PICTURES AND REVIEWS

 

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REVIEWS

Once more, dear friends, into that incongruous but friendly Irish pub in the Holloway Road, for another night of big hair and loud music. It's the first Friday of the month, and as usual the Dead & Buried club has taken over the north London drinker known to generations of Guinness-quaffers as the Lord Nelson for another night of deathrock DJing and live bands. Let's bring 'em on.

All Gone Dead are playing their first-ever gig tonight, but they've nevertheless got a bunch of enthusiastic fans and supporters clustered around the stage. It's not every band who can call up a fanbase before they've even played a note in public, but All Gone Dead feature two deathrock superstars in their ranks, in the elegantly-coiffed forms of Stitch (ex-Tragic Black, on vocals) and Darlin' Grave (DJ and cover star, on bass) and thus have an advantage over most new bands in that they're starting their musical enterprise from a few rungs up the fame ladder. There's nevertheless a slight air of first gig nerves about this performance. Eyes fixed firmly on fretboard and keyboard, the musician members of the band pick their way through the songs with meticulous attention, not quite confident enough to indulge in any rock 'n' roll dramatics. Maybe that's also the reason the stage lighting has been switched off. At any rate, the band appears indistinctly as vague shapes in the darkness and smoke, the white lightning of the strobe and the photographers' flashes bouncing off the haze. It's odd that All Gone Dead - a band who have clearly given much thought to their visual identity - should try to create a situation on stage where we can't actually see them, and where available-light photos are well-nigh impossible, but maybe that's another manifestation of those new-band nerves. It's Stitch who carries things visually, coming to the front, throwing out gestures and lurching around as if Dead & Buried's tiny stage is a rowing boat on a rough sea. The music is a slo-mo punkish grind, every song nailed to a mid-tempo programmed beat, the vocals enunciated almost English-punk style. It's almost as if All Gone Dead had decided to update Adam & The Ants' early style - the Dirk Wears White Sox material - for the laptop generation. That's actually a pretty cool concept, although, paradoxically, when they play an Ants cover it's the pop-star period song 'Ants Invasion'. There's one more cover to finish, Christian Death's 'Romeo's Distress'. 'This one goes out to Rozz Williams!' announces Stitch. (Deadpan voice in audience: 'They'll 'ave to play loud.')  It's the only fast song in the set, and offers a glimpse of the potentially cookin' combo that lurks behind All Gone Dead's neophyte hesitancy. All they need to do is speed it up and turn the lights on.

This isn't Ausgang's first gig - not by a long way. But it is the first time they've set foot on a UK stage for 15 years, and I'm willing to bet most of tonight's crowd know of the band only from various historical references in Mick Mercer's books, assorted big-ups on the web, and other suchlike second-hand sources. Nevertheless, the sudden surge of interest in all things post-punk means that Ausgang suddenly find themselves with a twenty-first century audience, and tonight that audience is primed and ready to rock. There's a roar of approval as the band, suited, booted, and looking like a bunch of rock 'n' roll gangsters, get stuck in to their tribal clamour. It's all a frantic rush of drums and vocals, Max spitting out the lyrics as if every word is an alien being erupting from his internal organs. The set is, inevitably, mostly old songs from the band's 80s incarnation, among them such steaming classics as 'Four Tin Doors' and 'Lick', 'Fat Vigilante' and 'Crawling The Walls'. But there's a brace of newies, too - 'Big Big Love' and 'Itchy Fingers a-Go-Go', which hint that Ausgang have plans to stick around and carve out a new career for themselves as a contemporary act. If that's the plan, I'm sure they could do well, for this is a band with enough energy and intensity to put much younger outfits to shame. I'd suggest, however, that they re-think their covers policy, for the set ends with a run-through of that hoary old rockers' standard, 'I Wanna Be Your Dog', a song which has been done and done and done so many times over the years by so many bands that it counts as no more than a crashingly obvious cliche now. Indeed, two bands on the present-day UK goth-gig circuit - Excession and the Screaming Banshee Aircrew - have recently featured this song as a live cover, and, frankly, Ausgang's choice of the very same number simply looks like they experienced a failure of imagination just when a fresh idea was needed. So, yes, it's good to have Ausgang back, and there's certainly potential here for the band to make an impact in the here and now. But future progress is going to depend on a hefty injection of genuinely original ideas. Old songs and old covers ain't gonna cut it for ever.

