Caught in the Crossfire

Brixton Academy
01/12/2005

There was a swarm of fans standing in the large Brixton Academy on Thursday night, a real mixed bag – old school ravers, young pop punks, middle aged trendies, the lot – so you would have thought someone in the crowd would have appreciated the Towers Of London (I hate those wankers! Z-Ed), tonight’s support band. However, it seemed that a grand total of zero was the number of fans the cock-rock band made that night, which, considering the guitar by numbers and indefinable vocals, wasn’t that much of a surprise. Even the singer’s clumsy clambering on top of a speaker did little to garner any sort of reaction from the bored onlookers.

Luckily, the DJ set that followed, in the build up to the main even, brought the entire Academy to life with booming bass and all sorts of stuff being thrown into the mix. Blur and Gorillaz merged into the White Stripes and Azzido Da Bass, and all the while the DJ’s hype man was revving the crowd up, getting them dancing, pogo-ing and generally having the good time that everyone expected in the first place.

But it was when the curtain covering the majority of the stage dropped that business really did pick up. The stage set up was simple enough – drummer on the left, Liam and his space ship like set up in the middle and guitarist on the left. The light show, as ever with the Prodigy, began as it meant to go on with a green star shining out from behind Liam as the beat kicked in. Then, to make sure the crowd really was at fever pitch, the lights went up behind the decks to reveal Keith and Maxim, in matching all black outfits, standing in cages, pumping the crowd up.

With both vocalists firmly in place in front of the musicians, the anthemic Breathe flew over the speakers, the sword wielding sound effects sparking a frenzy in the crowd, and even up on the balcony where only the faint of heart remained seated. Spitfire and Firestarter then followed, with Keith, now sporting a fetching side parting, finally getting a chance to bark out his infamous spiel. After the Maxim led-Voodoo People, Keith disappeared and emerged on the balcony, raving with the lucky few at the front, including, I might add, sweating a great deal in front of me.

At that point though, a scream from my friend made me look to the stage and, as the classic No Good kicked in, none other than Leeroy was on the stage, doing his version of Riverdance on acid, much to the delight of every single person in the crowd. His return to the group, whether permanent or simply to dance for the Brixton masses, was the highlight of the show, which was already an amazing set.

Poison slowed the proceedings down with its bouncing dub beat but the encore certainly did everything to pick the pace back up. Smack My Bitch Up was easily the loudest karaoke moment of the night and was soon followed by Maxim taking us way back when, as the cartoon sampled Charly told us not to talk to strangers. After a sharp glow stick shot to the face, I was busy dancing to the last song of the night, the song that turned everyone in the place into a Jamaican ska dancer, Outer Space.

It was a fantastic show put on by the group, the sounds, the visuals, and the inclusion once again of live musicians helped bring a raw edge to their sound. Top that all off by the return of the man who makes Bez look like a doddering old man, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a party!

Sam Hesketh

Todd
Lords
The Garage, London
07.12.05

Anyone who has lost faith in UK music would do well to pay tonight’s support acts a visit sometime soon. Both Lords and Todd are proof that it’s not all weak indie rock, emo or crud metal out there at the moment, there are actually some people doing genuinely thrilling things with the ye olde’ guitar, bass and drums format, starting off with Lords; a ferocious trio based in the capitol that approach their sonic assaults in the same frame of mind as Steve Albini.

Dry, tight and angular, they throw out twisted shapes of molten rock ‘ala Shellac, combined with the raw rock n’roll strut of (early) Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and they get the night off to an ear-screeching start.

Todd, again from London, specialise in an equally ferocious form of extreme noise terror that is lose and slack but equally as vicious as Lords. Their style of bile and noise harks back to early experiments in sludge and noise heralded by the likes of Killdozer, Tad and The Melvins and best of all, they are blessed with a frontman in Craig Clouse that has the stage presence to push Todd’s noise to new levels of insanity. By the end of the set he’s out in the crowd, dangerously flaying a mic-stand above his head as he bumps psychotically around the crowd, bashing into people and generally trying to rile things up. It works a treat and Todd make an instant and lasting impression upon the audience tonight.

The Fucking Champs feature Tim Green, ex-mover and shaker from hip Washington D.C. punks Nation Of Ulysses; not that you should use that as any indication as to what The Fucking Champs actually sound like.

The noise they make couldn’t be further away from the post-hardcore-punk sounds of Dischord Records. No, The Fucking Champs are rock. Rock as nature intended, carved out of stone by the likes of Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

The genius of the Champs, however, is they take the template of rock and put their own deranged twist on things, casting spot-on Thin Lizzy style twin-lead guitar solos over a relentless math-rock time signature. Their music never stops moving and evolving, changing and shifting and making the people who wanna dance curse the band’s inability to stay in one place at one time. And all of this is done with an attitude that is a million miles away from the more pretentious aspects of art-rock. The Fucking Champs are not ironic. They play like they believe passionately in rock music but are talented and clever enough to make it different to everyone else. In short, The Fucking Champs rock.

James Sherry

www.thefuckingchamps.com for all info.

Burst
Oxford Brookes Uni
December 3rd 2005

Opeth’s Ghost Reveries opus was always going to be a risky venture. With the addition of a permanent new member of the band; keyboardist Per Wiberg, who appeared on the band’s last tour on the back of their Deliverance/Damnation albums; and the signing to metal giants Roadrunner; well known for their associations with uber popular rockers Nickelback; Ghost Reveries and the subsequent touring of it, would be detrimental to either propelling the band into the stratosphere, or having the always contentious tag of ‘sell out’ attached to them.

The support for tonight’s show couldn’t have been better picked. Fellow Swedes Burst are seemingly also on the brink of superstardom, what with UK publications such as Kerrang! And Metal Hammer both highly rating the experimental noise mongerers.

With their deeply layered guitar sound, seemingly disjointed, atmospheric mix of both hardcore and metal sound and that oh so familiar mix of melodic singing with harsh growled vocals, Burst sound fairly fresh and inventive on record. Unfortunately, live, this sentiment isn’t realised. The songs seem to meander onwards into the unknown, before the audience is violently awoken again by a crushing Mastodon like chugging riff; yet just as the heads start to instinctively nod to the beat, it changes into a long drawn out mix of speedily strummed, distorted chords and irregular melodic lead guitar lines. It simply is just too much for your average audience member to handle, and subsequently the crowd reaction is a very pensive and confused one. Definitely some work is needed, if Burst are to impress on stage, and step into the big shoes the music press has already hyped up for them.

Mikael Åkerfeldt walks on stage with that self assured confidence of a man who knows he could probably spend an hour farting into the microphone, and yet the fans would lap it up and bay for more. And rightly so, Opeth have built up a reputation of writing incredibly original, intricately written music, mixing crushing heaviness with melodic beauty not often seen in the field of artists Opeth are often roped in with. And they can bring it live as well, picking up rave reviews like Steven Spielberg picks up Oscars.

Starting off with their magnificent album opener from Ghost Reveries, the crowd have already been drawn in, hook, line and sinker. They’re watching a band who have practically attained mythical status in the closed off, underground circles of the metal world, but who have now made a video (perish the thought) and had one of their latest tracks edited for radio. This shouldn’t be, but it is, each and every song is as breathtakingly well performed as the last, sounding ten times as brutal as it did on the record, and because of this, sounding even more beautiful.

Nearly all Opeth songs follow this ‘beauty and the beast‘ pattern, with softened acoustic breakdowns for each song, followed by riff upon riff of pure gold, heaviness wise. They follow the foot stomping White Cluster from their “red album” (as Åkerfeldt) names it, (Still Life for those not familiar) with the folkish cleanliness of Closure, which in turn overlaps wonderfully into Bleak.

This is metal Jim, but not as we know it…and you manage to feel privileged to be there, as if Opeth have especially invited you to watch them at work. Except from the beaming look on Åkerfeldt’s face, it simply doesn’t look like work. His crowd banter is genuinely amusing, having a quick game of Judas Priest music trivia before the encore track….”The music video to Breaking The Law, good or bad?………….that’s right, it was fucking bad”. It sure was Mike. It sure was.

As the band walk off after the hypnotically brutal ending bars of Deliverance fade into feedback, you can’t help staring after them in amazement and being truly thankful there’s bands like Opeth around to tour the smaller venues, rather than simply playing the Astoria and considering the UK conquered. Watch this band carefully, as soon they WILL be everyone’s favourite band.

SETLIST:

Ghost of Perdition
When
White Cluster
Closure
Bleak
The Grand Conjugation
Under The Weeping Moon
Baying of the Hounds
A Final Judgement
—————————–
Deliverance

5/5
Daniel Crouch

The Forum – London
02.12.05

To those not versed in the ways of modern hardcore, the scene greeting them on the dancefloor tonight would have their jaws thudding to the floor. It’s still early in the evening and already a gang of thick-necked hardcore motherfuckers are performing a bizarre dance ritual that involves flaying their feet and fists around as violently as possible while Boston’s THE RED CHORD provide the ideal soundtrack to the rampant displays of aggression. Unbelievably tight and powerful, their Dillinger Escape Plan meets Slayer metalcore is a damn sight more preferable to the cringe-inducing rock posturing of BLEED FROM THE SKY that follows them. Frontman Noah Robinson’s habit of switching between grunted vocals and tuneless supposedly melodic wailings is horribly irritating and his stage raps to hot chicks and hard drinking would be better suited to a Motley Crue show.

