The Kings Head – Reading
6th August 2008
I was stoked to see that this band had made the effort to play the UK in such a big way, i mean, this is DIY at it’s best. 4 blokes, on the road, bang up for it and wanting to rage every night.
Tonight, Canadian hardcore quartet Career Suicide rolled into Reading and blew the place apart. The show was held downstairs in a small room with no windows at the Kings Head pub, a perfect DIY set up for a band that love to rip up a space between 4 walls and that’s exactly what went down.
Before they played the room was warmed by FUK who supposedly had ex member(s) of Chaos UK, so we waited with baited breath. They provided a very meaty, old school British hardcore with a front man that can hold his ground.
Sweat poured and chaos reigned as soon as Career Suicide hit the carpet. Opening with Jonzo’s Leaking Radiation the small room erupted into total carnage, drinks flew everywhere and the place opened up like the floor was on fire!
The band smashed through the likes of Attempted Suicide, Bored Bored Bored, and some tracks from the new Cherry Beach EP and played with venom. Back in the middle of the room pyramids are being made by human punks and a death wall battle has taken place. Drinks are thrown everywhere and to his amazement, some guy in front of me finally finds his spectacles in one piece on the floor. Across the room, members of Shitty Limits are grabbed the mic, The band play at mach 10, people are pinned to the walls and it’s pretty safe to say that this is the best fun EVER!
The band finally end their set with the most legendary Quarantined and are then cheered to play one more track despite the fact that singer Martin Farkas can’t breathe whatsoever. There’s simply no oxygen left in this room. If you are gonna die you may as well go out in style so they rocked a killer version of The Todd Killings by Angry Samoans before it was all over.
Well done to Ellis for putting on the show and CS for travelling so far to rip the UK. We salute all of you.
Emilio Gonzales
Click here for Pete Craven’s Brighton show review on this 2008 tour….
TV On The Radio, Pete And The Pirates and Errors are to appear at the Concrete And Glass art event in London.
Michael Jackson will release a new album to celebrate his 50th birthday, with British fans compiling the tracklisting.
Ben Folds has unleased the first video from his upcoming solo album onto the web. Way to Normal is due out on the 30th September.
Supergroups are common through guitar based music. Grab a heap of musicians from seminal bands, knock out a few tunes and Bob’s your money-making uncle. But now we’ve got arguably the first ever electro-ghettotech-baile-dancehall super group in Machines Don’t Care with a line up consisting of Sinden, Hervé, Toddla T, Drop The Lime, Fake Blood, Trevor Loveys, Affie Yusuf and Detboi with Serocee giving it some vocal welly on one track.
Evoking envy from the hearts of bald men everywhere, Sebastian Rochford is back with his much loved brainchild – although, how it managed to scramble from his mind through a maze of follicles and surface that forest is still beyond me – Polar Bear.
Tonight, Billy Idol starts his encore with his 1982 hit ‘Hot In The City‘; an appropriate choice, given that London is currently in the grip of some ultra-humid weather. The assembled fans are already pretty sweaty before they’ve even entered the venue, and once inside, it’s clear that the Brixton Academy’s ventilation system (or lack of) won’t be doing the sold-out crowd any favours.
Ack, its early doors on a Sunday, and I arrive just as Southampton’s Whole in The Head literally hit their last chord. Next up those denizens of raw Dangerhouse punk The Sceptres, who number two guys outta The Shitty Limits, a red hot guitarist from the Greg Ginn school of fret board detonation, and up front the exuberant Bryony, shouting her lungs out. They are a young band, their sound is evolving, and I dig the stomping Garage breaks they throw in to the mix. 
Sometimes you can get yourself hyped up a bit too much about a band with a hot reputation, and subsequently end up a tad disappointed by the end result. Well, I’m glad to say there was absolutely no negatives about Career Suicide, they were a total bl’ast of the highest order, ripping thru 30minutes of primo-snotty hardcore punk with barely a minute to breath between the numbers… that for the record included two of my favourite tracks… “Moron” (from the debut album) and “There’s Something Wrong with You” that featured on the way rocking split 12″ with Jed Whitey… cooool!!!