What's this? Devilish Presley headlining over Ausgang? London's upstart gung-ho rockers taking precedence over a classic band from the golden 80s? Well, yes. Sure, Ausgang might have the history behind them, but Devilish Presley have the current-scene profile and the guaranteed crowd-pull, advantages which they've worked hard to gain, putting in much effort and playing more gigs than just about any other UK band in recent times. That's what gives 'em the top spot tonight. This is also the last time Devilish Presley will play Dead & Buried: they've more or less been fixtures at the club for a long while, and both band and club have done very well out of the association. But it's always best to make a move before things get stale, and I suspect Devilish Presley have decided it's time to get out there and carve out an audience beyond the London deathrock club crowd. Hey, even Specimen had to stop playing the Batcave in the end. So, here come Johnny and Jacqui for one last time, attitude in full effect and guitars turned up good and loud. Naturally, it's exactly the kind of take-no-prisoners performance we've come to expect from the band: a raucous romp through 'Prick Up Your Ears', their ode to the great bard, 'Billy Rattlestick', and their instant-deathrock hit, 'Hammer Horror Glamour'. I'll freely admit I don't think this particular number is anywhere near Devilish Presley's best song, being as it's basically just a shopping list of deathrock-isms which sounds like it took all of five minutes to write. But what the hell - tonight, in front of a moshing mass of mohawks and ripped-fishnet merchants, it works. Mr Navarro leads the crowd up the garden path with a bit of call-and-response participation ('Everybody say hell yeah!' Audience: 'HELL YEAH!' Johnny: 'Everybody say antidisestablismentarianism!' Audience: confused mumbling) and  the riffs just don't stop...until, of course, eventually they do. A vintage performance, and while I think Devilish Presley are entirely right to spread their wings beyond the confines of the Dead & Buried audience, it's a shame we'll no longer be able to see them brewing up their unique storm in this particular north London rock 'n' roll hole. 

see all the photos from this concert here

http://www.starvox.net

Katscan / New Days Delay (UK debut) / Devilish Presley at Dead and Buried 04/02/05

Devilish Presley
New Days Delay
Katscan
Dead & Buried, London
Friday February 4 2005
~review and photos by Uncle Nemesis

The blue neon sign of the Lord Nelson pub casts its incongruous light over the Holloway Road. Tonight, the Dead & Buried crew invades this north London boozer for the latest instalment of what, over the last couple of years, has become one of London’s most successful club nights. At a time when the standard goth club format - you know, the usual gothic top 40, EBM and 80s playlist - is starting to look stale and unimaginative, and the clubs which still churn out this kind of default music mix are starting to wonder where all their punters are disappearing to, Dead & Buried demonstrates that thinking out of the usual goth box can pay off handsomely.

Tonight is also one of the club’s sporadic live band nights, and here comes our opening act. The two Katscan gentlemen are blood-spattered and intense, frontman Martin favouring the crowd with an appraising gaze, as if sizing us all up for corrective surgery. They conjure up a stomping, rollicking racket, steering well clear of the usual EBM-isms which their two-men-and-electronics line-up might at first suggest we’ll get. Katscan are far too punk rock for any of that - as even the most casual observer might discern when they launch into the splendidly titled song ‘You Love It, You Schlaags’, in which the lyrics systematically demolish the current EBM scene, pointed references to ‘Ibiza Nietzche nursery rhymes’ and all.  This might amount to a case of - well, maybe not actually biting the hand that feeds you, but it certainly counts as a bit of a bared-teeth snarl in the direction of the very electro-heads who might be thought to comprise Katscan’s natural audience. But Katscan seem to be fuelled by a magnificent disregard for convention and careerist common sense, and if you ask me we could do with more bands with this kind of wayward attitude.

