It’s a Saturday evening, more than a tad moist, reasonably early, and I’m starting to feel a smidgen like how King Arthur must have, albeit in the West Midlands!
“King Arthur?” I hear you cry, with a mix of incredulity and discombobulation, but I spoke correctly.
“King Arthur..??”, you enquire again, this time with a raised eyebrow…
Indeed!
Allow me to elucidate: Thursday was The Levellers, Friday Saxon, and tonight is Drowning Pool’s turn! So, I’ve surrounded myself with several very different nights, all with different personalities all charged with the same quest: To make the world a better place through their actions. In this case, that means their music!
My Tintagel (colloquially named KKs Steel Mill!) is fully opened up and is frankly heaving like a bosom in a hammer horror film. There’s a veritable posse of us here for this one, people having travelled from Barnsley, Crewe, and Nottingham along with half of the local rock bar and even an ex I’ve not clapped eyes on in eons, and we’re all eyeing the stage as (Hed) PE, the first of three bands, announce themselves with something of a bang. Loud, angry, with hints of I.C.P. and Ice T, there’s a very definite stage presence here. Using bridges similar to early Korn but with a much harsher gruff vocal, “No Way Out”, is more of a kick in the crotch than a handshake in terms of a “Hello and welcome” salutation. “Rat Race” follows suit and it’s obvious there’s a serious portion of the audience who are here for these just as much as they are to sing “Bodies” at obnoxiously loud volumes later. There’s Rage against the Machine head tilts in their music, fused with older Chilli Peppers, and “Killing Time” plus “Renegade” even threw at me a memory of Cypress Hill’s “Can’t Get The Best of Me”. It’s violent, stirring and inciteful rather than insightful. All 10 songs of it! So not a bad start at all!!
Spineshank are up next, and I’ll admit to not really being a massive fan of their sound and thus I retreated for a while to savage some of the inhouse fodder. However, those who remained were entertained both by the band and the fact that they may have delicately suggested that crowd surfing might be the way to go. Cue legs and arms akimbo! Like giant flailing hairy octopodes (all of whom were missing 50% of their limbs obviously) they progressed across the crowd and (rather surprisingly given the occasion) not one of the bodies hit the floor, and instead rode on the wave of arms, hands, heads and the music. Speaking of the music, for me “New Disease”, “Beginning of the End”, and “Violent Mood Swing” were the most accessible, but “Dead to Me” got by far the best reception. There’s essence of “Negative Creep” by Nivana floating throughout the set and I can see how it pressed the buttons of a crowd who professed “yes” when asked who had seen Spineshank before. Proficient at what they do? Absolutely! And if it’s these guys you came to see, I’m certain there was no disappointment to be had here whatsoever.
26 tracks have passed since we took our place in the court of Mr Downing and much anticipation has built accordingly. Curiously Drowning Pool have a set 25% shorter in songs than their predecessors on stage, with only 12 songs on show compared to Spineshank’s 16! This could also however have a lot to do with a massive issue encountered on the previous night’s show which resulted in not finishing their Bradford gig until stupid o’clock in the morning, essentially meaning they had to do two gigs in one day! Not to be perturbed Ryan et al. launched into their set like saving Excalibur depended on it! “Sinner” constituted the fast start which we’d all been waiting for and it showed from the beginning that the crowd, now grounded, were going to enjoy this. “Feel like I do” kicks in and does absolutely nothing to dispel such things! Buoyant singalongs ensue, and basically remain constant for the rest of the night!
It’s always an interesting thing when a singer is in two bands at the same time and “Let the Sin Begin” definitely leaned on the sound of “Halo” by Soil and was danced to with similar enthusiasm. Prominent on this were the drums, leading the charge, the sound seemingly elevated slightly presumably to keep everyone tight in the midst of performance fervour! The urge to “make some noise” seems a tad redundant as we’re already operating as an autonomous collective and not remotely repressed!
Easing things down a little was “37 Stiches”, which was the closest we got to “More Than Worthless” which last time I saw brought myself and the lass with me to tears. It’s not the same but still impactful, lyrically and acoustically pretty, although angrier than More Than Worthless. To take the edge off any pernicious angst, it was followed by “Rebel Yell”, unexpected to anyone who’d not already cunningly acquired the setlist! For anyone who’d come purely for the obvious track, or specifically for the previous two bands, this was doubtless a welcome hint of the familiar, played with vim and vigour, complete with a decent solo and entertaining bridge. Contrastingly. “Sermon” was for me the surprise of the night. An angry metal soliloquy berating God, and his conspicuous absence at the times when most needed it touched me more than a cathol.. no no no Al! Don’t go there. Let’s just say it’d go quite nicely on a mix tape with “I’m not Jesus” by Apocalyptica and The Mission’s “Amelia” as it captures the mood it was going for with grim style.
The song of the night though for me without question was ”Tear Away”. Driven by the bass to create an air of oppression the lyrics resonated with me especially as I remembered someone I used to be close to who self-destructed, as “I don’t care about anyone else but me” repeated over and over. The lights are low, and there’s quite the atmosphere brewing as people find meaning here, relevance in the words and tune, eliciting emotional responses from the tempo and delivery perhaps a little too close to the bone for comfort on a night otherwise without a hint of rumination. When “Reminded” kicks in it’s almost a relief even though it’d be easy to continue that train of thought with the visceral malevolence of McCombs’s delivery, but instead it leads nicely into “Bodies”, a song so effectively hijacked by Psychostick that there’s a distinct chorus of “I can only count to 4” audible at least twice! The final chorus is performed with Ryan buried in a circle pit and it occurs to me after having spent years studying mental health that it’s entirely possible the subject of the song may well be telling porkies when insisting “nothing’s wrong with me!”. Greeted and sung with the reverence it deserves it finished the night’s performances off perfectly.
It’s still sopping when we disperse, while avoiding puddles which may or may not have housed watery tarts distributing swords! The girl from 15 years ago (ok perhaps 27 years now… call it artistic licence!) has headed to The Giffard, two days late for the Levellers gig which would’ve made the start of this sentence much more satisfying had she been here then, and like the rest of us, she’d come away from the evening having thoroughly enjoyed it. Three bands, all different, all well supported, and all impressive given their prior struggles the evening before. It could easily be seen as a musical holy grail..
But then if I look in a mirror I’m a grey Al too.. so lets not go there. An unholy grey Al? Sounds about right actually!
Until next time.. It’s been a pleasure!
