REVIEW: Greg Puciato, Escuela Grind, Deaf Club, Trace Amount at Gramercy Theatre | 05.17.2023

Show Reviews

May 22

Written By

Greg Puciato is a busy guy. Since the legendary Dillinger Escape Plan’s disbandment in 2017, Puciato has immersed himself in numerous projects, started a few bands, and even toured with Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell as his vocal counterpart. Puciato’s upcoming project, Better Lovers, has me particularly psyched (“30 Under 13” slaps so hard). But despite the countless ways in which he has contributed his artistry for and with other people, Puciato still makes time to do his own thing.

In 2020, Greg Puciato released his first solo album, “Child Soldier: Creator of God.” His sophomore solo release, “Mirrorcell,” came last Summer. Now, Puciato is in the midst of his very first solo tour of North America to promote these albums. The tour, which includes opening acts Escuela Grind, Deaf Club, and Trace Amount, stopped in New York City last week for an epic show at Gramercy Theatre.

The Show

Trace Amount, the sonic brainchild of Brooklyn-based artist and musician Brandon Gallagher, opened the evening with his unique mix of industrial metal and experimental noise. Gallagher’s sound is loud, gritty, and unapologetic. His pushing of musical boundaries and mindset of “the more lo-fi the better” was refreshing to experience.

Though Gallagher stands on the stage alone, he creates a sound that feels much larger. His impassioned vocal delivery tears through the speakers and demands your attention. The crowd was more than happy to comply.

Deaf Club was up next and ho-ly shit. Absolutely mind-blowing this band is. The intensity of their performance is like a Liu Kang bicycle kick to the chest that you’re delighted to receive. The show was chaos and I was here for it.

I can’t recall another band in recent memory that left me as speechless as Deaf Club did with their set. I was truly mesmerized, my vocabulary reduced to a satisfied “fuck yeah!” exclaimed at the conclusion of each song.

Deaf Club is a hard band to follow, but Escuela Grind was more than worthy as the next act. The band showed up ready to play some metal and have some fun and that’s exactly what they did. Vocalist Katerina Economou commanded the audience both as a performer and in the literal sense, as she parted the crowd into a massive wall of death and sent them into collision.

Escuela Grind are a force to be reckoned with. The band delivered an absolutely brutal set that showcased their signature grindcore grit and brought the energy to a fever pitch just in time for Greg Puciato to take the stage.

I covered Jerry Cantrell’s show in Montclair a couple months back and was impressed by Greg Puciato’s ability to channel Layne Staley so splendidly in his vocal performance. There are countless voices in rock but few that can embody its edge so cosmically. Greg Puciato can and does with ease. It’s no wonder that he is involved in so many projects; the man is pure rock and roll.

Accompanied by an awesomely talented backing band, Puciato opened with “In This Hell You Find Yourself” setting his intention to melt people’s brains from the start. The setlist was a near-even split between his two solo records and also included two tracks from his live/b-side release, “Fuck Content.” Before closing with “September City”, Puciato gave a brief tease of Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage,” fulfilling a promise to one of his Better Lovers bandmates that he’d sing some Chris Cornell. It was an epic close to an epic evening.

The Shoot

Earlier in the week I shot Wage War and experienced a bit of an off night creatively. I was hoping that the spark would be back for this show and thankfully it was. I decided this time around that I’d take my time with my shots and try to be more intentional.

In practice it’s easier said than done, of course. Something about the mix of anxiety and adrenaline that comes when the first song starts makes you want to throw every sensible idea you have out the window and frantically grab as many shots you can. The clock starts ticking as soon as those first notes are played, and the sense of urgency makes it easy to kick the can of self-improvement down the road to the next show. I’ve done it more times than I can count.

I’ve found a lot of power in focusing on my breathing while I’m shooting. Doing so makes it easier to prevent that frantic shot-grabbing and instead allows me to slow down, re-focus, and truly make every shot count. For this show, I was at least able to make most of my shots count, but all it takes is someone jumping off a bass drum or holding their guitar defiantly into the air and I fall right back into my "gotta have it" shooting mode.

Trace Amount’s lighting was the most infrequent and required some patience but with him being a solo act I was able to focus all of my time and attention on him. This allowed me to explore a handful of composition ideas and take my time with them. After I left the photo pit, I knew I had the shots I needed but still found myself reaching for my camera to take more. This is when overshooting becomes more of a hinderance than a helper; more photos to sift through and edit. I decided to trust my instincts and put my camera away to enjoy the show.

Deaf Club and Escuela Grind were both so much fun to shoot. The energy and intensity with which each band member performed made my job easy as the photos effectively took themselves. During Deaf Club’s set, I was locked into my viewfinder, getting shots of vocalist Justin Pearson, and he got right up in my camera. I was delighted and continued to shoot before realizing he was so close because he was using me as physical support to get off of the stage and into the crowd. It was a funny moment, at least for me, when I realized what was going on.

Greg Puciato’s set was very strobe heavy, which meant that with a few shots in rapid succession you could feel relatively confident that you got one with clean and even lighting. Such was my approach to manage; I'd use one blast of light to focus, then hold down my shutter for a few flashes of light and let off. This meant plenty of solid black frames, but in between them was often something good. Puciato's crowd interaction during the latter half of the set allowed me to grab some fun shots and end the evening on a high note.

All in all the night felt like a success. Many more shows to come in the weeks ahead – I'm particularly excited to see Cattle Decapitation for the first time! If you're reading this, thank you. I'm having a lot of fun doing Dangit Bee!, and I appreciate you coming along for the ride.