You won't believe it, but it's a gig review! What this blog was originally intended for! My modus operandi since I last attended a live music event has undergone something of a polar shift, so please bear with me whilst I attempt to describe guitar sounds and drummers and things using words that aren't ‘ice’ or ‘hockey’ or anything similarly irrelevant! Right, on with the music.
Three bands of a progressive persuasion were taking to the King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut stage on a positively arctic Saturday in the excellent Scottish city of Glasgow. First on were the local support act, A Torn Mind. I hadn’t known what to make of them on my initial pre-gig listening session but the cobwebs were well and truly blown away as they kicked off their short but sweet set, the sound quality in King Tut’s kicking seven shades of excrement out of the obviously sub-par Myspace versions of their songs and forcing me to reassess my preconceptions of underwhelmed-ness. The Glaswegian four-piece were shamelessly prog, but revelled in the fact, show-casing a torrid love affair with their delay pedal and a hippy keyboard and rhythm guitar player whose dancing skills made me feel like a member of Diversity. Entertaining and unselfconscious, with a few catchy hooks – I feel these guys have a bright future ahead of them.
Direct support on the tour was provided by Jurojin, who sounded painfully southern in comparison to the gargling Scottish tones of the previous band, but lessened the sore thumb effect of my own cockney-ness a bit, which was nice. They were a bit of a conundrum, musically. In comparison to A Torn Mind they were almost contrived in their alternative-ness, featuring amongst other oddities, a tabla-player. They skated the fine line between potential genius and pretention for a few numbers before the singer uttered a line I’ve never heard before at a gig and will probably never hear again: ‘We’re going to do a 19th Century folk song now’. When a prog metal band says words like these, it more often than not spells danger. They weren’t so much skating the line now as perching on the diving board threatening to plummet into arty-farty oblivion. But then the song started. And it was brilliant. The singer pulled off the folk vocal perfectly and the version of ‘Black Leg Miner’ they performed was outstanding, chunky and metal and well, just excellent. They then proceeded to annihilate my earlier skepticism with a brilliant end to their set. I couldn’t fail to be impressed by them, heavily Tool-influenced as they were, particularly the drummer, Francesco, who was so technically proficient he threatened to eclipse the remainder of the band, and the tabla-player who added to the ridiculously high standard of the percussive end of the band. The vocals? Generally a little too clean for my liking but still. A marmite band? Almost certainly. Ones to watch – definitely.
By the time Karnivool took to the stage it was past 10:30 and I had my dancing legs on (read: I’d had about 6 pints and a couple of gins and was feeling merry). What can I say about them, other than ‘wow’. The Australian quintet couldn’t really go wrong as far as their setlist went, being as they have only released two studio albums, both of which I love, but somehow, they managed to make it so perfect, it wouldn’t have been better if I’d written it myself and had them wrap a chocolate bow around it. Kicking off with tracks from this year’s brilliant ‘Sound Awake’ record, the band’s sound was tight and crisp and soaring, true to the quality of the record but exceeded not only by their performance but by the sheer flawlessness of singer Ian Kenny’s vocals, particularly on stand-out track ‘New Day’. The guy was all kinds of cool, somehow managing to pull off chilled Aussie with not a single reference to the Ashes, and with the zen-like contentment of an inebriated Buddhist. My gigging companion likened him to a ‘stoned velociraptor’, a bizarre simile that somehow fit him down to the ground. The crowd reflected the happiness with a lot of singing, dancing and general expressions of enjoyment. Although, at 11:30 on a Saturday night in Glasgow, I can’t help but feel that a lot of their work had already been done for them.
Direct support on the tour was provided by Jurojin, who sounded painfully southern in comparison to the gargling Scottish tones of the previous band, but lessened the sore thumb effect of my own cockney-ness a bit, which was nice. They were a bit of a conundrum, musically. In comparison to A Torn Mind they were almost contrived in their alternative-ness, featuring amongst other oddities, a tabla-player. They skated the fine line between potential genius and pretention for a few numbers before the singer uttered a line I’ve never heard before at a gig and will probably never hear again: ‘We’re going to do a 19th Century folk song now’. When a prog metal band says words like these, it more often than not spells danger. They weren’t so much skating the line now as perching on the diving board threatening to plummet into arty-farty oblivion. But then the song started. And it was brilliant. The singer pulled off the folk vocal perfectly and the version of ‘Black Leg Miner’ they performed was outstanding, chunky and metal and well, just excellent. They then proceeded to annihilate my earlier skepticism with a brilliant end to their set. I couldn’t fail to be impressed by them, heavily Tool-influenced as they were, particularly the drummer, Francesco, who was so technically proficient he threatened to eclipse the remainder of the band, and the tabla-player who added to the ridiculously high standard of the percussive end of the band. The vocals? Generally a little too clean for my liking but still. A marmite band? Almost certainly. Ones to watch – definitely.
By the time Karnivool took to the stage it was past 10:30 and I had my dancing legs on (read: I’d had about 6 pints and a couple of gins and was feeling merry). What can I say about them, other than ‘wow’. The Australian quintet couldn’t really go wrong as far as their setlist went, being as they have only released two studio albums, both of which I love, but somehow, they managed to make it so perfect, it wouldn’t have been better if I’d written it myself and had them wrap a chocolate bow around it. Kicking off with tracks from this year’s brilliant ‘Sound Awake’ record, the band’s sound was tight and crisp and soaring, true to the quality of the record but exceeded not only by their performance but by the sheer flawlessness of singer Ian Kenny’s vocals, particularly on stand-out track ‘New Day’. The guy was all kinds of cool, somehow managing to pull off chilled Aussie with not a single reference to the Ashes, and with the zen-like contentment of an inebriated Buddhist. My gigging companion likened him to a ‘stoned velociraptor’, a bizarre simile that somehow fit him down to the ground. The crowd reflected the happiness with a lot of singing, dancing and general expressions of enjoyment. Although, at 11:30 on a Saturday night in Glasgow, I can’t help but feel that a lot of their work had already been done for them.
The extent of my gig photography. Skilled I might well be, but you wouldn't know it. This is basically pretty much how I saw the gig, to be honest.
And so a good night was had by all, and Karnivool firmly placed themselves in my top gigs of the year list, sneaking on in there right at the end. I am a big fan, and I hope they come back sooner rather than later. Australia's not that far, right?
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