Saturday's first act has a mess of ideas and are most definitely entertaining. One of Infernotorium wears a catsuit - complete with cat head. Another has a homemade wizard's hat. They start with a song about a carnival, alternating carnival sounds with Slipknot noise. For a moment I'm bemused about where the roaring's coming from until the singer jumps in the air. "You can dance if you like." They also do a death-metal cover of Aphex Twin's industrial-dance 'Come to Daddy'. Another song has the most stupid don't-stop-start ending I've heard in a while - the half-musical equivalent of three exclamation marks spaced on three separate lines. At the end, they trash a Casio keyboard. I can't wipe the grin off my face and can't work out why of the few other people in this sun-filled room, most seem to be cringing. Maybe the band didn't mean to be funny?! Humour's the last thing on the mind of Acrid, but the contrast between their earnestness and bigging-up seems cheesy to me. Stop talking, stop covering Incubus and start extending those endings is what I'd say to them, if they hadn't split a little while after…
The next band, ironically enough, is called The Sell-Outs! 'Ha Ha Ha'! And that's the name of one of their songs. They are great fun from the taut countdowns "2-3-4!" to the picking up of a xylophone just to play one note at the end of a song. For all the punk bands who've come before them - and since this band formed when they were infamously young, that's a lot of forebears - I'm sure the Sell-Outs have their own originality, a natural verve and hypnotic belief that "I am my own expert". I might be biased; I'm itching so much to hear the new demo that I volunteered to do the artwork for it, but hey… contradiction in a nutshell? A punk band with a tambourine.
As the day gets on I get hungrier and get no veggie food, so I and my head fill up on beer instead. So all I have to remember Lost Child by is that they use slap-bass with tongue too far in cheek for them to play with as much intensity as the singer stares with (check: Pumpkins, Radiohead). After a break for no more food, I'm back in time for a 10-minute guitar solo from Cunning Elizabeth! A Lynyrd Skynyrd cover! How did they get on the bill? Covers from All Accused get in the way of appreciating their own material, because the other songs have more memorable tunes than AA's own bluster; Gekko and Headrush also don't stir too much from the basic sounds these bands seem to have.
"Manboob? Boobman, more like." I dunno what that quote meant, but in pre-PC slang I'd say their sound was GAY.
My Pet Junkie are more like
it.
Happy to be back in front of a home crowd singing along, and not just
on the "la la la" bits.
Read about them more somewhere else...
Frog Stupid
"If home is where the heart is, this is cardiac arrest!" Yes!
Songs about Stevenage! A stage invasion! A ska-punk band whom I actually
like! And everybody can't stop singing the brass parts afterwards...
Read about them more somewhere else...
20 Dead Camels
!
