w/Harkonen
Sun Dec 1, Graceland, 9:30 pm, $6.
At Playing Enemy's recent Graceland show, singer Demian Johnston, drunk and sweat-drenched, eyeballed the crowd fiercely before yelling, "We play like I fuck!" Quite the statement from one of Seattle's noisiest, most abrasive hardcore metal acts. If his announcement is true, an all-nighter with this trio would include more blood and bruises than an Ultimate Fighting Championship; drummer Andrew Gormley keeps the sound shamelessly heavy, Johnston howls like Satan drawn and quartered, and bassist Shane Mehling swings his instrument like he's battling invisible armies.
Mehling has been with Playing Enemy a mere 15 months, but already he's left his mark on fans. Most recently he broke a kid's nose in Philadelphia. "He was just looking for some insurance money, so he faked it," Mehling grins. In response, Gromley, who's had his tooth chipped by the flailing bassist, chides, "So he jumped in front of your bass?" Mehling has shed his own blood as well: He spent his first national tour stained red before developing calluses. "I was playing really hard and I ripped all my skin off [my fingers]," he explains. "It happened the day before a five-week tour, so I had to play every night and the [wounds] never healed." The 21-year-old is the sixth bassist in Playing Enemy's four-year existence. After reading a musicians-wanted ad on the Internet, he dropped everything (including his college education at Purdue) to fly out to Seattle and join the band. The trio is currently working on releasing their second CD, an EP called Ephemera, in the near future.
Live, Playing Enemy is more than just an occasional trip to the emergency room. Their jagged guitar noise, heavy-artillery drumming, and black-eyed bass lines give the group an attractively sinister feel. Lyrically, Johnston growls about everything from sex to bank robberies--the latter subject is especially fascinating to the singer, as he's trying to work in the money business. "These guys rob me blind," he jokes of his band members. "So if I get the job, I'd just be pushing the [emergency] button all the time." Hopefully there'll be fewer flesh wounds involved in that industry.
