Live @ The Fleece, Bristol - 8th November
Hunting Lodge – were a primal soup of sludgey vocals, snarling guitar, pummelling drums and monstrous bass – throttling banshee turmoil that revealled in reams of feedback. The vocalist (Papa Molasses maybe?) staggered the stage vomiting vocal textures all over this testrosterone heavy beast of a performance, its saliva dripping black mouth - a vision of hell. It looked like Anton Maiof (My Ambulance Is On Fire) was contributing lots of yelling too - stoking the temperature even higher… Blistering!
Here's a mp3 from their site - Mighty, the Forward Striding Toes.mp3 (please download) and if you're curious here's some live photos of the boys in action.
After this, anybody would have been an anti-climax, but from the moment the next act stood centre-stage and squeezed an entire tube of KY Jelly into his mouth, I sort of knew something interesting was going to happen. Smashing his face into a peice of contact mic-ed glass, making the grotesquest of faces resulting in some exquisitely distorted sonics... This was Justice Yeldham and the Dynamic Ribbon Device.
Really compelling stuff alone, but when he broke of a corner of the glass with his own teeth (with a horrible crunching sound) then dragged it across the remaining pane in a blood drenched scrape the performance entered a new realm of extreme. The squeamish (amongst us, me included!) winced. Later the glass fragmented further cutting into his neck causing blood to squirt out I really thought it was hospital time! However he seemed to avoid any fatal injuries. Blood and jelly combined and smeared across the smooth surface as the most gorgeously biological sounds were produced in great whirls of feedback. A real show stealer for definite, apparently he covered some of his merchandise in the evening’s blood – I bet fans were hesitant about a signature, especially if a pen wasn't to hand!
There's a great video of the man in action from a previous gig here. It's a bit on the weighty side (45mb) but worth the wait.
Melt Banana were a real highlight with their own take on 'Speedo-Thrash'. Tentacles of noise whipped the air, making my body jerk in spasmodic response, arms flinging about wildly. Playful chops in the sound and those marvellous vocals warped into unusual shapes by her box of tricks - blew all dusty predictability clean out of the water. They took the term ‘High Energy’ and ran with it, like a speeded up rock documentary or 'attention deficient' teenager (most songs clocked in at just one minute thirty). The band ploughed through song after glorious song, the small faction of the crowd in front of me became a seething mass of twisting limbs, wobbling heads and alcohol spillage with every tune. You’ve just got to love Melt Banana they left me feeling more alive than I ever thought possible.
Melt Banana - Rough Dogs Have Bumps.mp3
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