By Serena Cherry
Batting first for Bristols’ noise team tonight are the ever-expansive post rock three piece Thought Forms, who quite literally put dozens of (effect) pedals to the metal, and overdrive the audience into their own little world of fuzz. They begin their set with some ethereal sounding recent material; combining minimalist delayed guitars with guitarist Charlies’ beautiful soft vocals, to pay a slow-building homage to the hazy sound of My Bloody Valentine.
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By Serena Cherry
Photo credit Ben Higgins
Falmouth three piece Tall Ships provide a dose of upbeat cinematic rock to warm up the heaving Monday night crowd, but their frequent use of predictable chord progressions files their efforts neatly away under the ‘something and nothing’ category. Despite their ability to write melodies which are easy on the ear, the band fail to harness any possible impact of the ‘loud/quiet’ dynamic which compromises the majority of their song structures. So whilst Tall Ships did indeed rock out enough for their front man to fall off the stage tonight, they left little else to be remembered from their merely functional performance.
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Arriving late, cold, and drenched, I was more than ready to bask in the fuzzy indie warmth of Mystery Jets. Why was so I late to the show I was supposed to be reviewing, you ask? It’s Bath, I was in a tea shop – happy?
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By Serena Cherry
Firstly, it was surprising to see Hang The Bastard, merely in the visual sense, as they are a band who sound like they should possess a lot more beards than they evidently do. But facial hair was the only thing these riff mongers lacked tonight. The London-based quintet have been gradually conjuring up a sludge storm within the British metal underground over the last 5 years; and from such thundering performances as this – it’s not hard to see why many find their concise blend of metalcore and doom so irresistible.
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By Ashley Clarke
Rocking up to the Tunnels on my bike, I spy some cute girls hanging together outside the venue, their arms laden with tins, cakes and neon-iced baked goods. Confused for a split second that I may have arrived at the tail end of a tea party instead of a punk gig, I am suddenly embraced by the rather wonderful idea that these delicious looking morsels are headed for sale on the merch stall inside the gig. Mmm, cake AND a pint! Inside the venue, I linger over the proud array of zines, artwork, cds, badges and pink/purple tie-dye socks and bags for sale, scrawled angrily yet lovingly with caustic-fashion slogans such as ‘VOGUE F*****G INDIA’ (made by the Crash Paris queens themselves).
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By Serena Cherry
Amidst the anticipation in The Cooler for Chicago’s instrumental post metal stalwarts ‘Pelican‘, their is also apprehension over which version of the band Pelican we are going to see tonight. Anyone with ears trained to sub genres that begin with the word ‘post’ will be able to notice the split down the middle in Pelican’s discography. Continue reading
By Huw Goodhead.
Call the Doctor start the night off with their unique brand of alt-rock. It’s really quite refreshing to see a front-woman in an edgy guitar band, and Call the Doctor’s Patti Aberhart is a great one – commanding the audience’s attention and drawing them in off of their seats. I find it hard to ignore the fact that there’s a definite Karen O vibe vocally, but with a more driven backbone they set themselves apart.
Having written an article about Ed Sheeran way-back-when, I’d stumbled across Leddra Chapman as both one of his co-writers and co-performers. A number of months have since passed and occasionally her name has lit up on my musical radar, so when I saw she was playing at The Louisiana in Bristol, I thought it worth taking a semi-informed gamble to find out what she was all about.
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The Hit Ups have been slowly honing their sound for a while now, wetting our appetite with last year’s free download of Unforgivable / 66sexy. They’re back with new synth-led and menacing DIOYY-esque textures, but still leaving that nasty Hit-Ups taste in your mouth. Unexpectedly, many of the lulling down-parts on the record are actually quite emotive, before (of course) a debauched chorus inevitably tears you a new one.
The Whordes EP is released March 26th, order it here:
Archimedes
Monoceros [Single]
Released: 25th March
Released on the one year anniversary of their debut EP (On Spirals), Archimedes new single shows a years worth of growth, the result of which is a single which defines the band, their evolving sound, and perhaps a whole genre. Continue reading