Sworn Amongst–Fibbers, 06/06/13

The impression we got when we entered a nearly empty Fibbers tonight was that, apart from us, most of the rest of the audience were members and friends of the bands. If I’m honest, I was only there for one of the support bands and knew nothing about the other two on the bill. In hindsight, I should maybe have done a bit of research.

It might have been the lack of crowd that made Scarborough’s The Antiquity seem reluctant to take the stage and kick things off. After finally being cajoled on, twenty minutes after the advertised start time, there was much shuffling about and lots of warming up from Gary Stephenson on drums before a recorded intro led into their first song. Well, I say song, vocalist Joe McEvoy seemed to be barking (or, perhaps, burping) into the microphone. There was little indication of anything that could be described as lyrics. This style carried on throughout the set, with McEvoy putting so much power into his vocals that he seemed to have to squeeze his body to get extra air out. I’m only guessing but I doubt that these were love songs and were more likely about death, destruction and the need for Strepsils the morning after a gig. The music was thunderous. There was a chainsaw sound effect in the middle of one song. At one point one of the guitarists looked to be doing something interesting, playing along the neck of his guitar, but I couldn’t pick whatever he was doing out of the mix. The blessedly short set of just five songs, all of which sounded very similar to me, was over almost before it started, although there was an unexpected bonus of a brief, somewhat dark, melodic section in the middle of the last song. Andy, who is usually better at pre-gig research than me, couldn’t help but laughing at the performance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that The Antiquity are a bad band, they just play a style of music I don’t like. That’s not their fault, is it?

Apparently, it’s over two years since I last saw InSpades.Inc. “I think we might stick out a bit,” frontman Stewart King confided in me before they took to the stage. And it wasn’t just the shirt, tie and waistcoat worn by dapper-from-the-waist-up drummer P.G. Branton were a world away from the muscle-shirts sported by most of the rest of tonight’s performers. Ghost In The Mirror set the scene – heavy but not brutal with vocals that were your actual singing, rather than just growling. Andy’s feet were already tapping, a good sign. The music is definitely heavier than I remember but not excessively so, with some of the older songs being re-worked for this set. The previous melodic leanings are still in evidence, though, if not quite so prominent. Each song seems to include an impressive instrumental section and P.G.’s drumming gets more and more frantic as the set proceeds. When Sucker Punch is introduced, I mention to Andy that I like it, then find that I barely recognise it in its new form. It’s still a good song, though. Tempting Fate, with its brief, semi-doom-laden opening seems to epitomise the new direction, while latest single DNR, a powerhouse of a song in recorded form, ends the set in style, showing that metal doesn’t have to be simply a wall of noise and that being able to hear the individual guitar lines is possible.

I’ve learnt recently that, in the right circumstances, “cookie monster” vocals aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Sworn Amongst, with their Cthulhu-inspired stage banners, are practitioners of this particular style but, musically, they provide none of the subtlety of, for example, Opeth. Their music is full of brutal riffs and power-drumming but one thing is certain – however good fans of The Antiquity might think that band is, their near-neighbours from Hull are much more accomplished, have a more mature sound, bags more energy and a lot more stage presence. To my ears, they still produce noise, as opposed to music, but it’s a better noise. It’s heavy but there is music underneath. The problem is that it is relentless, all one level, with little relief. The band are tight and the vocals, while mostly growls to these untrained ears, give the impression that they contain lyrics rather than just sounds. On the rare occasions that songs were introduced, we were able to pick out the titles within the lyrics. There were occasional glimpses of noise-penetrating guitar solos but, apart from those, the entire set was an brutal onslaught with barely a break between songs, impressive in its intensity but, just like the openers, this style of music does nothing for me.

Satisfying A Craving

Monday 28th February: Way back when, many years ago, when I first started going to gigs, it was rare for me to know anything about the various support bands I was due to see. In fact, I can’t even remember many of them, especially those from your standard two-act gigs. Most of the time, I doubt I even knew who the support were due to be and rarely did I like them. These days, however, I’m as likely to go to a gig based on who (one of) the support bands are than I am for the headliners.