When I reviewed New Days Delay’s performance at the Wave Gotik Treffen last year, I asked - not entirely rhetorically - which promoter would be the first to bring the band to the UK. Well, now we know. Cavey Nik snapped them up for this show, and from the sudden audience-surge to the front that takes place as the band come out to set up their gear, it seems he was wise to do so. There’s a lot of interest in New Days Delay in the UK, and maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise, for the band plays exactly the kind of spiky, spunky, punky pop that would give the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a good run for their money. Tonight, the small size of the stage makes for a rather awkward soundmix - the drums are so close to the audience that the drummer’s snap and clatter tends to dominate the sound: the acoustic racket coming off the kit at times threatens to overwhelm the PA. But the engineer whacks it all up loud, the bass gets a good old growl on, and guitar slices the mix like a circular saw going through a kitchen worktop. Over all this, vocalist Insa, an animated mop of blue hair and distressed fishnet, delivers a new-wave wail with her characteristic quirky verve, casting sidelong glances at her band-mates as if slightly unsure what they’ll do next. What they do next, by and large, is simply pile in to the next song, rattling through the set like a go-cart on a cobbled street. Insa has the additional advantage of a personality that’s as sparky and immediate as her band’s music. She snatches a minute here and there to talk to the crowd with endearingly nervous amiability, and by last-song time there’s not a doubter in the house. I reckon New Days Delay could do well in the UK, and not just in goth circles. In fact, I’m tempted to say especially not in goth circles, for they have a much broader appeal than that. As the indie scene rediscovers its post-punk roots, New Days Delay find themselves making exactly the right racket at exactly the right time.

Devilish Presley are making a video tonight, for their soon-come single ‘Hammer Horror Glamour’, which explains the presence of the random bloke with a camera, wandering about on stage. Devilish Presley are also well known now as purveyors of a no-shit, bug-eyed rock ‘n’ roll show, which explains the presence of a mob of moshers down the front. The band hurls itself into ‘She’s Not America’ by way of an introduction, and as ever it’s full volume, full speed, and damn the torpedoes right from the word go. New songs make an appearance - ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ being, apparently, a blast at DJs who have proved reluctant to give the Devilish Presley sound a spin, a sentiment Johnny Navarro amplifies with an impromptu rant. ‘Hammer Horror Glamour’ itself enters the fray like a bovver boy gatecrashing the vicar’s fancy dress do. Now here’s a paradox: in all their songs so far Devilish Presley have always made a point of steering clear of all the schlocky horror imagery which festoons the deathrock scene like the Hallowe’en party that time forgot. But here, they chuck it all in as if they’ve just done a trolley dash up the Hallowe’en tat aisle at their local novelty shop. ‘I was born in Highgate Cemetery...’ asserts Johnny Navarro, and it all gets significantly more spooky-silly from that point on. I can’t quite decide if this amounts to the band engineering a deliberate head-on clash with deathrock, or if it’s some sort of deliberately OTT double-bluff: hey, you horror-heads - you want deathrock? OK, we’ll give you deathrock! Either way it’s an unexpected departure - although, musically, the song is a typically barnstorming rocker. But I can’t help wondering, given that ‘Hammer Horror Glamour’ is coming out as a single, video and all, and will therefore probably end up being Devilish Presley’s all-purpose calling card to potential new fans, if it won’t end up becoming a bit of a millstone around the band’s necks. Will they end up having to explain for evermore that the song is not a representative Devilish Presley number, and their material in general just isn’t like that? Ah, well, time will tell. Tonight, the band simply steam into their set as if an entire pack of rabid hellhounds were on their tails, and you just can’t argue with that kind of righteous rock ‘n’ roll blast.

see all the photos from this concert here

http://www.starvox.net

Leisur Hive / Devilish Presley /Cinema Strange (UK debut) at The Spitz 23/10/04

Pictures - Uncle Nemesis (thanks!)

