A Life Once Lost and Grimace Federation @ Kung Fu Necktie.

Text by Rick Kauffman. Images by Tim O’Donnell.

Philly’s A Life Once Lost’s warmup on Saturday evening was a dubbed riff from a track off their newest album, Ecstatic Trance, entitled “Madness is God.”

The track served first to get their sound just right — a sound they’ve become all too familiar with. Kung Fu Necktie has served as home for ALOL for at least two years now. Since they tore the joint a new one with The Red Chord in 2011 and held a residency during the ten-year anniversary of A Great Artist in 2012, they don’t seem to play anywhere else.

They own this joint.

The place wasn’t packed, however. In fact, it was quiet reasonable. Nevertheless, ALOL came to lay down their personal flair of riffy, groove metal. The four-piece consists of two original members, Robert Meadows on lead vocals and Douglas Sabolick on guitar since 1999, while drummer Jordan Crouse and Chris Weyh on bass have come on more recently to complete the group.

The repeating track that drew the crowd to the stage wasn’t out of laziness — when they played “Madness is God” second, Sabolick used it to fill the spot of  the rhythm guitar while he tore sweeping scales over a techy disjointed beat. ALOL lays down transfixing, repetitive grooves while the drummer rides a mean crash. It’s headbang central, and no one does it better.

It’s typical of ALOL to headline KFN but this was not the case Saturday — another Philly-local act, Grimace Federation, encompassed the stage to ride out the night. The instrumental riffy, math-rock trio has changed a lot in the past few years, where once they were straight instrumental they are now heavily aided by electronics. Each member cornered themselves behind gear and instruments and completed the groove of the night armed with laptops and ableton mixers.

The awkward fills, poly-rhythms, spacey interludes, rising action to climaxes of sound, textured electronic beats a la Boards of Canada working as backing tracks to extremely technical drumming, Grimace Federation showed a slew of talent in one sprawling epic. Wes Schwartz on computer/keys/mixers worked as a maestro — stopping the action, rising it, dropping with a hand raised — while Jim Calvarese worked the bass guitar and keyboard of his own. Sometimes they’d let the guitars hang and work the electronics, but the drummer, Christopher Wood, never stopped. He was aided by a headset to keep a tight beat.

A movement of dizzying uptempo, jazzy, breakbeat nonsense climaxed with breakdown of dark electronic dub — straight up wobbles.

And then, the Wood busted out the maracas.

The first words spoken were to announce the final song, like method actors who never break character. On their Facebook, their genre is listed as “blisscore.” Maybe it was the wormhole projected behind them but it was certainly one hell of a ride.