ENVISION

considering the brutal heat the pacific northwest saw this month, i wanted to somehow work "indian summer" into the title of this august-centric post. i know keith would feel the pedro the lion reference, but i wasn't sure if dan would approve of the emo name-check. but yeah, envision has been chilling pretty hard this month. first off, we played a couple of shows with xibalba. if you're not friends with any of us, you might not know this, but we've basically served as their hype crew since keith or eric checked out their demo, told everyone else about it and and we all proceeded to nut profusely over it. eric had been hitting them up to include seattle and bellingham on their summer tour, so when that actually panned out, we all got super stoked. on august 10th, we played with them at the morgue in georgetown, which, though fairly new to doing hardcore shows, is definitely one of seattle's best all-ages DIY venues. hanging out beforehand in the yard-ish thing outside the venue, we seriously felt like we were in bartertown, and kept looking for tina turner to make a couple of us fight. on a 85-degree-plus night, dudes were making bum fires in big steel cans, and there were those huge wooden spools that hold industrial cable everywhere. it was tight. you can't really see much here, but a few of us are blurrily chilling pre-show:

left to right: half of anna, the almighty alan blackman, keith, john, me and, against all odds, a sober jeff wampler

we played first, and it was fun. we got to silence months of nagging with about 45 seconds of a harvest cover. we also debuted a new, untitled song, which was exciting. it's been in the works for months and months, so getting to finally play it was pretty satisfying. keep reading for a video of it from the bellingham show. anyway, here's a couple shots from the morgue:

keith's tower of edge.

metal mike looking legit terrifying. just wish there was a photo of his epic xibalba windmills.

dan brings the brees.

next up was eric's road buddies parasitic skies, who, like always, brought it hard. they played a couple of tasty new jams, and their strife cover lit up the morgue like rick rodney after a few rounds of crown and cokes. then, finally, xibalba. just as brutally slow, low and heavy as we'd anticipated. lots of mosh, lots of chug, lots of fun.

nate from xibalba.

brian from xibalba headbanging through my floating cab.

after them, sojourner played and brian talked some noise. fun stuff. then we chatted with the xibalba dudes, made plans to meet up in bellingham the next day, made a quick hot dog/TDM run in capitol hill and called it a night. excellent show, excellent venue, excellent vibes. the next day, we met up with xibalba at the ground floor (which, sadly, has decided to put the kibosh on hardcore shows, since they don't fit in with the venue's mission to be "a place of healing." mmkay.), then ended up at whatcom falls for some cliff diving. john macked it hard straight out the gate, bryan from xibalba big-upped keith's circa '98 sleeveless soulfly tee, and everyone peer-pressured the shit out of their roadie bud to make the huge jump. after that, we headed back to the venue and jammed pizza, then split up for pal'meni and rudy's. the show was a lot of fun. torero (which features a couple dudes from john's old band ghost dad) opened, and were great. then we played, and while the consensus was that it was a bit sloppy, it was still fun. peep this video, courtesy of our friend aaron. watch for joey o. mosh, wampler intoxication and dan getting cross-checked by the bass player from media mind's punk-as-fuck kid at around 6:25:



then xibalba straight killed it after us. if possible, even heavier than the night before. we told them that they're not allowed to NOT play out of full stacks from here on out, and they agreed. pretty heady amount of 'vizh-mosh and nate in a "borrowed" american apparel windbreaker:




after them, our boys in media mind rocked it. always fun to play with them, as they bring a more stripped-down, nasty vibe to their 'core. dig it. afterwards, we kicked it with xibalba as they loaded up their van, quoted a grip of gary oldman movies and, after seriously an hour's worth of wrangling, managed to snap off a big group shot:

xibalba-vision...plus casey.

fast-forward to the 27th, and we're gigging hard in olympia. or, to be more specific, in tumwater, at a grange hall kiiiinda out in the sticks. after getting cockblocked on buying a new guitar by some dick on craigslist, i met up with the van (piled high with 'vizhers and our buds in stuck), eric and keith jumped ship to my whip, and we navigated two hours of awful traffic to oly. we jammed some vic's pizza with our not sorry homies, toasted gina's 18th/19th birthday and ate some tasty vegan cupcakes. stuck was first, and held it down nicely. congrats to them on putting out their demo and their wolverine-themed t-shirts, even though earth crisis and entombed both beat them to it. we played next, and got to kick out the new song again. was fun. after that, not sorry raged with their unbeatable youth crew jams. keith and i peer-pressured alan into borrowing one of our tuner pedals, to which he agreed under extreme duress, and promptly disconnected all of his cords with his bleeding through-esque guitar acrobatics. and then did it again. and then he discovered that one of his cabs wasn't connected. suffice to say, alan no longer likes us (just kidding), but they still killed it. they played a couple new songs from their forthcoming 7", and they are, if possible, even harder than the demo cuts. get excited. oh, and keith stole the mic from j25 for the last half of "moving on," which was fucking awesome. after them, white wards kicked some challenging, noisy 'core, and media mind ripped it again. and the little kid sang a black flag cover. rad.

so yeah, big month for the 'vizh. lotta fun shows, and lots of exciting stuff coming up. for all you demo haters, we are vaguely planning to record for some sort of EP soon. we've also got a show in honor of our friend toby's return from iraq in bellingham on september 18th with vanguard, serious black, get it ready (SB dudes and toby on vokills), and a "surprise secret headliner." if you want to know who it is, please send 50 e-mails a day, every day until the show, to bellyhamster@gmail.com asking about it. seriously, do it. anyway, that's about all i've got. holler at us at envisionannodomini@gmail.com, keep checking here, and stay high. a-frank out.