Cinema Strange
Devilish Presley
Leisur::Hive
The Spitz, London
Saturday October 23 2004
~review and photos by Uncle Nemesis

At last, Cinema Strange have come to London. After several years and several European tours, during which the band always contrived to pass by the UK with their eyes carefully averted, we’ve finally snagged ‘em. And, just to reinforce the sense of a special occasion, this gig is not taking place in one of London’s usual rock ‘n’ roll holes. Instead, we’re at The Spitz, a cool east end arts venue with its bijou bistro on the ground floor and a rather tasty selection of continental beers at the bar. What’s more, it’s a sell out tonight, and that in itself is a rare occurrence on the London gig circuit. Curious souls from all over town and beyond crowd the staircase up to the music room in the attic, along with sundry representatives of the Cinema Strange Barmy Army - the travelling circus of fans who seem to show up at every gig. I’m sure I recognise some of the girls who so enlivened the moshpit at Cinema Strange’s Prague show last year with their formation slam dancing. Could be we’re in for an interesting night.

Angular and abrasive, like ripped-up bits of musical sandpaper, Leisur::Hive scratch and caterwaul through their opening set. They’re a splendid foil for Cinema Strange’s own tangental art-rock, their purposeful, dressed-down image neatly counterpointing the Cinema chaps’ wayward glam, while the music just...fits. Violin duels with guitar, and on vocals, standing at a bandaged microphone stand that from some angles creates the impression that ectoplasm is spewing from his mouth, Dan spits out words with an intensity that gets quite alarming. The audience pays the band the compliment of watching with rapt attention: I imagine many people here are new to the Leisur::Hive experience, and I think they’re going to go away impressed. ‘Try To Be Still’ turns up in the set, a blustering squall of violin, as do sundry other selections from the band’s new album ‘ 3 Ton Edition’. On form and cooking tonight, Leisur::Hive’s music splinters like broken eggshells, and I’m sure a shard or two pierced a few new hearts tonight.

And now a complete contrast crash-lands on the concert, as Devilish Presley take the stage and hammer tremendously through a set of their mutant blues.  Goading and exhorting the audience between songs, Johnny Navarro displays a fine a take it or leave it attitude that has some of the audience hanging back, bemused, unsure how to take this rampant rock ‘n’ roll wildman, while others pile down the front and boogie. The band have a new album in the works, so the set is slanted towards the newies, but it’s all supremely accessible stuff. As soon as the drum machine starts beating out its insistent tattoo, those basslines start rumbling and the guitar shoulders its way into the fight, you’re there, unceremoniously dunked in a bucket of seething rock ‘n’ roll. Take it or leave it, folks, that’s just what Devilish Presley do.

At last, it’s time for the main event. Cinema Strange’s appearance on stage results in instant cheers and a few puzzled looks. An odd side-effect of the band’s absence from the UK until now is that most people’s impression of Cinema Strange has been gained from the relatively old photos of the band which still seem to be everywhere, in which Cinema Strange look like a fairly standard (if more than usually left-field) collection of fishnet ‘n’ mohawks deathrockers. These days, of course, Cinema Strange have moved on from that style, and when they emerge tonight in braces and dickey-bow (Lucas), a Punch and Judy professor’s humbug-striped shirt (Michael) and a monochrome undertaker’s suit (Daniel) and - shock! - a dangerously rock ‘n’ roll bandanna on the head of the drummer, it’s amusing to see the expressions of bewilderment cross a few faces. This is Cinema Strange?  But...what happened to all the artfully-ripped fishnet, the Batcave threads, the *hair*? Why, they’re even wearing paper hats! Johnny Slut never did it like this!

