It was not a band that I was very familiar with. Their iconography was in favor among a certain element at school. It was creepy, that's for sure. The type of shit that Mom and Dad do not want you scrawling all over your three-ring binder. But it wasn't ghoulish; it had a sort of jaunty, old-fashioned prettiness, a lot of it. Skulls and lightning and roses and ravens. It seemed like it had been stolen from some mythical frontier in a lost decade of the American past. What was most disturbing – and therefore most exciting – about it was its whimsy. There lurked a devilish joke behind it all. Death. Ha!
Based on these factors I had imagined – and hoped – that this band would tear my heart out with their electric guitars. Pound my spleen with drums. Make good on their morbid promise. But everything about them – the way they looked, the way they acted, the way they sounded – defied my expectations. They dressed like normal. They didn't particularly acknowledge the crowd. Their music was faint and faraway. The harder I struggled to focus on it the more it deflected my attention. They played a song – something about rowing – and I swear I forgot each note the moment the next one passed into my ears. It only left me with a feeling. A feeling about nothing.