Tonight is one of those occasions as I make a solo trip to Fibbers to see Inspades.inc, a band I’ve seen once before and really enjoyed. Seeming to write their songs around lovely guitar solos (or, perhaps, duets as, once I took proper notice, I did spot one “solo” actually slide smoothly across from Stewart King’s guitar to that of Adam Brady) and with some nice changes of pace, the band came across as a lot more confident tonight than the last time I saw them (which was, to be fair, only their second gig). There was still a hint of nervousness, most especially during Cannibals a song written and sung by Brady and hampered by the fact that tonight’s sound man didn’t seem to have realised that the vocals were coming through a different microphone – vocals are hard enough to hear through the more dance-music orientated sound system at Fibbers without inattentive sound engineers… There’s little doubt (in my mind, at least) that King is the “main man” of the band. The rest of the songs featured his vocals, he did all the talking and, as far as I could tell, the majority of solo’s were his as well. His understated (i.e. not too showy) posturing was counterpointed by the more relaxed performances of the rest of the band (P.G. Branton on drums and Jim Quinn on bass) and he’s another of those frontmen who, if he can’t tempt the audience closer to the stage will just shrug and get on with the performance. And it was a very good performance. Along with Cannibals, the six song set was made up of Seanachai, Twenty Minutes From Now, Lost Track Of Time, Of It’s Own Accord and Sucker Punch, some of which I recognised from the previous gig and some of which were new (I’m ruling out “less memorable”). If you like your rock slightly less heavy than metal, you will probably enjoy this band. A debut EP is available now and there is the possibility of a longer release towards the end of this year.

In contrast Leon Sanford, vocalist with Tiger Please, seemed more insistent that the audience moved closer to the stage, calling us forward after completing their first song. Hailing from South Wales and being around since at least 2009 (when they released their debut EP), this is a slightly more established band who had supported tonight’s headliners all through their tour and who are about to be supporting Funeral For A Friend. With twelve guitars and a spare drum visible on stage, I was expecting big things. Sanford has powerful vocals, even if they were helped by a fair bit of echo/reverb, which somehow reminded me a little of The Manic Street Preachers, while the music varied from pseudo-Killers in the quieter moments to something bordering on heavy at other times. I didn’t catch any song titles and none of the songs immediately took up residence in my head, but it was a reasonably enjoyable set. There was a great deal more showmanship in evidence, with band members (including a stand-in for the usual guitarist) moving around the stage on a whim. The band are about to write an album of songs based on the real-life stories of their fans and the last song of their set was, apparently, the story of one woman whose father committed suicide early in her life. Opened by the stand-in guitarist basically beating seven shades out of the extra drum and containing slightly more than a hint of Runrig, this epic song turned out to be my highlight of the set. The band were joined on stage by the members of the headliners - all togged out in Tiger Please T-shirts - and yet another drum halfway through the song, ensuring a rousing end to the set. I may not be beating any doors down in order to see Tiger Please again, but I enjoyed what I saw tonight.

The Crave, on the other hand, I would definitely see again. Apparently they last played York a couple of years ago, to a slightly smaller crowd at the Duchess. (Tonight’s crowd was somewhere in the region of fifty people, many of whom seemed to be friends or family of Tiger Please…)

Looking like a mix of any number of rock or metal bands, The Crave play fast and loud, but still melodic, rock and mix the accessibility of the likes of Bon Jovi with something that has a bit more edge. Songs like Crash and Burn, with it’s heavy metal vocals and almost finger-plucking guitar work, mixed easily with the more commercial, audience sing-along of High, while a more ballad-like song whose title I couldn’t hear once again suffered from a poor vocal mix in the sound, but not as badly as the cover of Limp Bizkit’s Mission Impossible theme, when the vocals from drummer C.J. Evans were, once again, ignored by the sound-man until some frantic gesturing from the stage woke him up. This song also featured the reverse of the end-of-tour hi-jinks,as The Crave were joined on stage by the members of Tiger Please, all sporting Scream masks and some just their underwear and some strategically placed sticky tape… Most of the songs played seemed to come from the recently released album, Breaking The Silence (which I bought on the night) but there was also one brand new song – Star Tripping – which at least shows that the band aren’t resting on their laurels. There was a great deal to like in this performance and, like Inspades.inc, I would highly recommend The Crave if you like guitar-driven rock. (As an aside, this is the first gig I’ve been to this year where none of the band used a keyboard.) I couldn’t put it any better than the tour poster – “Back in a simpler time there was no indie, no emo, no nu-rave. No post-this, post-that, just riff-laden, ballsy rock ‘n’ roll; huge songs, life-changing gigs and a whole world of noisy, gutsy fun.”

