Wax Idols

  So much changes that single years have the nostalgic weight of whole decades. It was 2013 when I saw Wax Idols last. Hether Fortune was married I believe. Its 2015 just after seeing them the Tuesday before Halloween. A wide gap of everything changing in between. My nieces and nephew grew.  2015 and its a different Hether Fortune. She's divorced.  There is a whole lot of backstory that acts like a movie trailer. It influences and shapes your thoughts on a performer before stepping into the venue. I was pre-sold by 2013. Last year I chose to buy the shirt for Discipline And Desire at her Empty Bottle show 2013 April 20 instead of the CD. I figured I can buy that later. I still haven't.  I want to of course. Always so broke. And so I am far less familiar with it. I notice other reviewers referring to D &D all the time. Its interesting now to write about the newest and this relative void regarding those past records, at least for me. I will not refer back to them.  This time I let the shirts go....and instead I bought the CD for American Tragic. The shirts were awesome....and they were black this time! I wanted to be close this time.
  I walk into the Bottle well in time to see Them Are Us Too, and they were fucking crazy awesome. I wanna see them again! This was my first time seeing them and I believe, they have been here before my friend Aimee said. When it was them....it was them! Its one of those nights that have the impact of multiple events. I will find it incredible that I was able to see these two bands together. I was sad that I had no money left to buy their music, but it is something for later, but as soon as possible.  Its a powerful imprint that first time, in part because for a while it will have to be the only time. You don't want your memory to be the only thing to hold the hmm ......memory together. 
   I've been sold on Wax Idols for a long time, and this time especially after reading an interview with Hether that made it a mission to see her band at Empty Bottle again. I found myself identifying more with her underdog narrative as she speaks about her struggle with depression. This on top of a divorce.  And she toured around the world with  White Lung. Much has happened with her crammed into two years. In Japan on stage at Fuji Rock was surreal, she has said. In Austin she hung out with CoCo and Ice-T. She split her head open stage diving during the Cro-Mags. In Athens, Greece, between tours she cried upon seeing The Acropolis for the first time. In Russia, St Petersburg they blew out the power at the venue. She has said that going to Russia was the coolest thing in her life. I mean. That's intense. And so I read this I think just months before the concert. Of course it influences mightily my view of her. This time I would bring something to hear on the way back, to rabidly binge on tracks that catch immediate fire.
   And so I came home with American Tragic. You can't help but see her doomed marriage and divorce as background. And her as a survivor of it.  And Depression.... when it lands its strikes, but Hether has learned to ground-fight. Pounds her way back up, and fights her way out.   Some lyric fragments jump out in front of you as if seeking to be the substance behind the headline. I'm Not Going is just like that.  Every line is like my favorite fucking line. Deborah is the new Shadow Play. I don't know if this was a deliberate thing. These two songs being in the middle, because they are deepest of the sad. The sad-dance bottom. When a goth bounces back, its a fucking sight. As indeed we take flight with Seraph. In interviews Hether is open about her struggles with depression. Tragic is an open-veins, defiant slugfest. Its an underdog's soundtrack. Reading the interviews made me salivate the album!  Some may argue that indeed they shaped rather than confirm an opinion. I imagine these are the tracks that imprinted live. The memory turns ever more surreal, German Expressionist.

Very few people besides Hether had a hand in working on the 9 track album. I believe she played most of the instruments of the recording except for the drums. So its interesting to ponder how personal a creation this was. In part it reflects in crystalline form what she had to survive and continues to fight. And that is also no secret. Hether's other job is being a professional dominatrix. So thats why to me its notable and amazing how open-veins vulnerable she is willing to be.  Depression doesn't leave you alone just because you are on tour performing in front a crowd you know you got by the balls. Depression can drop the value of that like Mexican pesos to the U.S. dollar. Hether is really open about her experience with depression. Reading the interviews, some months before the show and after influenced I suppose how I would see Hether perform.  In essence I became her fan all over again.
Zig