Local noise-rock trio Mirakler steals spotlight in 3-band bill

Talk about cutting to the chase.

Pittsburgh noise-rock trio Mirakler kicked off a blistering, 22-minute set Monday night at The Government Center on the North Side with a raucous take on its bonafide crowd-pleaser: the vicious “Instant Drugs.”

When played live, the song erupts around its edges and borders on the Vesuvian.

“There’s no fire, only mirrors and smoke / Create a messiah and it ends up a ghost,” frontman Daniel Gene roared into the microphone on the East Allegheny record shop’s band stage. “They’ll dig up the bodies only to bury the lead.”

The song is the A side to a 7-inch EP released by The Ghost Is Clear Records and Reptilian Records in August 2022.

It took Mirakler, native sons whose vicious backbeat was provided by new drummer Devin Brown, less than 30 minutes to absolutely steal the show during a two-hour concert with three up-and-coming noise-rock bands, two of which are touring nationally.

Kansas City’s Nerver bravely endured some technical issues to pound out a bombastic set, while Austin-area trio Pinko angrily dropped the curtain on the evening.

Mirakler, though, provided the marquee aural feast of the evening.

It is LOUD at Govt Center on ⁦@Pittsburgh⁩’s North Side tonight! Native sons Mirakler open a 3-band bill. ⁦@TribLIVE⁩ pic.twitter.com/Bl782jVrWL

— Justin Vellucci (@JVTheTrib) October 17, 2023

The group, whose energetic onstage presence belied the voltage of their work, played six songs off their excellent full-length debut, “How I Became The Devil.”

They closed the set with “The Shootist,” the B side to the aforementioned 2022 single. In between were live-wire takes on recent songs like “Ecstatics Fields of Love & Grace” and “Egg.”

The trio, which practices at a storage space in McKees Rocks, had a bit of a stunted birth, forming in late 2020 amid the covid-19 pandemic. In spring 2022, Mirakler self-released on Bandcamp a covers-only EP — appropriately titled “The Covers EP” — which featured punked-up treatments of songs like Bjork’s “Declare Independence.”

While Mirakler’s studio recordings have paid a kind of pressurized attention to texture and, yes, volume, live the three members snap at the audience like freshly uncaged animals.

During “This Is Brit Pop,” the trio visibly raged as a singular-headed kind of convulsing monster, then stopped on a dime, leaving Gene — who intentionally was standing far from the microphone — to dead-pan his lyrics. The bridge, a rare moment of calm during the set, quickly was overshadowed by more distorted guitar refrains and the punctuation marks of a jackhammer rhythm section.

For the record, “This Is Brit Pop,” a reference to the English band Pulp’s 1998 LP “This Is Hardcore,” does not sound anything like Brit pop.

While Mirakler flirted with velocity, the Kansas City-based quartet Nerver packed more of a bottom-end wallop. Frontman and bassist Evan Little, his long, wavy hair often obscuring his face, hammered out bass chords with a plodding intensity, frequently in death-march 4/4 time. It lent the group’s sound, which occasionally veered a little bit into metal territory, with a density and weight that complemented Mirakler’s angularity.

Nerver was no slumbering beast, though.

As the group closed “Blood Boy,” a cut off the band’s 2022 LP “CASH,” it began sprinting forward, the music becoming more and more frenetic, before a dramatic end. On “Now It’s Dark” — or was it “The Chair?” — guitarists Dakota Hollenbeck and Jake Melech allowed open notes to ring out beyond the borders of a verse, the noise giving way to a wall of feedback.

Kansas City’s ⁦@NerverKC⁩ launches into its set’s 3rd song after some brief btw-song patter at Government Center on Pittsburgh’s North Side. ⁦@TribLIVE⁩ pic.twitter.com/KuWjaKBU9x

— Justin Vellucci (@JVTheTrib) October 17, 2023

The band encountered technical difficulties about three-quarters of the way through its set, something that required a new electrical power-strip and a new guitar. But they weathered through with an engaging take on the title song from their 2022 record.

Pinko cleverly combined the best elements of the two bands preceding them, painting their live sound with velocity and mass.

On a new song, “Martyr of All,” frontman and guitarist Guillermo Mendez attacked the black Gibson SG guitar he wore high above his waist, strumming furiously and swaying in time with the sound.

Pinko live at Government Center tonight on ⁦@Pittsburgh⁩’s North Side ⁦@TribLIVE⁩ pic.twitter.com/N77ui84Hds

— Justin Vellucci (@JVTheTrib) October 17, 2023

Pinko bassist Jared Flores, his mushroom-cloud hair calling to mind Melvins’ frontman Buzz Osborne, was a particular treat, his big-business-style delivery offering dramatic counter-points to guitar lines from Mendez that sometimes shrieked with frustration.

The group ended its too-short set with a song so new that it doesn’t even have a title yet. Mendez lost himself in the rage of the closing moments, angrily lashing his guitar toward the ground and wrapping a microphone cord around his neck as he screamed.

The Government Center proved an inviting venue for the show, its colorful record bins and sound stage set on birch-colored wood floors so new they lacked the requisite fade of concertgoers’ tread marks. Foot traffic through the record store and the nearby bar added to those who paid the $10 admission for the three-band bill.

A staff member working the sound board kept the guitars and bass high in the mix — appropriate for the audience, many sporting hoodies and holding cans of Modelo, and more than a few old enough to have cut their teeth on post-hardcore acts such as Fugazi in the ’90s.

Mirakler next plays the same venue Nov. 4 with A Deer A Horse and Pittsburgh act Flash Thunder. Nerver and Pinko head to Michigan on Tuesday, where they will play at The Run Off in Kalamazoo.