Oblivious to the fact that they’ve just let a cat among the fashion-pigeons of the nascent UK deathrock scene, Cinema Strange tumble into their music with all the gleeful energy of children sliding down the bannisters of a stately home staircase. They bob and dive and whirl around the stage, always in motion, never letting the show slow down. They whip up that strange tension, that feeling of pent-up electricity: much of it’s in those tense, nervy, thin-string basslines (Daniel Ribiat tends to avoid his E string, as if he’s frightened of getting a parking ticket if he lets his fingers rest there for even one note), and those controlled, clattering drums that seem to start and stop so instantly you’d swear someone had flipped a switch. The guitar darts and pokes and, on occasions, lets loose with a big crashing chord, and over all this Lucas Lanthier recounts his fables and allegories, tall stories and cautionary tales. Sometimes leaning out at the crowd, brandishing the microphone like Piggy with his conch, agitated and forceful; sometimes hanging back like a lecturer surveying his students to ensure that they’ve taken it all in, he’s the patch of calm as the storm swirls about him - and always the focal point of the show. And what stories does he tell? Old stories and new stories, favourites and trip-you-ups: ‘Catacomb Kittens’, ‘Lindsay’s Trachea’, ‘Needle Feet’ and ‘Aboriginal Anemia’. They’re all received with delight, although somewhat to my surprise, the Cimema Strange Barmy Army at the front behaves with impeccable restraint, gazing with wide eyes upon the band and hardly slam-dancing at all. But if the audience antics are a touch subdued, the applause that breaks out after every song is warmly enthusiastic. Cinema Strange, it seems, have been taken to the hearts of London, and are probably wondering why they didn’t pitch up here sooner. Let’s not leave it too long before the next one, gentlemen!

see all photos from this concert here

http://www.starvox.net

Pics from July and August 2004

Buried by Monsters - 02 04 04 (photos courtesy of Uncle Nemesis)

The Vincent Razorbacks

Devilish Presley

The Last Days of Jesus (London debut)

The Last Days Of Jesus
Devilish Presley
The Vincent Razorbacks
Dead And Buried, London
Friday April 2 2004
~review and photos by Uncle Nemeis

Tonight, we’re in north London. Up the surreal end of the Holloway Road, to be exact, where traffic islands rise hopefully out of the motor-river and every third shop is a slightly dangerous looking hairdressing salon.  Between the crashed spaceship architecture of the Metropolitan University and the taxi showroom, there’s an Irish boozer called, inappropriately enough, the Lord Nelson. It’s a traditional spit-and-sawdust-without-any-sawdust establishment which, under normal circumstances, plays host to showbands and folk groups, ceilidhs and hooleys. It’s the kind of place where Johnny Rotten’s dad - who still lives round these parts, in the ancestral council flat - would probably come for a pint o’ the dark stuff of an evening. But tonight is different. It’s the first Friday of the month, and that means the pub re-invents itself as Dead And Buried, London’s deathrock club. No toe-tappin’ jigs tonight. The plan is to make the old place shake with the righteous power of rock ‘n’ roll.  Rip up your fishnet, big up your hair, and step inside.

Dead And Buried doesn’t feature live bands on every occasion - not least, I suppose, because at this stage the number of deathrock-compatible bands on the UK gig circuit is fairly small. But three gung-ho rockers of assorted styles have been assembled for tonight’s entertainment, and the first of these is a combo by the name of the Vincent Razorbacks. That name sounds like it was derived from an obscure species of lizard, but in fact it’s a play on the name of the band’s main man, Vince Ray. He’s better known as an artist than a musician: his rockabilly comic book-style art has appeared everywhere from T-shirts to record sleeves (the cover art on The Damned’s ‘Grave Disorder’ is a Vince Ray). The band looks somewhat like one of those art projects come to life - a regular geezer on drums, a couple of chaps who could be taking a break from the night shift at the 24 hour funeral parlour on bass and guitar, and, fronting the whole caboodle, Vince Ray himself, looking like he’s just strolled on stage after a hard afternoon wrestling with the innards of his BSA Star Twin. They deliver a good-time rockin’ set (always supposing that your definition of a good time extends to cheerfully macabre songs about serial killers), shamelessly throwing poses and mugging for the crowd. The sound of the band is essentially traditional vintage rock - the Razorbacks aren’t here to take us into uncharted musical territory, that’s for sure - but it’s played with a swing and a grin and a fine disregard for muso concerns that is entirely punk.  When the drummer breaks his kick drum, he simply calls for a roll of gaffa tape, sticks it back together, and carries on rockin’. They climax on a version of that fine old Osmonds hit, ‘Crazy Horses’, a suitably wacky choice for a cover, and a selection which, I think, gives you the drop on the band. They’re here to entertain; they’re here to flam it up, cut loose and get spooky-silly to a good rocking beat. If that’s what you’re after, here’s a band which does just what it says on the 50s-style Brylcreem tin.

