VEIL OF MAYA

Veil of Maya sounds like a beautiful rose and turquoise scaled velociraptor, death in its eyes, splintering the bathroom door to needles as you try to climb behind the toilet, wondering how the fuck a dinosaur got into your home.

Marc Okubo of Veil of Maya.

This is the soundtrack to so many wonderful moments in my life: driving my first car through the winding, forested roads of Santa Cruz; skateboarding along the ocean at sunset; disregarding the sunrise entirely to continue the digital violence with a room full of good friends.

This band holds enormous sentimental value as well as incredible staying power in my day-to-day music rotation, so I consider myself lucky to have caught my second Veil of Maya show at Portland’s Hawthorne Theater alongside djent overlords Periphery.

Blending primal savagery with empyrean beauty, this Chicago 4-piece turns the volume down on other metal acts through a mastery of vitriolic guitar tones, mind-numbing rhythmic complexity and an unapologetic approach to vocal melody. Listen to some older Veil and it should come as no surprise that the band was formed by a guitarist and a drummer (Marc Okubo and Sam Applebaum). Behind the veil, technicality is king.

Veil takes their name from the Devangari word Maya (“magic” or “illusion”) and a Vedic philosophy that the true nature of being is shielded from the untrained - that the common man must achieve enlightenment in order to pierce the veil of Maya and see the world as it truly is. This phrase has been used in metal music before - progressive metal pioneers Cynic incorporated it on their 1993 debut album Focus - but after 5 LPs and counting, my favorite Chicago groove masters have cemented the name in modern metal history.

Watching Marc’s fingers flex across the fretboard in double-time, tongue lolling out and eyes careening hungrily across the small interior of the Hawthorne Theater, I reflect on the fact that this band at one point featured 3 guitarists. It seems that Marc may have devoured the other two at some point, absorbing their power in order to keep up with the masochistic tempo he has set for the band over the years.

Dan Hauser isn’t slacking off either, matching Okubo note for note on a sleek headless bass, his legs firmly planted and his hair cyclonic. Lukas Mygar hides his eyes with the low brim of a trucker hat as he screams eldritch prophecies and commands, his pointing finger reflected back one-hundred-fold by the surging audience. Sam Applebaum is lost in a glittering labyrinth of symbols in the back, resolutely smashing his way into view in regular intervals. It’s nearly impossible to utilize the bench in the narrow photographer’s pit - I am immediately bodied by the tide of humanity joyously discharging the week’s frustrations.

The setlist began with the haunting, hypnotic opener to 2012’s Eclipse. 20/200 is a minute-long instrumental combining a discordant choir with a lacerating groove featuring more sharp edges than a wood chipper. This song is a perfect example of everything I love about Veil of Maya - an encompassing, ethereal atmosphere and so much pure muscle you can’t help but bare your teeth listening to it. Whistleblower is next, a highly textural meatgrinder that follows Mygar’s whispering growl through a hall of mirrors. These two tracks reflect different periods of Veil’s history - Eclipse was the band’s last album with longtime vocalist Brandon Butler (Iscariot, Lost Origins) and the last before clean vocals and hardcore screams found their way into the sound. I was amongst the skeptics to outcry the band’s fall to mainstream success when the 2015 single Mikasa was released, but I am happy to say I was proven oh-so wrong over the course of 2 wonderfully brutal and sensuous albums.

The Hawthorne Theater drips with excreted endorphins as the band plunges into the first three tracks from Matriarch, the first album to feature Mygar’s diverse cleans and screams. NYU, Leeloo and Ellie are all named after female protagonists from TV and film (the whole album is) and they spit fire just like their namesakes. Fan favorite Punisher follows, and any semblance or order quickly flees the room amidst the serpentine violence of one of Okubo’s best riffs. When the song drops into a sample ripped from Youtube - a teenager criticizing a Periphery album by ad-libbing the riffs with his mouth - we all join in before smashing our bones together in rapturous celebration.

As I manage to stuff my foot back into the shoe that’s being repeatedly torn from me, the breath burning in my lungs, a familiar intro crashes over the audience - it’s Mikasa, the song that filled me with such self righteous disappointment so long ago, that brought to my lips the dreaded curse of sell out - and I’ll be damned if I’m not the loudest person in the room screaming along. Sweat stinging my eyes, elbows and knees bruised and battered, I begin to see, just for a moment, the world beyond the Veil.

Catch Veil of Maya live on tour with Animals as Leaders in 2020 - tickets are right here, and go listen to all of their albums - they Bump well with wind in the face and bloodless knuckles.

♥ Zach