, the latter also of the fearsome Behold… the Arctopus) have joined a reactivated version of Gorguts, a veteran Canadian death-metal band that’s revered in the underground for having issued one of the strangest and most progressive heavy albums of all time, 1998’s Obscura. No info yet on when the new Gorguts will surface, but stay tuned to The Volume for news, and in the meantime, have a listen to a few tracks from Obscura:
Obscura