July 27, 2005
Ploughing their way into this evening, Cerebral Vacation rammed straight into an intense, powerful and quite beautiful set. The strong bass hits you like an elephant and stomps around on your torso, making every bone in your body bend. This prominent bassline mixed with strong, deep vocals really captures the audience’s attention. The melodic, heavy guitars kept up a subtly switching contrast between powerful riffs and impressive lead breaks. The two vocalists used well-though-out and inventive vocal patterns, giving them diversity and the flexibility to build up emotion with a really dark, potent kick, which injects a mass of energy to their songs. The drummer uses simple, driven beats to keep it tight, whilst including amazing fills which lifted the sound. Between the vocals and guitars. Cerebral Vacation kept each track distinctive, mixing influences from across the rock genre. This is beautiful metal, with passionate, frequently brutal and enigmatic complexity.
Next, we were treated to funny noises coming from behind a “sack”. When the afore mentioned “sack” was removed, Air Biscuit are revealed. Looking more like an acid trip gone wrong, this odd band of giraffe men, demons and paranoid Australian government officials in gas masks (or something), mesmerized the crowd with their quirky, intense and increasingly ridiculous metal. The weird, ringing keyboard produced everything from jazz induced scales, J.S Bach organ mongering, to full-on glow-stick wielding trace. With the guitar infusing manic, crunchy riffs, the drums provided about the only thing that was steady about Air Biscuit. This band seems to be laughing at all things conventional, using many different genres to just get weirder and weirder. This Buckethead / Mr. Bungle style of upbeat dance and dark metal, makes your head hurt, your feet tap, your face grin, and soul bleed, which is just how we like it. Satanic, aboriginal, ballroom waltz. So go figure.
Following that spout of insanity, Solis spooned out some powerful, pounding and angry metal. With a mix of thrash and classic metal influence, they used some nice riffs and interesting tempo and dynamic changes to barrage our senses. The simple and thumping drums crashed through the songs, and the energetic frontman screamed like he had a small army of wasps setting up camp in his left lung. It was all so promising. The songs built up effectively, to a point when they ascended into chaos. Unfortunately there was a bit too much chaos. the drums lacked conviction and the bass didn’t seem to help with the organization of the band. The guitars used some complex and interesting riffs, but seemed to stray out of time easily. After a few songs it was obvious that Solis were void of imagination. The vocals became repetitive and annoying, and the band lacked unity seeming completely lost at times. They gave us five pretty good individual performances, but they need to tighten up and add diversity to their song structures.
Sticking to a similar theme, Aphema finish off the evening with another powerful display of heavy rock/metal with strong grunge tendencies. The guitars were simple, but fierce and had some impressive lead outbursts, even though sometimes, it felt like they needed more deviation (an occasional high-pitched screech would’ve been nice). The thumping bass dragged the songs along, and with the drums, kept the band tight and together, Aphema used good dynamics at times, especially when the eerie keyboard was introduced, giving them an electro-industrial edge. However this edge could have been used to greater effect and would’ve made them stand out a little better. Dark vocals that mixed angry screams with powerful, Pearl Jam-esque growls, suited the sound well, unfortunately they weren’t always as strong as they could’ve been, backing vocals would have provided the support the frontman needed. They were very in-sync as a band, but would benefit from better movement on stage, still, they haven’t been together long and definitely had good potential.
And the winners of Junktion 7 Battle of the bands 2005, heat 4 were Air Biscuit
Writen By Steph + Gaz
