Chasing Ghosts with Stabbing Westward at The Neighborhood Theatre

A night full of ghosts, all pleasant even if haunting, accompanied Stabbing Westward’s powerful return to Charlotte, NC.

Photos by Kris Engelhart

“How you doing Charlotte? Man, it’s been a while since we’ve been here. Like two decades!” exclaimed Christopher Hall, lead vocalist and co-songwriter of Stabbing Westward, during a break in the music during their set at The Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte, NC. It has been a few decades. It’s just short of 3 decades since I last saw Stabbing Westward live. On March 1st, 1999 Stabbing Westward played Tremont Music Hall with Placebo, and while that was a great show, the show that solidified Stabbing Westward as one of my favorite live acts was when they played Tremont with Ash as openers on October 29th, 1996. That show is forever burned into my mind. I didn’t know too much about them at the time. I had heard their singles on the radio and liked them, but hadn’t really gotten too deeply into their music. My late brother was a huge fan and orchestrated a get together that included several of our friends and significant others. The last time I saw Stabbing Westward live was in his company. Stabbing Westward was one of his favorite bands, and he helped make them one of mine as well. It is apropos that Stabbing Westward’s latest release is titled Chasing Ghosts. I felt like I was chasing plenty of ghosts the night Stabbing Westward made their return to Charlotte. While there were plenty of ghosts in the building, none of them were scary. Instead, I was haunted by past loves, losses, and a younger brother who was ahead of his time in life and unfortunately in death. The musical, emotional, and visual haunting was a pleasant one. Witnessing Stabbing Westward rising from their self-imposed early grave was as uplifting as it was reliving being at a show, at least in spirit, with my late brother. 

For a while Stabbing Westward was defunct. Chris Hall had moved on to form The Dreaming and Walter Flakus was pursuing other projects. Then Flakus joined The Dreaming and it only seemed to make sense, from this fan’s point of view, that the two resurrect Stabbing Westward. They did so with a new album, the aforementioned Chasing Ghosts, and an EP of covers, Hallowed Hymns, which features a brilliant cover of “Burn” by The Cure from The Crow (1994) soundtrack. It was thrilling, and completely unexpected, to hear them launch into their version of the song early in their Neighborhood Theatre set. As the final notes of “Falls Apart,” the second song of their set, ended and the image of a crow appeared on the screen behind the drum kit riser, a chill shot through me and I knew it was going to be a special night. 

It was already special though, bittersweet in fact, as the ghost of my brother (memory of him specifically–ghost of him metaphorically) was all around me. As the band played through some of their greatest hits, and some selected deeper cuts, I couldn’t help but remember my brother’s reaction to the songs when we saw them together decades ago, and imagine what they would be like now. Hits like “Nothing,” “Save Yourself,” and “Shame” landed at just the right spots in the set. Lesser known tracks from their self-titled 2001 album “Wasted” and “So Far Away” were special treats. “Waking Up Beside You,” “The Thing I Hate,” and “Sometimes It Hurts” were highlights from Darkest Days ((1998). “Slipping Away” and “Inside You” were special deep cuts from Wither, Blister, Burn, and Peel, and a rousing “Violent Mood Swings” was a highlight from Ungod (1994). 

The band itself is much more lean now. Less instrumentation on stage, and a few less members, but thanks to technology they sounded even better than in the past. I can truly say that Hall’s voice sounded exactly as it sounded all those years ago. He hasn’t lost an octave. Newer members Bobby Amaro (drums) and Cyamak Ashtiani (guitar) round out the band and mesh perfectly performance wise with founding members Hall and Flakus. 

Speaking of songwriting duos and band members, The Dead Cool, comprised of husband and wife duo Johnny and Angela Yeagher,  opened the ceremonies and conjured up the spirit of the evening’s show with their cool darkwave sound that washed the venue in waves of melancholic beats and deep synth notes. They served as a great musical counterpoint and complement to Stabbing Westward’s heavier sound. The Wilmington NC based act is obviously enamored with all things beyond the grave and the trappings of what awaits all of us, but their performance and the music itself display a type of life and energy similar to what  Neil Gaiman captured in his vision of Death of The Endless in The Sandman comic. The Dead Cool might deal with death metaphorically, but they are contradictorily full of life at the same time. They were a beautiful fragrance of bitter and sweet to my mood, mind, and ears, being as heavy as they were given my personal emotional and mental musings that evening. 

Stabbing Westward is an aggressive and often lyrically somber band. Many of the themes of their songs deal with lost opportunities, lost loves (both intimate ones and, I would argue, familial ones), as well as self-loathing. There’s a catharsis and cleansing though that accompanies their performance of these songs. So many in my generation grew up without the mental health support that younger generations take, not necessarily for granted, but as a given. Many young people I know shy away from the type of music that bands like NIN and Stabbing Westward write. I’ve been told, by younger students of mine, that this type of music is not healthy. Stabbing Westward and NIN’s music and concerts were our therapy sessions though. The expulsion of emotion, in a safe setting with peers who were feeling the same things (alienation, loss, despair, anxiety, depression), but didn’t have a therapist to see and would have scoffed, because of the then publicly attached stigma, at going to one maintained their sanity by engaging with these songs and artists. Stabbing Westward let us know that we aren’t alone, and better yet, we aren’t defective or broken because we felt like the protagonists of their songs did. This was something that my late brother helped, nonverbally, to clarify for me with his foray into the darker realms of industrial and “alternative” music (which we eventually took mainstream). I know he would have articulated this after the Neighborhood Theatre show if we would have had the chance to see it together and talk about it afterward. Who knows though? Maybe he was there with me as I chased the ghosts of my past: both the ghost of his memory and my own previous purges of emotion and catharsis Stabbing Westward has given me over the decades. I’d like to think so. He got to see a hell of a show. 

See the Full Gallery of the Night Here!

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