Wednesday 10th October 2001, Bedford Esquires.
When SickleBack arrived onstage they looked like the archetypal gurnge band - all ripped jeans and greasy long hair. Howveer, as soon as they started playing they began to SOUND exactly like a typical grunge band. Imagine Nirvana without the passion and contrasting violence of Kurt's songwriting, and you'll know exactly what I mean. This was their first ever gig though, and they didn't do too badly on stage, with only a slight nervousness coming through. They also had a set of oroiginal material, which is more than I can say about a lot of new Bedford bands. Hopefully they'll improve with time, but for now, they just sound like typical Nirvana wannabes.
Coming onstage to a barrage of industrial samples, Stressed Kim did not live upto the violence of their intro. Their music did not suffer for it though, as it was a rather original mix of art rock, noise, industrial and the occasional indie touch. Basically, a more melodic rock based version of NIN... Not very heavy, but good nevertheless. I have seen them before and tehy sounded much heavier - at this gig the distorted guitar was too low in the mix.
And now, onto Borderline, who are quickly becoming one of the brightest local punk hopes. As good as any other local skatepunk band, these guys are only 14/15 so if they don't make it with Borderline, the members are so good already that they'll definitely make it with some other band in a few years time. They have charisma, stage presence and decent songs, and even if a lot of their stuff is quite formulaic skatepunk, they do it well. They occasionally seemed slightly disheartened, but that's unsurprising considering the shitty low turnout for this midweek gig. Overall, this was a typical new band night - fuck all people and an uninspiring atmosphere, coupled with the lack of any truly heavy bands to get everyone going. However, it did showcase three totally disparate elements of the local rock scene, so there is some hope for the future if bedford continues to produce bands as original as Stressed Kim and as promising as Borderline.
Pete Burov