SLAUGHTERHOUSE ALL-DAYER –
LONDON PURPLE TURTLE 04/04/10
Easter Sunday and eight bands are in town causing mayhem and it seemed like a few people had come down for it. What else are you going to do? Go to church, stuff your faces with chocolate, go and watch Winger who are also in town? I think not. One thing that going to this did mean was getting caught up in Totally Failing London’s (as I refer to TFL) ongoing campaign of weekend engineering works. This meant I limped into the venue with only a few songs of first band The Atrocity Exhibition remaining. What I heard after discovering there was no cider on tap and grabbing an Amstel instead was an impressive sludge and crust laden bout of acerbic distempered noise. You can tell this lot’s origins easily by their music, they sound as pissed off as anyone probably would coming from Northampton and Milton Keynes and this spilled over into songs like ‘Scissors.’ The ten minutes of what I caught had an uncouth, bastard heaviness and it certainly woke me up.
There were plenty of bands I had never encountered before and that’s the beauty of bills like this. DKH who I was later told stands for Don’t Kill Hooyz (the name of their drummer) were one such case in point. They were also one of many bands who has members in their ranks who don’t like performing on the stage. In fact singer Seph spent more time running around the crowd and mucking around with the punters as well as the guitarists effect peddles, whilst the trio on stage simply went for it. Musically they were also loud and in the face and had a real leaden heaviness about their assault. Making the audience move closer to the stage, the singer proceeded to roll around the floor in front of them and yell his head off. Thuggish and brutal in both the show and antics, it all won us over. The band played a new song for the first time with the singer getting on stage to hit a couple of drums placed there for him, never missing the opportunity to yell. They finished off with a couple called ‘Grief’ and ‘Delay’ and left us with ears ringing, wondering just what had twatted us.
More of that sort of slapping about the chops was to follow with At A Crawl bursting onto the stage far faster than their name suggested. Still only an unsigned demo band it was the unhinged performance of their singer which again attracted attention. The two on stage, drummer and bassist, flew out a spazz laden tumult; they looked like they may have been brothers and the bass player spent most the time facing the drummer, back to the audience. A turbulent spew of discordance flew out the speakers to spatter on those watching like afterbirth from the Virgin Mary’s bruised and battered cunt (in keeping with the Easter theme, you understand). The vocalist was a nutcase and he took to the dancefloor practically foaming at the mouth as he looked down at the ground and ranted at it. It was a bit like watching a car crash and had us transfixed even if nobody was moving to the flailing violence. Thankfully they were a lot better live than the songs on their MySpace suggest and by the end of the set I was even forgiving them for cutting Amebix off the PA as they came on.
Void were one of the main draws of the day for me as I had heard their earlier stuff and the band had previously had Czral and Kvohst in their ranks, who if you know anything about the lunatic fringes of metal, you should realise that they served time in the likes of Code, Dodheimsgard, Aura Noir, Cadaver Inc and countless other great bands. Today the line-up includes their original guitarist / programmer OCD and the second they started I was reminded of Ved Buens Ende as the music swirled and turned in on itself and the drumming impressively battered away. I thought they had brought masks onto the stage but did not put them on and in fact they struck as totally lacking in concept visually. I also was rather alarmed as the vocalist joined in; firstly he was too loud in the mix and stylistically I found that he didn’t suit the style I was expecting in the slightest. The shouty vocals had very little variety and as musically we went forward I was reminded on newer numbers that were aired of a mediocre blackened death approach more in line with the likes of the recent Antares Predator album than the weird, out there avant-garde touch I was hoping for. An older song from Posthuman (an album which I cant find for the life of me but know I have was aired) as well as newer songs like ‘Babylon’ which again I found too formulaic really. I guess I went into this expecting too much and was on the whole disappointed. There is promise here and an album is due out in Sept-Oct. Again their MySpace page is a good illustration as it has an old and new song and frankly they are miles apart.
