Thirst Club Esquires Bedford. Friday 8th April 2005.
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After seeing the last two esquires packed out, including when I sang for blackout, it was rather surprising to see such an empty house. The crowd mainly consisted of punks, and female underage drinkers. To be fair, quite a tough crowd.
The opening band
High On Kites opened the night for us with some groovy, catchy riffs. This band have an awesome stage presence, they really rocked out! The guitarist and bassist seemed to change over from time to time, but both brought some cool lead riffs, & solo’s to the sound. There wasn’t much crowd response, but these guys managed to still rock out and make a good impression.
The next band up were Catharsis These guys knew what they were doing, but really had it quite tough, as the last band left with half the audience. I felt these guys really needed to loosen up a bit. There was basically no movement on stage. Personally I really think the bassist was scared. If you picked him up and hid him in a cupboard no one would actually notice! These guys have the rock, now they just need the roll! Great sound but more needed on the performance!
Before I say anything about the last bands’ performance I would personally like to buy their guitarist a pint! I swear he was the only guitarist there who used his little finger to solo! Now I know I’m being picky, but using the little finger when you solo really can influence the quality of your solo. So guys, learn from this!
The last band Cut In Quarters has that sense of new weird freshness that is only obtainable by consuming vast amounts of magic mushrooms. These guys really have a strong sound, which is only matched by their ability to rock out! The only downside was that the bassist had some small technical difficulties at the beginning but that was nobodies fault, not even George bush. You could tell that these guys really knew how to work together and equally produced some awesome music. For once the audience (which had up to this point seen about as much action as the corpses at the local morgue), started to move. It was good to see the place finally come alive. The only criticism I have of this band is: next time you want to entertain us during a technical difficulty, bring your own spoons. A great night guys.
Review by Chrisy Baby www.Blackout.org.uk
I had heard rumours that this band were supposed to be really heavy. I didn’t find this to be necessarily so. The band have recently recorded a C.D. at K2 studios but With this being their first visit to the venue this band seemed a bit nervous on stage, and it seems they were even a bit apprehensive about the bands name, having changed from Names For Enemies to the more dynamic Faster Destroy They have an almost new metal sound with the Ellen Ripley emo screams added in and almost verging on pop but with slightly more vigour, there is also a mix of mild acoustic sounds in with the bursts of energy. After a while I began thinking that their material all sounded a bit formulaic – with a slow steady start and quick bursts of screaming to follow and sounding very ‘Loveburger’ when the main sound kicked in, but overall, their songs all seemed to be too start stoppy and not having too much stage presence either; perhaps we were all too spoilt on the night with having two bands (Kites and Quarters) having such amazing front-men as singers.
I did notice however that they employed a clever use of little intricate bass work soloing in when it could. I will admit that this band put a competent effort in and you probably need to see them a few more times before getting in to them, which wouldn’t be a bad thing as they were quite good overall. Not really enough oomph for headlining, although I know that the previous band did not want to go on last to cater for their fans, making Faster Destroy more of a winding down slot.
www.myspace.com/fasterdestroy Faster Destroy Review by Keith www.bedfordmetal.tk