August 18, 2004
Complete with an amazing guitarist who constantly spewed out complex metal riffs, Five Ash Down started proceedings, and gave us an energetic performance with a great deal of movement from the vocalist and guitarist. The bassist however, stood very still and this seemed to slow that energetic performance down a notch, he also couldn't be heard above the sheer din that was coming from the guitar, which was a shame because whatever he was playing certainly looked very good, this was helped by the rather classy Tanglewood™ he had in his grasp. The female drummer kept steady throughout, and her backing vocals were well worked, but weren't quite loud enough. Five Ash Down seemed to have a distinctive and established sound, they're very tight and well practiced, with good variation between the melodic and the metal, it undoubtedly gets your head nodding.
With bags of confidence ManPlayingKazoo took to the stage with a kick you in the teeth sound, and yet another brilliant lead guitarist who actually used his tremolo which has been very rare, if not, non existent in the competition so far. Nice drum intros, awesome high pitched guitar solos and complicated finger bass, accompanied by strong Muse style vocals with clever lyrics, showed that these guys aren't afraid to make things a little difficult for themselves. Good use of the room on stage from the frontman and the bassist who dived off the stage and fell over, but carried on regardless except for the laughing. MPK really have a powerful sound, and with the two guitars thrashing away in unison at some points, it's not hard to see why. *this is a comment that I couldn't quite figure out, about the little pretty lights on the frontman's guitar, lovely!*
Walking straight out of Lock Stock And Two Smokin' Barrells come Call Me Jack, this bunch of geezers came along to give us Danko Jones style riotous cheesy rock and roll. And it went down a storm. The lead guitarist had some damn good technique and having said all that about the tremolo earlier, he goes and uses one doesn't he. His backing vocals weren't up to much though, they lacked power and clarity. The drummer, who to his credit had only been with them a week, kept only to his left hand side of the kit, creating fairly uninteresting and not exactly original drum beats. This pretty much ego fuelled performance, didn't change in tempo (like heir egos) throughout, apart from the intro to one song which was much slower and verging on quite nice, but they soon changed that. They ended with a cover, a rocked up cover of Elvis's 'Suspicious Minds' which again went down a storm with their part and parcel array of 'fans'.
The Vapours were on last tonight, and with shirts and ties everywhere and an ominous 'The' in their name, we were expecting, with rolling eyes, a Hives/Vines type thing. However, it didn't turn out like that. It was much more aggressive than anticipated, melodic intros giving way to a loud cacophony of noise, It was the new style rock and roll by all accounts, but with an edge, that definitely won favour. There was little to no crowd interaction from the band, but they didn't really stop playing to give themselves the chance. Some complex drumming, but somehow you were still able to nod your head along comfortably. With all members thrashing recklessly at their instruments, clever lyrics, passionate vocals and very frequent, very prominent solos, they were energetic, loud and fast as hell
ManPlayingKazoo get the honers this week, which means we get to see them again (whoo!),. To see more pictures from this gig click here Review ~ Steph Photos ~ Andy 'Pyro' Butler
Written By Steph
Photos ~ Andy
