Seabrook Power Plant began and ended its set on Tuesday night at Zebulon, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a grimly combative clamor. Jared Seabrook, the band’s drummer, bashed a manhole-cover-size ride cymbal and viciously pummeled his snare; Tom Blancarte clawed at his upright bass with something like frenzied desperation. In the foreground Brandon Seabrook, Jared’s brother, was a man apparently hellbent on earning the title of World’s Least Rustic Banjo Player.
It was all hyper-declarative and a little juvenile, but not without reason. The music of Seabrook Power Plant — the name is a riff on a nuclear station in Seabrook, N.H. — descends both from the extreme wing of avant-garde jazz and the twitchier strains of hardcore punk. Some songs on the band’s self-titled debut, just out on Loyal Label, also reveal a fruitful affinity with the lumbering churn of stoner metal.
One such tune, “I Don’t Feel So Good,” was a highlight of Tuesday’s set. Brandon Seabrook, playing electric guitar, paired off at first with Mr. Blancarte to play a sludgy riff. This went on for a while, drums crashing on the downbeat, before abruptly stopping for a guitar solo. Mr. Seabrook set it high on his fret board, in scurrying-centipede mode.
Among the other guitar-centered tunes were “Base Load Plant Theme,” an overdriven full-group freak-out, and “Waltz of the Nuke Workers,” a blast of deceptive punk primitivism. Mr. Seabrook’s solos were studies in gangly aggression: even with the softening effects of a delay pedal his tone conveyed a kind of blowtorch immediacy. His style wasn’t far removed from that of Marc Ribot, a veteran of equally wily constitution.
It was all hyper-declarative and a little juvenile, but not without reason. The music of Seabrook Power Plant — the name is a riff on a nuclear station in Seabrook, N.H. — descends both from the extreme wing of avant-garde jazz and the twitchier strains of hardcore punk. Some songs on the band’s self-titled debut, just out on Loyal Label, also reveal a fruitful affinity with the lumbering churn of stoner metal.
One such tune, “I Don’t Feel So Good,” was a highlight of Tuesday’s set. Brandon Seabrook, playing electric guitar, paired off at first with Mr. Blancarte to play a sludgy riff. This went on for a while, drums crashing on the downbeat, before abruptly stopping for a guitar solo. Mr. Seabrook set it high on his fret board, in scurrying-centipede mode.
Among the other guitar-centered tunes were “Base Load Plant Theme,” an overdriven full-group freak-out, and “Waltz of the Nuke Workers,” a blast of deceptive punk primitivism. Mr. Seabrook’s solos were studies in gangly aggression: even with the softening effects of a delay pedal his tone conveyed a kind of blowtorch immediacy. His style wasn’t far removed from that of Marc Ribot, a veteran of equally wily constitution.
