Live music review: Nashville punks Snooper played sold out Parish with Blank Hellscape and Water Damage

August 13, 2024 Case Cockrell 655 Views Blank Hellscape, drone, egg punk, live music, post-punk, punk rock, Radio East, Review, Snooper, Thor Harris, Water Damage

Playing with enormous foam toys while moshing and crowd surfing may seem familiar to concert attendees in Austin. To Nashville’s Snooper, their regular tour stop in the central Texas music hub is becoming a celebrated, crowd participation-oriented affair. Since the release of their debut LP after a handful of splits, the DIY punk ethos of Snooper took the interest of Third Man Records. Run by garage rock overlord Jack White, the Tennessee band has been on a tear with even more single releases and a relentless touring schedule, which has featured multiple stops in Austin over the past 18 months. For Snooper’s Summer Austin appearance on August 3, the band enlisted the help of Blank Hellscape and Water Damage. After their last SXSW appearance of 2024 that featured the former, Snooper was ready to make it all about their Texas musical kindred spirits at ATX East Side alternative music stronghold, Parish. It was a business as usual Saturday night for the Country Music town punks in the best and most incendiary of ways.

Local drone act, Water Damage opened the Saturday night show, appearing with local drumming powerhouse Thor Harris. Harris has been a lot of places and rocked a lot of faces, even recording and touring with legendary noise act Swans in what is considered the golden period of their modern era. Harris appeared with various instrumentalists onstage, even featuring a second drummer, two guitarists, bass, a lap steel player, and a stand-up stringed instrument that we couldn’t quite identify, adding to the foreboding soundscapes of the group. Despite having multiple songs recorded and released, the well-rounded ensemble opted for one continuous improvisation, testing the audience’s patience and showcasing their astronomical abilities in the process.

Blank Hellscape came next, setting up on the venue floor with no more than two soundtables and vocalist Andrew Nogay delivering his jaw-dropping sinister vocal delivery that accompanies the noise-making machines operated by local musicians Ethan Billips and Max Deems. When the noise trio hit the stage, it became noticeable that the venue was starting to fill up to the max, causing the Parish staff to stop selling door tickets as the show sold out before Snooper hit the stage. Billips also writes and records under the moniker Body Tape, who also had a hand in remixing the local post-punk band Exotic Fruitica on their latest EP Cruel. Blank Hellscape made their acquaintance with Snooper when playing their final performance of SXSW 2024 at University of Texas West Campus staple, The Ballroom. Tramel and company were spotted raging along to the local noise act on the last day of the festival, and the result was a mini tour this summer that will stretch to Denton and San Antonio.

Sold out by the headlining set, Snooper took their time to set up their spectacle onstage. Employing their jovial egg-punk identity, the quintet pulled their regular foam props onstage, including an enormous phone and a video monitor that allowed the audience’s reactions and mosh antics to be shown on the stage backdrop. Snooper took the stage with their usual goal in mind, slashing through as many songs as possible and delivering what felt like the bulk of their released catalog. “Company Car,” “Bedbugs,” “Pod,” “Powerball,” and “Xerox” all appeared with lightning-fast intensity, showing the Nashville punks firing tunes out of the cannon at rapid fire.

Despite the whirling vocal effects on front woman, Blair Tramel’s microphone making her spoken banter challenging to decipher, the singer told the audience how their love of Austin has blossomed at a bombastic rate, making their Texas appearances regular with a resounding response from their compact, albeit sold-out performances. Snooper were relentless, just hacking through the short-but-punk rock as fuck cuts that only stopped for speech samples as the band tuned and reloaded the thrashing musical ammo that kept the Snooper train rolling a for non-stop, constant crowd-surfing thrash-fest. “Unable” and “Running” capped things off for the evening, both songs about love and living in the DIY musician fast lane.

Snooper, even as a headliner, usually only have about 30 minutes of punk lifeline, 15-plus songs of output that makes a powerful statement. The audience sings every word, does swan dives off the stage no matter how big or small, and the band gives visual approval to the antics that bring the house down with every live gig they play night after night. Business might be the same, but the punk onslaughts keep coming, and that’s never a bad thing in the world of mosh-ready music.