I had taken a wild guess that with a name like Astrohenge and with a prominent keyboard on the stage that this lot might be a bit space rock. Although not a million miles out they still delivered quite a surprise. This SE London quartet were made up of a drummer, keyboardist (sporting an Einsturzende Neubauten shirt) and a guitarist and bassist. Yep, well spotted - no vocals, but the two racketeers on the strings continued the days tradition of not playing on the stage but stood on the dancefloor and literally had one massive duel with each other. Musically they were excellent and played much of their material at full throttle and forged it out with a massive adrenaline rush which spread out contagiously in a vortex through the audience. By now and with the Amstel having run out and being forced onto Kronenberg I was suitably spaced out and easily lost myself in the myriad folds of the hypnotically unravelling music. All of a sudden they threw and unexpected dash of Muskorgy’s ‘Night On Bald Mountain’ into the middle of one of their shredding post rockers, which I was not expecting in the slightest. I was really impressed with this Henge and felt like they had dropped a hefty slab of stone on me at the end of their set.
I had seen all the other bands before at some point and were aware that Latitudes were another instrumental combo. They stuck to the stage, actually filling it up and would have been no doubt excellent if I hadn’t been quite so blown away by the band before them. This was another energetic performance, certainly from the keyboard player and the dynamics of their muscular heavyset riffing were suitably monolithic and it was evident that the band were really enjoying themselves. This was speaker trembling stuff (well that was my excuse for hugging the speaker); it was also rather busy now and it was a place with space. It’s probably also the reason I am still a bit deaf now! Watching them all going mental from the small viewing balcony was another less dangerous place to really be able to get into the band and again I enjoyed them a lot although as far as Latitudes were concerned they very much struck as more of an ‘angular post’ kind of band with a bit in line with the likes of Isis so in that respect although good, they were not doing anything totally original.
The other band that had really made me drag myself down here were Dragged Into Sunlight having seen them before at The Unicorn and been blown over (literally) by the weight of album ‘Hatred For Mankind.’ They play with backs to audience and have an air of mystery about them although this was kind of negated by their presence on their merchandise stall all day (their shirts are excellent). They also have as a centrepiece a stand with goat horns and candles and they light incense too (boy could the blokes toilets have used some of that). Luckily they did not shroud us in dry ice so we could at least attempt photos of the backs of their heads. By now the venue was close to rammed with many cramming to the front to watch the spectacle. Twilight outside and blacker than sin in and musically the best way to describe this lot are with words like ghastly, vile and filthy. Humongous riffs and horrible yells brought out the abject misanthropy of the music and it kind of made you want to punch the walls. I again popped up top and took some shots, they looked so normal with flash but the music still made them sound like they were possessed. It’s pretty original and unique as well and the band are obviously ticking the right boxes to be picked up by Prosthetic. Demonic and ritualistic Dragged Into Sunlight have something that very few bands have - a scare factor. This was a set that could have killed someone unsuspecting walking in off the street and great stuff, the highlight of the day for me. Would like to see this lot on tour with Esoteric at some time, that would be a mighty pairing.
So drunkenly we head towards last band of the day Ramesses who if you know your doom are a trio from the ruins of the original Electric Wizard line up. I guess it was a fitting end to the day although nowhere near as climatic perhaps as it would have been if DIS had played last. As their ‘Iron Crow’ struck the audience swayed in ways beyond mere alcohol but I am sure it helped. Words written include ‘big riffs’ ‘big vocal yells’ ‘big beards’ and other such unintelligible scrawls but I am sure that gives you an idea. The sound levels seemed to have gone up a notch and the drum tattoo of ‘Take The Curse’ had us twitching about in time with it and lurching drunkenly to the fuzz laden guitar assault. I have to say that others were evidently more into this than I was and there seemed to be a fair bit of bowing to the riff as though it was almost a religious experience. This is the sort of band that I do find myself getting bored of fairly quickly as the pace can be monotonous and they aren’t the most exciting band in the world to watch. That didn’t stop me staying for the whole set and I could not help being drawn into things. I did laugh when a drumstick shot into the crowd and almost caused some punter to head off in search of stitches but blink and you would have missed the speed that Mark Greening had another in his hands, without missing a beat. Last song could have gone out for zombie Jesus on his day being called ‘Baptism Of The Walking Dead’ and by the end of it I felt well and truly nailed as I staggered out in search of buses, trains and other forms of hard to locate transport.
Many thanks to Jake of Slaughterhouse Promotions for a great day of metal and for getting all the bands on and off stage like clockwork.
http://www.myspace.com/slaughterhousepromotionuk
Pete Woods
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