Thirst Club Esquires Bedford 12 June 2004.
(Photo's Of The Night) - Check slide show for best results.
A night of pure Metal and guitar playing ability, billed as 4 bands for a fiver, perhaps the other quid made up for the D.J. playing some brutal metal tunes requested by visitors to this site (except Slayer – that C.D. got stolen!) (Catch him at the Hob Goblin High St. Thursdays also – cheers Paul).The flyer designed for the night had the Princess of magazine selling fodder herself promoting the night, - my only concern there was ‘as long as Prince Will and Harry don’t get to see it’, but they don’t tend to get to turn up to Esquires much – ‘well I’ve never seen em’.
APE THREAD – Never fucking heard of em and based on recent experiences of unheard first bands on, wasn’t expecting much. I kind of thought it was going to be just some young band given a chance to build up the bill. – Boy were my expectations wrong. I thought they came over as quite professional and well practiced with two vocalists, the main one having both normal melodic and a predominant growling style without sounding forced and sounded really good on the sound-check before the gig also. The guitarist I noticed employed some pointing stabbing movements to the strings whilst playing. 2 Metallica numbers were covered, including a rather good version of ‘Seek and Destroy’ and as if to liven things up further. Their frontman leapt from the stage to entice some moshers up front.
As the lights dimmed on them they asked for one more song which they got – it kind of sounded like all the others but they put every effort into the performance and were surprisingly good on the night. They also have a gig at London’s Astoria coming up.
What I like most about DELICATE CHILDREN is the intensity of their gigs, they have been quite busy with gigs lately, with 5 gigs in just as many weeks, recently branching out of Bedford with a gig at Luton and even a charity event upstairs at Bedford’s George and Dragon. They actually had the most people on the door, half the crowd had come to see them – the other half split between the other 3 bands.
A bit of a change to the dynamics this time, with their bass player upfront and sharing the vocals, not sounding too confident during rehearsals and toying with the idea of wearing a mask, but by the time of the actual performance, the nervousness had gone and carried it off much better than the earlier sound-check. With bent over double movements while playing and a heavily bandaged instrument which once came in use during a nose bleed incident; its good to see a bass player not hiding in the background but more upfront and moving about more – making up for their lead (thong man) guitarist, putting everything into accuracy over showmanship, which I don’t blame him as he picks at the strings with some degree of talent instead of a cop-out boring strumming style seen in to many shit pop punk bands.
Just the one arm flapping from their capable singer since a recent collarbone injury, but no half measures in the trooper’s performance. There’s a kind of relaxed session style to the drumming sounding better than normal, but adding to an all to generic feel to the songs which seem to all sound the same after a while, making me feel as though they need something different and special to pull out of the hat in order to add some variation.
When I first heard ECHILON BLUE were asked to play the Metal night. I went down to their home base in Luton to see them and soon realized they were a top Luton band, - a class act in fact, with one of the best singers on the night, with more mixing of growling and melodic styles making a refreshing change to all the growly bands I’ve been hearing lately. Their guitarist stands out well as a focal part of the band – always with a fag in his mouth and ruffled suit looking suspiciously like a play figure rag doll, ‘fantastic guitarist though’ along with their dread-locked drummer (who my friend Ruth quite fancied) put in every effort to the show, while using speakers to clamber on and sing. Having seen how well they go down in Luton and the amount of fans they obviously have there. I was surprised they didn’t bring many down with them; sharing the same amount of people as the first band, who I think hail from Leighton Buzzard.
What an amazing headliner CERBERUS were. They’ve been playing some top shows where they come from in Milton Keynes recently, including the Download warm-up night at The Pits and on the bill along with some of the best Thrash acts.
I thought they were the best on the night, although surprisingly proving M.K. to be too far to travel from, had the lowest votes on the door. I managed to have a chat with the singer/guitarist earlier, who I recognised from a photo in the M.K. version of the Go section of their local paper. They seem to be getting sought after for great gig opportunities and showed themselves as a pure unadulterated (throw them horns) METAL outfit, although their drummer looked bored with all the clichéd iconic crowd responses, but their Zak Wild like guitarist/singer like a human windmill of long blond hair united in a proper thrash metal band, succeeded in getting the crowd going.
Cheers to everyone who came down, Calvin for his organization and flyer design and to EVERY band that put every effort in being so good on the night.
Keith www.bedfordmetal.tk
Review Two added 09/07/02
If you’re going to play in front of a dodgy papier-mache mascot, you should at least attach it properly. One of the first golden rules where good metal is concerned, and one that ApeThread clearly neglected to consider. Failed by their own shoddy stage-prop, their set began a little shakily, the drummer consistently dragging behind the rest of the band. Eventually tightening up, ApeThread delivered a near-perfect rendition of Metallica’s classic ‘Seek and Destroy’, and immediately seemed to gain confidence. Despite an increasingly obvious imbalance of talent, the last few songs in the set were delivered with accuracy and style, and the frontman, breaking yet another of the sacred metal-commandments, climbed onto the empty dance floor in a last ditch attempt to get people moving. Putting down your guitar and indulging in a bit of mic. -posing is always going to be risky, but ApeThread did it anyway, and it sounded a bit pants. So, despite ignoring time-honoured rules like they never existed, Apethread produced half an hour of the most pretentious wank I have ever heard, and THAT, is good metal.Trying to ignore what pissed me off so much about them last time, I proceeded to spend the NEXT half-hour searching desperately for something positive about Delicate Children. More than ever, I noticed that their sound is based heavily around the use of the quiet/loud dynamic. In an attempt to flick between the two extremes instantly, both bass and guitar use heavy distortion, and the singing members make use of a screaming, broken vocal. Fair enough. People do it all the time and it works just fine. But not for Delicate Children, and now I am going to tell you why. It is simply not enough to flick a pedal on and wave your hair about a bit. Listening to Delicate Children is something akin to being slapped in the face on the verge of a particularly heavy yawn, cruelly denied of the pleasure you deserve. The focus of the problem is probably the drums, which it has been said before, have a laid-back quality to them, which remains constant throughout each song. Despite some neat kick-work, it was often simply a lack of cymbals that let down the heavier bits. The vocals are in this respect much more effective, as are the guitars. Its not as if they are sloppy either...In fact, if Delicate Children didn’t sound shit, they would be ok. If that makes ANY sense at all.....
Third up, Echelon Blue subjected Esquires to half an hour of clinically executed funky post-hardcore. Technically, this band were the strongest of the night, with the kind of tight riffing that would make any self-respecting metal-head piss his pants in seconds, and Maroon5-a-like melodies that seemed to mix perfectly with RageAgainstTheMachine-style heavy sections. With not much support in attendance, their crowd interaction seemed limited to a couple of blokes at the front, who were treated to a succession of sexual invitations and saucy winks from the muscle-bound frontman. If I had to say something critical about this band (which I do), this area of their performance would be the weakest, although musically, they are one of the most exciting local acts I have seen in a while. I couldn’t think of an interesting way of writing about Cerberus, I really like em and I thought they were awesome.
Review by Joe Chritchley www.bedfordmetal.tk