Saturday 15.February 2003, Bedford Esquires.
Malicious, probably thought this line up was too
good and pulled out, leaving '2Ft. NOTHING' to start the ball rolling. Their lead singer - 'Nish', with
the Starting Line top was a particularly good front man, he had the confidence with out the
arrogance in demonstrating a good rapport with the audience and you could tell the crowd liked
him. They had a lot of fans down too see them; some making a train journey, and one, it was mentioned
had travelled up from Portsmouth.
Their main singer had a good singing voice, it had a strong, harsh but also melodic quality, and the
other guitarist also pitched in with vocals, but wasn't as good and kind of spoilt the sound. They've
played Esq. before so they have experience and ability; if they were on the previous Rock heat - they
would have had I'm sure a likelier chance of getting through. Their competition was just too high on this
bill, but I still think they had a fair go. They done a few indy covers and a cover of the 'Happy Days'
theme, which was faster and heavier (although not as much as the Nuclear Assault version). I quite liked
this band but if they could just rest their backing singer, - his guitar work was faultless though, and would still credit
him as an asset to the band.
I would like to urge this band to perservere, as they are developing an encouraging potential.
KAINE are never without the ability of getting the crowd going, they have a good strong vocal sound,
bloody heavy guitars and an experienced drummer who has also lent his talent to 'The Tendons', so he knows
what he's doing. They have a new bass player - posing with a fag in his mouth and stopping to swig his
bottle between songs, he hasn't practiced with the band long and pitched in not too badly, he has I know
had live bass experience so should have been able to mesh in to the bands ability to Kaine the crowd. They
done a strikingly rocking 'Nirvana' cover - 'Territorial Pissings', complete with an accurate sounding
vocal intro. It was also good to recognise the slight Sex Pistols riff, which made an appearance during the
set. Although playing extremely well as ever, their guitarist wasn't having a good gig, somehow cutting
his finger, bleeding down his guitar but still having to strum fast, - 'what a trooper', there was also
some technical problems with the guitar lead socket, in which a guitar swap was in order, after the one
that died on him was hurled off the side of the stage, but the crowd remained loyal and energetic to the band
throughout.
IMPACT not so much kept up the crowd momentum, they improved on it. No bass - just six strings to form their
sound,which created one of the heaviest mosh pits I've encountered at Esq. there was even a huge circle mosh going
on at one point, the crowd were just a blur of energy. The usual bouncer even disappeared at one point and returned
with a re-enforcement to oversee the crowd going ape.
This band also had a lot of fans down, all mostly wearing caps. They had quite a skilful drummer, whose technical drum
work had loads going on, in with the galloping rhythm thunder.
Their front man worked hard at wipping the crowd up in to a fury in no time. They were more hard-core punk than metal.
I'm sure if they had any c.d.'s out, they would have sold well on the night.
Why havent this band played Esquires more? If you like your music furiously fast and heavy as fuck, this is the band to
experience. Impact and Kaine went through to the next heat, later this year.
Review by Keith Pickering www.bedfordmetal.co.uk