Not unlike a zealous religious figure or a rebellious hippie, Liturgy is interested in elevating your state of mind — taking you to a place beyond the eternal.
Liturgy is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based four-piece led by guitarist and vocalist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix. The group claims the genre of black metal, but the music deserves a category of its own. On the band’s MySpace, “pure transcendental black metal” is used as a bold-faced descriptor for its sound.
The band will bring its pummeling and explorative brand of metal to Comet Ping Pong in Washington tonight and to the Golden West Café in Baltimore tomorrow.
Liturgy began informally as a solo project “years and years ago,” Hunt-Hendrix said. He describes his original work in Liturgy as “a bedroom black metal, Boredoms-type thing,” citing the experimental Japanese noise-rock band.
In 2008, Hunt-Hendrix released the Immortal Life EP under the Liturgy name. He expanded the lineup to a quartet shortly after the EP’s release, and the newly formed group recorded Liturgy’s 2009 full-length debut, Renihilation, together.
The band expanded “partly because the drummer, who I went to high school with, Greg, he moved back to New York,” Hunt-Hendrix said. “We had stopped playing together because of college, but when he came back, we just started playing again. … It happened pretty organically and for a lot of different reasons.”
Despite the presence of other members, Hunt-Hendrix continues to write the music and organize the band himself. He invited the other players to the band because “it was impossible to reproduce the experience of the record just by myself,” he said. “So initially, I really wanted to play live.”
Liturgy’s full-band sound is a mix of classic black metal — deafening drums, rapid-fire guitar playing and screeching, incomprehensible vocals — and chant-utilizing, drone-heavy experimentalism.
Although Hunt-Hendrix worships at the altar of black metal, his group’s sound is an entirely different monster.
One of the non-metal influences on Liturgy is minimalist musician La Monte Young. His early works in the 1950s and ’60s came to define avant-garde minimalist music and helped lay the groundwork for modern drone.
“I just really like his music and his attitude toward music,” Hunt-Hendrix said. “La Monte Young’s music is all about creating this transcendental state, and it’s kind of like eternity, and I think that part of the inspiration for Liturgy was trying to use black metal to do the same kind of thing.”
Hunt-Hendrix’s desire to capture his favorite music and reinterpret it in his own way was what sparked the idea for Liturgy.
“I love black metal, and … for me, there is certain music that I really love, but I also wish it were a slightly different way or wish it was more ‘something’ than it is,” Hunt-Hendrix said. “So eventually, you end up making that thing. And that turned out to be Liturgy.”
Liturgy recently signed to Chicago’s Thrill Jockey Records, but Hunt-Hendrix isn’t quite sure how the deal came to be. Thrill Jockey started in 1992 and a diverse array of artists have recorded for the label over the years, including Tortoise and Boredoms. Today, the label might be best known as a recent home to a slew of Baltimore bands: Double Dagger, Thank You and Future Islands, to name a few.
“I’m not exactly sure why they approached us about it, but yeah. I think it’s a good fit,” Hunt-Hendrix said. “I think it’s sort of an interesting choice on their part. I think they’ve never put out black metal before and even very much metal at all, so it’s kind of a courage move on their part in a way.
“All of us like a lot of the bands that have put out music on Thrill Jockey,” he continued. “So the thing about our band is that on the one hand, we’re playing black metal, but on the other, our influences come from the traditions that Thrill Jockey has always explored.”
Liturgy will play at Comet Ping Pong tonight. The show is at 10:30 p.m. Tickets cost $10. The band will play at the Golden West Café tomorrow. The show is at 10 p.m. Tickets cost $7.
rhiggins@umdbk.com