Parading, In Spades

Saturday 25th September: After the disappointment of Tuesday's very late cancellation of Oceansize's gig at the newly refurbished Fibbers, which would have seen all of us out, tonight it's a solo outing for me to Stereo to get a second dose of some of the band members from last Saturday.

Tonight's support act, In Spades Inc, were only playing their second gig and, in some ways, it showed. There was an air of nervousness surrounding Stewart King's self-depreciating banter, almost as though he was apologising for the band turning up. He needn't have worried. While their music couldn't be said to be completely original, there was something just a little bit different about it which made it interesting and entertaining. Their forty minute, seven song set (including one cover, which I recognised but, for the life of me can't remember...) contained a nice mixture of material from the slow, haunting opening of Hurricane, which eventually built to a much louder climax, to the brash heaviness of Sucker Punch. But it was the guitar work that really caught my ear - each song seemed to contain an intricate piece of guitar, from either King or fellow guitarist Adam Brady, which sometimes didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the music but in all cases enhanced it.

This may have only been the band's second outing but, in researching this post, I realised that we had, in fact, seen another of King's bands, Satori, supporting Panic Room at the Duchess almost a year ago to the day. Both Roj and I enjoyed that performance so much that we bought the album that night. In a strange piece of symmetry, I picked up two copies of In Spades Inc's free EP preview tonight, one copy of which I have passed on to Roj. I don't think I could honestly say that I liked tonight's performance as much as I did that of Satori, but i certainly wouldn't be averse to seeing In Spades Inc again. Definitely one to watch out for.

...and now a confession. In order to remember thoughts and set-lists at gigs and to help write these posts, I make notes on my phone. Tonight there was a human/technology interface failure (I forgot to save the note I made for the headline act and subsequently managed to inadvertently delete it while the phone was in my pocket) which means that the following review is based solely on my somewhat poor recollections.

Parade are (or, possibly, were - their website says that they are changing their name) another band that we saw last year and so impressed us that we bought the album. One of the loose family of bands centred around Mostly Autumn, Parade was, at the time, made up of current MA members Ann-Marie Helder and Gavin Griffiths, past member Chris Johnson and two long-time collaborators of Johnson, Paddy Berry and Simon Snaize. Tonight ex-Yards guitarist Chris Farrell stood in for Snaize, whose name is strangely absent from the above website. Anyway, The Fabric ended up being one of my top five albums from last year and, therefore, I wasn't going to miss seeing them live again.

Tonight's set featured most, if not all, of the songs from The Fabric, including all my favourites - the epic The Diamond, the nasty The Dogs, pop-tinged but very rocky Start Again and the fantastic Feedline - along with an encore comprising of an acoustic song which I feel I should remember and a full band version of Science and Machinery. Chris Johnson played an acoustic version of the latter last Saturday. It's a song which appeared on the special edition of Mostly Autumn's Heart Full Of Sky album but which, apparently started life years before with Chris J, Chris F and Paddy, providing a nice link with tonight's line-up.

As expected the musicianship was superb. Chris Farrell played some incredible guitar, Paddy's bass was superb, at times making even the floor vibrate and Gavin's drumming was brilliant. Anne-Marie performed some pretty impressive vocal gymnastics - particularly during the wordless ending to High Life - despite apparently having voice problems during the whole of both this (very short) tour and the Panic Room one she had just completed. She and Chris perform some wonderful harmonies, which are just one of the high points of the album and live performance.

There is a reliance on technology, with a laptop tied into Anne-Marie's keyboards in order to produce some of the more unusual sounds. (There are enough pops and whistles on the album to make R2-D2 wonder if it contains a message for him...) Normally, for me, this would be enough to make me a little sceptical about the quality of the music - is it being "played" or just reproduced? But, somehow, I can forgive Parade this extravagance. Maybe it's because of the pedigree of the band members.

Anyway, the whole performance was brilliant and the whole band seemed to be enjoying themselves, playing off each other and practically pushing each other around while still managing to make wonderful music.

Hopefully, whatever the future holds for the band, they will continue to make and play such quality music.