Devilish Presley are another band who touch base with the throbbing monster of rock ‘n’ roll, but rather than reproduce the well-tried band-blueprint, they’ve wrenched things in a different direction. They’re a two-piece, equal parts attitude and technology, pitched up somewhere between the White Stripes and Suicide. (At this juncture, I should perhaps mention that I consider Suicide to be the finest rock ‘n’ roll band that never touched a guitar, so - well, so there!)  Devilish Presley’s minimal line-up makes for a sound that’s all bare bones and knuckledusters, a rattletrap hot-rod on the dirt road to oblivion (I think I’d better ease up here before my metaphor-motor overheats) - but, having said that, it’s impressive that the very first song in the set, ‘In League With Elvis’, is stripped down even more. It’s an uber-minimalist arrangement for two voices and bottleneck guitar, which makes the band sound more like they’re in league with Robert Johnson than ol’ aviator shades himself, and yet it still manages to rock.  But then it’s time to hit the loud pedal. Johnny Navarro gives us a defiant glare, looming over the audience like a Bond villain sizing up the next victim for the piranha pool, while Jacqui Vixen swings her bass like it’s just been reloaded. They slam into a set of what are rapidly becoming their live-set hits - at least, in London. Johnny pointedly compares the London crowd’s enthusiastic cheers to the cautious, don’t-know-if-it’s-cool-to-like-this-band reaction of the audience in Sheffield, where Devilish Presley recently played: ‘They were hard work!’ It’s an indication, perhaps, of how much of a shock to the system Devilish Presley are to the out-of-London goth scene, which I imagine still expects its bands to do that regular goth thing. Me, I reckon ‘regular’ is for bowel movements. The more Devilish Presley can shake things up, the better.

The Last Days Of Jesus are the jokers in tonight’s pack in that they’re not steeped in transatlantic rock ‘n’ roll style. They’re coming from a different place (literally - was Elvis ever big in Slovakia?), and their set is at once a freaked-out avant-rock show and a baffling middle-European carny experience. It’s difficult to think up neat, catch-all comparisons for the racket The Last Days Of Jesus make. Sometimes they’re almost a metal band, in that scratchy, minimalist, first AC/DC album style; at other times, they’re a fractured, fractious, punkish bunch, somewhere between Wire and and the Adicts. Mary O, the frontman, lurches and gesticulates his way through the set, declaiming his incomprehensible lyrics as if they contain the Fundamental Truth Of All Things, and if he only hollers them out with enough conviction, light will dawn upon us all. He’s flanked by a half-naked guitarist-cum-percussionist, with the keyboard player looming as impassively as an Easter Island statue on the other side. The drummer, effectively at the centre of everything on the venue’s small stage, keeps it all pounding along, a reassuringly solid foundation for Mary O’s loony grandstanding. The crowd seem half amused and half amazed by the spectacle: some people jump about to the clattering beats, others stand rooted to the spot, wearing expressions which seem to say, ‘Oh no, there’s a scary man on stage!’ During ‘Death Song’, Mary O contrives to fall off the stage altogether, and shuffles around the crowd on his knees, singing up to them such random lyrical couplets as ‘I’m a joke/Full of coke/I’m so strong, a plastic bloke.’ There’s something rather endearing about a band from Slovakia including the word ‘bloke’ in a lyric. At the end of the song, Mary O does a big death scene on the floor at the audience’s feet, but miraculously recovers to take a bow. It’s all a splendidly absurd, theatrical performance which transcends the rather prosaic surroundings of this north London boozer, and leaves the audience grinning foolishly even as they scratch their heads, uncertain of what to make of it all.

That’s not the end of the night by any means - Dead And Buried’s DJ crew takes over for several more hours of encouragingly diverse music as the gig switches to club mode. The UK may not do deathrock to any extent or in any way that would be recognised in, say, California or Germany, but tonight, in this packed and scruffy pub, it feels distinctly like something is starting to happen. Where, if anywhere, our nascent  deathrock scene will end up going is anybody’s guess at this stage, but if we get more gigs like this one along the way then I think it’ll be worth the ride.

see all the photos from this show here

http://www.starvox.net