Portland is a great town to be in a band. There is no shortage of people lining up to see you, and the community is very tight-knit. Unless you play punk rock.
Lebenden Toten plays punk rock—the good kind. The rip-your-guts-out and piss-all-over-your-dead-body kind. The band performs all over the world, have plenty of international support and released several records. So why have you never heard of them?
Almost every record LT has released has been in other countries that have historically supported their endeavors in ways Portland never could. Of the myriad releases credited to the band, only two of them have been released on a U.S. label.
To Portland’s credit, the one U.S. label with any Lebenden Toten releases is local punk label Feral Ward, run by former His Hero Is Gone and current Tragedy member Yannick Lorrain.
Everything else by LT has either been self-released or released by smaller punk labels in countries such as Japan, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.
While LT usually packs the house when they play in Portland, it is only because their appearances are so sporadic. In 2011, LT played three shows. So far this year, the band is on pace to best that by at least one, having played near the end of March with a May show on the horizon.
A typical LT performance is an experience to remember, as whatever venue hosts the show will look like a DMZ afterward. What’s more, the biggest venue LT has played in the last four years is Branx, and the next biggest holds just over a hundred. Because the venues are so small, only the most dedicated LT fans will make it inside. And if that somehow includes you, they will make sure to make it an event for you.
What can one expect from the band itself? Apart from the usual crowd eruptions, expect lots of downbeats, feedback and shriek-y (sometimes downright scary) vocals from Chanel, the band’s singer. Because LT’s fan-base knows an awful lot about punk rock, expect comparisons to many bands you’ve never heard of, but I can offer at least one: a more explosive Melt-Banana.
And if you’re not familiar with Melt-Banana, just go to a LT show. It’ll be more fun that way.
Next show: May 30 at Blackwater Records (1925 SE Morrison St.), 8 p.m., all ages.