Sean C. Morgan
John Pelcher is planning a sonic and visual explosion Saturday night as his band, The Berated, takes the Rio Theater stage.
The “industrial pop” carries a ragged punk vocal nodding to death and industrial metal riding on top of a synth-heavy framework ranging from the melodic approach of the Cars to the rhythmic drive of Rob Zombie.
The group plans a visual assault from the silver screen behind them while dancers perform before them, with set pieces and instruments crafted from wood and bits of electronics in a sort of urban-rural collision. The theme is shocking in a Halloween way befitting Halloween weekend.
The show is family-friendly, Pelcher said. There shouldn’t be any vulgarity, although the band’s flyers warn of it.
Pelcher warns those who may be affected that the show will include strobe effects.
It will still be creepy in a haunted house sort of way, Pelcher said, and young children who may scare easily probably shouldn’t attend.
“The Berated has been an ever-changing project for over 10 years,” Pelcher said. He started it with friend Matt Metzler and a Casio keyboard in their bedrooms in Portland. They used a headset for a mic.
“We’ve actually been more of a studio band since we started,” Pelcher said. “We’re just now getting the show started.”
Their big influences have been industrial music, Pelcher said. When they got their guitars, it turned more toward industrial metal. They’ve turned more toward the industrial pop but wander freely back and forth into industrial metal.
“We do it for the love playing music and making music,” Pelcher said. “We’re at the point of making it and sharing it with people.
“It’s not just music. It’s live performances done differently from what you’d expect. It is bizarre. It’s purely stage presence – and an intermission, which is amazing in itself.”
This show is sort of like a big top meets the gypsy, with a dose of Alice Cooper’s vaudevillian horror shows, something like other show bands, Marilyn Manson or Gwar, for example, Pelcher said. “It’s not so dark, not so much to offend or scare anybody away. It’s a spectacular, something Sweet Home has never seen.”
The band includes Pelcher, who recently worked in the produce department at Safeway. He now works full-time on his business, Ares Satellite, with his wife, Melissa. Pelcher is vocalist and ringmaster.
Metzler of Portland plays keyboards. Tyler Gillette of Cascadia hits things and plays drum parts. Patrick Culy, who works at Sunshine Industries, plays guitar. Brandon Leaton, who also works at Sunshine Industries, plays bass.
The performance includes 11 additional cast members, including dancers and a terror squad.
“I’m an artist to the extreme,” Pelcher said.
He also paints, draws and works with video.
“I love sonic art, visual art, performance art,” he said, and he wants to show that all of it can be had here in Sweet Home. He wants local kids to know they can do it too.
“There’s another element here in Sweet Home,” Pelcher said. “Artists can come out and expose themselves.”
“I want music to explode in Sweet Home,” he said. “I want art to explode in Sweet Home. There’s enough talent to get everything going and make it an entertaining place to live.”
When people talk about going to Portland to find something to do, “the only thing they’re talking about is being entertained,” Pelcher said. “You can be entertained anywhere.”
The Berated was one of the bands at Psychostock, held in Sankey Park in August.
“We did that show, and it turned out so well,” Pelcher said. “That was a big inspiration to get this going.
“I’m hoping people here come to see the new show, something different. If you don’t like the music, you’ll like the show. There’s something that will affect you. There’s something that’ll kind of take you out of your every day. I don’t care if you love it or hate it. Art is supposed to affect you.”
That could mean joy, anger, sadness or anything else, Pelcher said, and his goal is to make you feel something about his and his band’s work.
Doors open at 9 p.m. The show will start between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. For information or tickets, contact the Rio Theater at (541) 367-5559.