Savage Sisters Metal Meditation with Monks Pond
PhilaMOCA
531 N. 12th St.
Philadelphia
April 28, 2024
*Extra credit: Test your focus (or flexibility) by reading this review while listening to the heavy metal meditation recorded above.*
People packed like sardines on 2‑foot-wide yoga mats were practicing their box breathing when a force of harmonium, gong and electric guitar smacked me square in the face.
I was part of a 60-something crowd practicing yoga poses Sunday afternoon… on the appropriately filthy floor of arts venue PhilaMOCA while heavy metal masters raged on stage.
It was all part of a one-off, ticketed fundraiser for Savage Sisters, a Philly nonprofit that provides recovery housing for individuals suffering with substance abuse. I was happy to support the mission — and curious to see if metal and mindfulness could coexist.
“Harm reduction, yoga, and heavy metal all challenge the status quo,” instructor Deborah Cohen synopsized prior to leading us through an hour-long flow set to a not-so-typical sound bath from New Jersey ambient metal band, Monks Pond. It was also the group’s debut live show.
Before launching into the lesson, Cohen assured the anti-authority audience: “You don’t have to do anything I say.” Each instruction, she said, was simply “an invitation.”
I’d heard that liability disclaimer plenty of times before. Attending yoga classes has previously left me feeling like a poser participating in the appropriation of the ancient practice. But I still used to regularly spend part of my paycheck at yoga studios and have been searching for a new space since moving to Philly. Because nothing quite calms my back pain and chronic inner turmoil like stretching in silence.
Still, I showed up Sunday as I would to a concert — AKA, nothing but tickets in hand — as opposed to how I would for a yoga class. Looking up towards the cobalt blue spotlights and disco ball hanging from the ceiling, I felt a phantom surge of stage fright before taking my place at the front of the yogic ensemble (a sacrifice I made on behalf of you, readers, so I could sneak video of the band). I also felt an uncanny urge to pray as if pewed-up in a strobe-light-soaked megachurch.
But minutes later, batting my sweaty hair out of my eyes and mouth while balancing on a borrowed mat, I realized I was, indeed, at something closer to a choreographed concert than a meditation. Cohen’s voice was almost drowned out as a barrage of instruments, several of which I’d never seen before, began pouring out of the mustached millennials (plus one woman and a clean-shaven older man) on stage.
One guy in a Simpsons T‑shirt somberly pounded the mridangam, a highly resonant South Indian drum. Another dude wearing a black beanie and skinny jeans grinned and swayed his head back and forth while slaying guitar runs over a medley of maraca, shells, other shakers, and chimes.
It sounded like Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship” on repeat. For some reason, I associate that song with writer David Foster-Wallace, who wrote about the ambient art piece in his posthumous book, The Pale King. I got a copy of that book last year and have read about ten pages so far. Perhaps that’s a symptom of my in-need-of-fine tuning attention span?
Anway, take “The Big Ship” and scramble its relative innocence with a heavy beat that sounds like shackled soldiers marching to war against their inner demons — then you’ve got something similar to what Monks Pond was delivering. Each time I stood up from a forward fold, I found myself rapidly skimming the stage, taking advantage of my momentary position to discern what instruments were producing that rich ambient noise.
Nervous that I was the only one nodding my head along to the music, I next scanned the room behind me. Though most were moving seamlessly through the sequences, I spotted at least one metal head just sitting on his yoga mat at the back of the room, listening.
Inhale for 1 – 2‑3. Hold your breath for 1 – 2‑3. Exhale for 3 – 2‑1.
Cohen managed to voice her own rhythm over the clashing band. That rhythm is called box breathing; sucking in oxygen for a certain amount of time and holding it in for the same duration before sighing it out to meet a secondary, same-paced stillness.
Without committing to calming my consciousness, my heart instead racing from the adrenaline of sweating to psychedelic, I imagined I was mimicking exercises somewhere in between yoga and pilates. Though pilates has become widely associated with vanity-fixated white women, it was originally invented as a literal prison workout by German Joseph Pilates when he was interned by British authorities in World War I. You could call that hardcore.
Crammed into my own little nook amid the crowd, I felt the tension between thinking outside of the box and operating under constraints.
Like Cohen outlined, yoga can challenge our relationships to ourselves by forcing a baseline level of bodily awareness into our brains. I, for one, usually deny my possession over any physical form, thereby justifying bodily abuse in the name of all that is good. But that tactic only lasts so long before you crash.
Hardcore music can also blast anxious internal dialogues into metaphysical shrapnel, but I’ve had to throw that coping strategy into the “avoidance” category, and recognize it as a regular catalyst for crazy decision-making. Which is cool and fun. But the darkness that’s implicit in metal can also be interpreted as deeply radical — forging a pathway for humans to recognize and accept the fucked up parts of ourselves alongside the good.
Philosophically, the themes all align in perfect parallel. In practice, it boiled down to a fun core-strengthening class and introduction to a powerful next-door-neighbor, dark ambient drone band. I’ll probably pull their music up on Bandcamp to soundtrack my mood swings.
Instead of walking out of the show into a drunk night of darkness, I left the blue room to meet a soberly bright sun and 90 degree heat.
My zen had evaporated. Time to queue up some Slipknot, punch the air and think outside the box. I started to scale the side of my apartment building… and made a mental note to call Deborah Cohen and sign up for yoga.
NEXT
Monks Pond is playing Asbury Park in New Jersey on June 8th.
