Malachi guitarist Dathan Lythgoe is the first to describe his band as dark, sad and overwhelmingly pessimistic, but, he says, all that bleakness serves a greater purpose.
"I think that it's a reminder that there's a lot of bad things in the world," Lythgoe says. "It's easy to just live your life every day in your little bubble, so it's good to just be reminded that there's a lot of strife in the world, and that you shouldn't forget that you're lucky to be where you are, living where you are-that other people in the world might not have what you have."
If the current economic downturn should somehow increase demand for pensive music that reminds us things could be worse, then Milwaukee's local music scene is well prepared for recession. The city now produces heavy, foreboding music with the efficiency and innovation with which it once manufactured beer, with scores of hardcore and metalcore acts warning of discontentment, injustice and apocalypse.
Malachi distinguishes itself from its peers through both scope and instrumentation. Their dirges often pass the 10-minute mark, alternating between barren and violent, allowing plenty of time for their churning, thundercloud riffs to build to sharp, thrashing breaks. "We initially set out to be a straight doom-metal band," Lythgoe admits, "but we all come from hardcore punk backgrounds, so we couldn't maintain the slowness for 10 minutes."
And then there's the cello, which tag-teams lead duties with the twin guitars. Baleful and expressive, it imbues these suites with a sense of grandeur and emotional resonance. Although Malachi does make room for human voices, these shrieked voices are fleeting and almost incidental, more a response to the music than a focal point of it. It's the cello that really sings.
Cellist Betsy Rettig has dedicated her life to the instrument. A graduate student of the UW-Milwaukee chamber-music program, she performs with several regional orchestras, quartets and trios, including the Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra. Metal is a full 180-degree departure from her usual Christmas concerts and wedding performances.
"It's a completely different skill set," Rettig says. "When I play in orchestras, there's this language that's been developed to communicate things precisely and clearly. And of course it's printed on page, with only a little room for interpretation. But playing in Malachi, we had to develop our own way of communicating what we mean. Someone might just say, 'Let's play loud here and really fast here," using general terms. Everything has to be explained; we have to talk a lot more, which is great. It makes you really think about what you're trying to say.
"It's a challenge, of course," Rettig adds. "When we first started playing, I'd just want to know, 'What key are we in?' But over time it's allowed me to become much more at ease improvising than I was. It's liberating, in a way. Playing music from the page, you're either playing it right or you're playing it wrong, but [with] improvising there's no way to be wrong."
With one-fifth of the band, bassist/vocalist Robert Collins, living in San Francisco, Malachi doesn't do too many local shows, but the band is gearing up for a string of dates behind their just-released record Wither to Cover the Tread. In advance of a January jaunt around Europe, they'll play a New Year's Eve concert at the Cactus Club.
