The Chicagoist will be launching later but in the meantime please enjoy our archives.

Chicagoist Weekend Theatre: Pre-Pelican Band Tusk, Live In 2004

By Jon Graef in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 7, 2014 7:10PM

Chicago's Tusk were a quartet once described by one of their reviewers as "artistic grindcore" for their albums of short songs and big concepts on albums like 2004's Tree Of No Return. Tusk were also notable for having three-fourths of local instru-metal superstars Pelican. [Tusk, in fact, predates Pelican.]

The group's last album was 2007's Resisting the Dreamer, but there's been a lot of activity on the Tusk Facebook page lately. The reason, though, for that activity is bittersweet. Sadly, Tusk vocalist Jody Minnoch recently passed away. The band posted a note by Tusk/Pelican guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw, a moving eulogy in which de Brauw says that Tree Of No Return is the album he's proudest of in his career.

de Brauw writes further about the conception and execution of Tree Of No Return:

Jody and I worked closely in tandem to fashion a concept album where the music would follow and illustrate the lyrics. We had a shared ideology that the limits of our talents should never define the boundaries of our musical ambitions, and you can audibly hear every one of us struggling and pushing ourselves beyond our capability. But to me, therein lies its beauty—the sound of a couple of hardcore kids listening to Tales of Topographic Oceans and saying, “fuck it, let’s try and make the grindcore version of this.

Since that post, Tusk has uploaded its three albums to Bandcamp and posted video of a house show the band played in Chicago ten years ago. That show, all brutal 19 minutes of it, is our weekend theater pick. Watch below: