Third Program Aural Chaos
This week I went to two gigs. They were very different. This one was the one I actually wanted to go to, however on learning that acts such as BBBlood (or Baron Bum Blood as he is affectionately known) and Skat Injector were playing, every single person I know refused to go. Fucking pussies. Here’s what they missed.
Backwards
With one of the bands dropping out of the schedule, Backwards were installed as opening act and they were exactly the sort of thing that gets people’s attention. Two bassists, a drummer and a vocalist playing abrasive, sludgy stuff that could be described as anything between doom and post-industrial noise they very quickly got the miniscule audience’s attention, thanks in no small part to their frankly wondrous frontman. With his quiff and moustache it might be easy to mistake him for a hipster, but his preening, aggressive stage presence said otherwise. Contorting himself and screaming one minute, then sullenly glaring at random members of the audience the next, he thrived on the attention and provided a perfect visual accompaniment to the harsh music. I don’t like focusing on the vocalist when reviewing but it is clearly the bands intention for this to happen in this case. And when he wound the mic up to its maximum height on the stand and then delicately flobbed on it, I found myself very nearly in hysterics. Great band, fascinating frontman, definitely something I will keep an eye on.
Iron Fist Of The Sun
I have been meaning to check out this guy for a long time. He’s been playing local gigs for a while but I have never managed to catch up with him till tonight. I will be seeing him again. He took to a pitch black stage (hence no photo) and roared out staccato blasts of processed vocals for about eight minutes over a throbbing industrial wall of bass noise. Then finished. Bastard. I am going to grab a hold of his “Behavioural Decline” album from Cold Spring Records and drop a review soon.
Skat Injector
So throughout the evening, one particular guy attracted my attention on the basis that he was wearing a shroud and makeup and was covered in tattoos with some of those metal implant things in his arm. This in a distinctly “normal” pub in the arse end of Digbeth, Birmingham it turns out he was one half of Skat Injector. Big surprise. The band took to the stage with one dude in the aforementioned outfit (plus additional hood, ladies fingerless, fur edged gloves) while the other guy was bedecked in a lovely floral dress, offset with beads at the waist and a fucked up burns mask type thing (a la Vanilla Sky). Oh and they both had ladies wigs on. They took to the stage and proceeded to batter the fuck out of a box of metal objects while taking turns screaming in a truly terrifying display that was mesmerizing. The album Skat Injector is so vastly different from this live performance it is hard to see them as the same band, but the half hour or so of screeching and feedback definitely did something to my neurons. If you get the chance see these fuckers live. Seriously.
Pollutive Static / BBBlood
So the headliners arrived. No stage presence no flashy lights just two blokes who looked like they were on their way to the shops. One of them BBBlood was the chief reason I went to this affair, as I have a split released on Dead Wood Records with him and Stuntcock. It is extremely noisy but it’s a bit hard to get the full effect of noise music listening at home. However standing in front of two fucking massive speakers that are throwing nasty frequencies at high volume really does the trick. No melodies. No vocals (well BBBlood shouted a couple of times in the middle). Just distorted feedback manipulated by a bunch of pedals and lights and a weird magic box that got banged about all over the shop. They clearly enjoyed playing together and the mid set jostling that Pollutive Static got was strangely heartwarming. I also enjoyed the fact that he gave us the finger as they walked off, admittedly in a quite jovial way. They came back for a brief encore and then it went quiet. It’s strange to have a whole bunch of people react by cheering and clapping to this sort of onslaught and I wonder what it all means. Maybe Ill figure it out one day. I know it was a deeply memorable experience although today I feel like someone punched out my brain. But in a good way.
Kim Monaghan
