Scene Report: MODBANG PDX at The Six – Hosted by Heterodox Records

MODBANG PDX – Hosted by Heterodox Records

Venue: The Midnight PDX & The SIX Venue – 3341 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR

Date: 4.25.26

When did Saturdays become such a blur? It’s all just a big fucking blur. Sometimes it feels like time doesn’t exist, but when it does, my god. Where were you when your life was at its most fragile and gaussian? Life feels scattered and the incoherence is often distributed across a slew of false memories and minor fatigue rather than held in one clean, uh, shape. It’s Saturdays like this that make me wonder when exactly will dementia begin to blur the edges of reality into a culminating force. I guess these are perfectly normal thoughts to have before heading to an electronic show on a late April evening in Portland circa 2026.

Luckily for me, there are lots of familiar faces here which will definitely help assuage my fears of falling into the warm embrace of cognitive impairment. Familiarity has a medicinal quality in settings like this. And honestly, I’m glad there are so familiar faces, otherwise I might actually be going mad. I look around and see Occurian, Maximum Strength, Casual Decay, Production Unit Xero, D.Phono, Soup Purse, Ben Martens, Kid Camaro, SLTHR, Quemal and that was only the visible perimeter.

First up was Enzo Caselnova and I cannot properly overstate how good it felt to see him play live again. Enzo is one of those people whose presence already makes a room better, whether as a patron or just musically speaking, so it’s all nectar when going to a show where Enzo is playing. At first, I thought I was listening to a bit of an Orbital homage, but that was quickly proven incorrect and Enzo pulled out a fucking death rattle. My god there are a lot of motherfuckers in here – so many faces to witness the moody industrial catharsis happening on stage. And it is catharsis, because my knee is resting against the wooden bar and is being thumped unmercilessly. Check out of some the set below.

This place is at capacity – which reminds me this is probably a good time to tell you that you can listen along with the live stream that Modbang captured. What it doesn’t show is the crowd off to the left, behind the lens, swaying and floating through all that dark music breathing with the music.

Family Trust is up next and they’re always solid. For the uninitiated, this is the joint project of {arsonist} and Spednar. These two remind me of two cats – just two cats on the town with their synthesizers. Lots of hard punches and dystopian IDM. Here’s a fun fact that a learned from Ben Martens (who doesn’t know anything about computers) which may have only a passing relationship with reality but it has enough grains of truth that I’m going to write about it anyway: {arsonist} works with a company that’s working on a neural processing unit that will soon usher the delayed on set of Judgement Day. Family Trust will no doubt be one of the more useful duos in the forgotten cities fighting the ensuing cybernetic takeover of our planet. They already have the soundtrack. Personally, I’ll be long dead by then, but I wish the rest of you luck fighting machines in the dark.

Okay let’s bring some stuff back into focus here. This is a Modbang show, but it’s hosted by Heterodox Records which means there’s label business crawling amongst all this heavy bass. This is a release show for Blaix‘ new album Erica’s Acid, that you can find on HTX Records’ Bandcamp Right Now. There’s more coming out of the Heterodox pipeline, too. Our favorite Pauly Shore addict, Occurian, is releasing an album called Omenist on 5/16 – which should finally give us something productive to discuss besides the criminal pivot from Wesley Snipes to the Weasel. Also, Ben Martens, resident computer virus downloader, will also be releasing an album through Heterodox Records that will culminate with a show on 6/27 in Corvallis. Some kind of Ben’s Album Release Birthday Bash situation. Details remain hazy, but the probability of slam poetry and hip-hop rave music feels dangerously high.

Blaix is on! This is some intense shit. I know because I wrote it down.

Blaix’ work is always very interesting to me because I get something a little different every time I listen. It’s clear by listening to this, that we were both raised in the same “culture” on a frequency in there that I recognize immediately – the way certain sounds arrive and trigger that “I see what you did there” response in the back of my head. To explain further, this set had moments where it felt very much like an updated soundtrack to Smash TV or maybe I’m listening to a new’ish proto-industrial project. The music can feel haunted, but in a live setting (for me) it also has a grounding effect. Looking forward to reviewing his new album.

Speaking of neon machinery and arcade violence, Wet Mango is up next. Admittedly, I’m really into their music and have been ever since they played this little Ambient Garden Party deep in the magical, bunny laden innards of Northeast Portland just west of the Cully shanties. What’s great is that they can go from a Kid Chameleon inspired YM2612 ambient set to something like this and just fuck your shit up. It churns something in those who like to dance and hits the part of the brain that remembers every demon, mutant, and brute we trained ourselves to defeat as younglings. Let the oozy gremlin on stage show you how to get down-and-dirty to destroy those forces of old and evil. Also, the bass was fucking boppin as you can tell from the video below.

By the end of Modbang, time had lost its clean edges again. Also, I refuse to close this report without talking about Cyclop Toad’s visuals. They were perfectly calibrated to the mood of the night: video game homicide – bright digital violence, a controlled barrage of color and motion that felt completely at home inside the chaos. A welcome distraction, yes, but also part of the architecture of survival. Sometimes you need the bass. Sometimes you need the crowd. Sometimes you need a wall of pixelated carnage reminding you that the demons can still be defeated, even if only for a few minutes under the lights.