A big old riff party hit Swansea on the first Saturday in October as Oxford's premier noisemakers joined some of West Wales loudest for a night of superior riffage. I went down to check it all out and make sure I was made deaf for the rest of the week.
Starting the night were Mould (8), who impressed in this year's M2TM and have refined their sludge driven crush with countless gigs this year. Pulling their sound from the tar pits of the NOLA sound, this is sludge with blackened vocals that will definitely get your head banging if you're a fan of Eyehategod.
Their usually slow moving low end steamroll is punctuated by hardcore aggression which got the pits starting and the melodic guitar lines often counter the fuzzy bottom end, this black(end) Mould always manage to impress, and with a bit more refining and stage presence they could really be ones to watch in the local scene this coming year.
Next though are a band who you should have been watching for a long time, but always seem to be on the fringes, thankfully though this is changing with their debut album just being released and a renewed focus on playing shows as a much louder four-piece, who have gelled perfectly.
Heavy On The Ride (8) are probably the slickest band in the scene, with an overture of Kyuss/QOTSA style garage stone rock, drenched in psychedelic desert vibes and dual vocal harmonies, drawing from their eclectic debut album it was a set of some old favourites and newer treats for anyone that may not have been at their album launch shows.
Happily taking the spot as outright heavy turned into groove, Heavy On The Ride allowed for a bit of a transition in the night, from the sludge to the desert rock, we were moving though all the sub genres of the stoner scene before landing on Swansea's answer to Clutch; Suns Of Thunder (9) took the stage and kicked out the jams, like the veteran rockers that they are.
There's always an expecting of big riffs, big laughs and some grooving when the Suns come to town and that exactly what we got, the songs are crafted around the dual vocal/guitar inteplay, while in the business end the bass and drums lock everything down.
There's always an expecting of big riffs, big laughs and some grooving when the Suns come to town and that exactly what we got, the songs are crafted around the dual vocal/guitar inteplay, while in the business end the bass and drums lock everything down.
The between song banter was just as killer as the songs themselves, the band always having a sense of not having a clue what they're doing but also being a slick unit. I dare you not to move when the Suns start laying it down and heck you may even get some pit etiquette advice! Always a good time with Suns Of Thunder and I don't see that changing soon.
Speaking of good times, some of my favourite gig memories were with the legendary Orange Fucking Goblin Baby! I've never seen them play a bad gig and likewise I've never seen Desert Storm (9), who I would consider to be the heirs apparent to OFG, play a bad show either, and this Swansea headline set didn't change anything as they took to the stage with the swagger and confidence of a band who knows how good they are.
Leaning heavily on their new album Buried Under The Weight Of Reason, Desert Storm play with the same reverence for classic metal and Black Sabbath as OFG did, full bore heavy that transcends into woozy psych/stoner and thundering doom, the band manage to fuse all these elements brilliantly.
Throwing it back to some earlier riffs for those of us that have followed the band for a while, Desert Storm really could have played anything and the crowd would have gone home happy, the riffs were colossal, the vocals booming, this was a carpet bombing of heavy groove from the Oxford riffslingers and Swansea loved every minute of it.
*As an aside that's two gigs in two weeks at The Bunkhouse and my love for this venue grows every time, the sound system is ace, the bar area is conformable and has some great beverage choices (though a couple more Non Alcoholic options would go a miss).
The gig space too has had some of the structural issues addressed and everything seems to be moving in the right direction, please go out and support this venue and the events they put on as you don't know what you've got in an alternative space that cares about it's patrons and venue.*
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