BORN FROM PAIN are from Holland, not that you’d know it from the ridiculous fake American accent frontman Che Snelting insists on talking in. Their music doesn’t fare much better either, rarely breaking out of the same chugga-chugga tempo that so many metalcore bands get trapped in.

NAPALM DEATH are the daddies of extreme music. Grindcore? They invented it. Blastbeats? They invented those too. Fake American accents? No chance! Everything Napalm Death do is genuine and honest and they roar through a set that shows these young metalcore pups how it should be done. From the short sharp shocks of their groundbreaking early material (‘Scum’ and ‘Life’ sound as brutal as ever) to the title track of this years ‘The Code Is Red‘ album, their entire set is a lesson in brutal power and speed, climaxing with a glorious white noise cover of the Dead Kennedy’s anti-fascist classic ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off‘.

AGNOSTIC FRONT were one of the first bands to bring the then very separate worlds of hardcore and metal together, a fact they are keen to celebrate by devoting a large chunk of their set tonight to their ground-breaking mid-eighties ‘Cause For Alarm‘ album, before Barney from Napalm joins them onstage for a riot inciting stomp through ‘Blind Justice’. Pure hardcore perfection.

All that’s left now is for HATEBREED to level the place with one final punishing hardcore attack. Although not the most original band around, they are so ferociously heavy it’s impossible not to be knocked out by their sheer brute force. ‘Nobody stand still, let’s turn this place into a Warzone,’ bellows frontman Jamey Jasta and the audience respond accordingly bringing the night to an end with a vulgar display of testosterone that threatens to bring the entire venue crashing to its foundations.

JAMES SHERRY

Les Savy Fav
Thunderbirds Are Now!
The Garage, London
30.11.05

Thunderbirds Are Now! are buddies of Les Savy Fav who also happen to have their debut album ‘Justamustache‘ recently released via the Fav’s own label French Kiss. And true friends help each other out right? Les Savy Fav have done the right thing and have brought Thunderbirds over to the UK for the first time and right from the start of their set it’s immediately obvious we’re in the company of greatness. They are rocking and wild, yet slick, tight and melodic and manage to walk the difficult line between quirky post-hardcore and commercial rock without compromising either aspect of their sound. This is a band you’re going to be hearing a lot about next year and the buzz starts right here. Besides, any friend of Les Savy Favs’ is a friend of ours. Such is the greatness of the mighty Les Savy Fav, anything they touch turns to gold so the Thunderbirds future is in good hands and watch them go!

Les Savy Fav have been deconstructing rock for nearly ten years now. Sounding like a spiky collision between the angular dance rock of Gang Of Four and the scratchy white noise anger of Fugazi, they are led by the gloriously unhinged frontman Tim Harrington, who, it wouldn’t be unfair to say, has the wild crazy eyes and unkempt appearance of a hobo and borderline schitsophrenic. We’re sure he’s a lovely well balanced individual offstage, but put him in front of a crowd and he turns into a twitching, mischievous imp dead set on causing confusion and disorder around him as the band provide the brilliant soundtrack to his insanity. At one point he grabs a video camera from someone in the front row and swings it above his head, then he’s got his big belly out, climbing around the stage, sinking his teeth into the P.A. system, itching to cause that little bit more chaos and constantly pushing the boundaries. He also has a great voice, injecting addictive vocal melodies into every riff and rhythm and allowing tracks like ‘We’ll Make A Lover Out Of You‘ and ‘Rome (Upside Down)‘ to creep into your subconscious and stick!

Yet, considering how amazing Les Savy Fav are tonight, you’re still left with the feeling that they were holding something back. Past tours have seen them reach amazing new levels of musical insanity but tonight it was almost as if they didn’t want to embarrass Weird War by blowing them right off the stage, which they could have easily done and quite frankly, did.

Weird War feature Ian Svenonius from classic Dischord Records bands Nation Of Ulysses and The Make Up although Weird War aren’t a patch on his former visionary bands. Weird War play clean and funky rock n’roll that is just way too clean and not rock n’roll enough. While Ian’s past bands have been abrasive and harsh, Weird War’s white man funk just isn’t particularly good. Or funky.

Predictably, the crowd thins considerable during Weird War’s headline set. Maybe next time they won’t be foolish enough to allow Les Savy Fav on before them!

James Sherry