A nice preview for the band's Sunday (4/29) show...
Rabid Rabbit at Empty Bottle | Concert preview
Chicago doom purveyors drown their sorrows in low end.
Rabid Rabbit
Don’t let the name fool you. Rabid Rabbit moves at an
ominous, glacial pace. The Garfield Park group has grown into a unique
and potent purveyor of doom, with an outlook that extends from a placid
grimace to an imposing scowl. After several iterations, the lineup has
solidified into a quartet unified in vision and intent, featuring not
twin guitars but two basses. The subsuming low end is hardly the only
way in which the band deviates from its peers.
That much is startlingly evident on the band’s impressive second album, last year’s Czarny Sen, which translates to black dream
in Polish, a nod to vocalist-bassist Andrea Jablonski’s homeland. Her
haunting monotone approaches a drone, set against guitarist Dan
Sullivan’s grim power chords and pro shredding. Her voice lends tonal
variation to an otherwise proudly bleak palette. Second bassist Arman
Mabry and drummer Mike Tsoulos thicken the concoction to a cosmic
funeral dirge.
The group’s talent for the unlikely includes improvisation, as
saxophonist Dave Rempis demonstrates via scalding skronk both on the
record and often live. He’s not on hand at the Bottle tonight, but Rabid
Rabbit’s devastating art-sludge never fails to leave a glorious stain
on the local scene.
