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	DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 BOMBS AWAY

Despite one-time punk handbook Vice magazine’s Starbucks-like expansion into the world of retail, television, books, and film, the now neophyte record label has maintained a level of global street cred. And like label mates the Stills, the Streets, and Bloc Party, the bass-and-drums combo Death from Above 1979 are a perfect fit for Vice — if they didn’t already exist, the label would have had to invent them. At their near sold-out performance downstairs at the Middle East a week ago Monday, they hammered out selections from their debut, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine, each one a violent postcard from a fantasy land where everyone has a moustache and a metal fetish.

On the CD, singer/drummer Sebastien Grainger and bassist Jesse F. Keeler deliver one hyperkinetic blast of energy after another. Live, they were no different: Grainger evinced a restless drumming style, and his wailing vocals darted through intense if repetitive melodies. At one point, he came from behind the kit to dangle his lanky mohawked frame above the punk congregation. The screamed, thickly mixed vocals made it hard to tell which if any of the songs were not about girls — "You see this lady, she’s a lady, she a baby baby" is a representative snippet. But given the relentless disco-metal-punk thump, words were beside the point, and apart from "Blood on Our Hands," so was the idea of individual songs. Death from Above 1979 relied mostly on Keeler’s rumbling, effects-heavy bass, which often mimicked the vocals when not backing off to support them. Although duos like the bass-less White Stripes get by without much low end, in DFA, the bass vies with the singer for the spotlight. And Keeler’s sound manipulations and synthesized tones covered quite a sonic range. Bursts of overwhelming feedback did little to dissuade audience members from pressing as close as possible to the stage, as a sea of fist-pumping, near-moshing, dyed-black-heads tried to match the explosiveness on stage.