A July 2022 double bill at Darkroom that put two of Christchurch’s more uncompromising acts on the same stage: the caustic post-punk of Dance Asthmatics and the ambient drone and noise of God Destroyer. On paper a strange pairing; in practice, a night that worked.
Dance Asthmatics
The Dance Asthmatics arrived with the kind of set that reminded you why they occupy a particular place in the Christchurch underground. The Melted Ice Cream four-piece — Stephen Nouwens on vocals, Joe Sampson on guitar, Ben Odering on bass, Brian Feary on drums — have always been hard to pin down neatly, and this show leaned into that. The evening ranged across melodic jangle with Dunedin lineage, through the kind of strutting Fall-esque post-punk that they do as well as anyone in the country, and out into stretches of straight-ahead punk that had the room moving. The menace that critics have often reached for when describing the band — comparisons to The Gordons, Killing Joke, the Butthole Surfers — was present throughout, but so was the underlying sense that this is a band with genuine command of its own vocabulary. A varied, confident set.
God Destroyer
God Destroyer occupy a different register entirely. Where the Dance Asthmatics trade in rhythm and attitude, the Christchurch drone project works in texture and slow-burning disintegration — moving between passages of ambient drift and near-atonal noise, sometimes within a single piece. On this night the quieter, more melodic stretches were the most striking: extended tones held long enough to shift the room’s atmosphere before collapsing into something harsher and less forgiving. A set suited to patience, and rewarding of it.
