Review: Crobot, Exchange

For those of us of a rockin’ disposition who aren’t given to hollow social media gestures or solemn silences, the best defiant response to those Islamist terrorist cretins whose attack claimed the lives of so many of our own is simply to carry on rocking. This big value triple-bill provided ample opportunity to do just that.

By coincidence, Buffalo Summer were due to share a festival stage with the Eagles of Death Metal this week. These regular visitors to Bristol are guaranteed to get any party started – even a party taking place on a drizzly Sunday evening in Old Market – with a brisk 30 minute set of cheerily upbeat, groove-heavy (thanks mostly to some monster, ribcage-rattling bass lines from Darren King) Led Zep filtered through the Little Angels. With song titles like A Horse Called Freedom and Down to the River, they’re clearly inspired by the majestic wide open plains of their native Swansea.

Texans Scorpion Child had a grim time when they played here on last year’s Lords of the Riff Tour. They’d lost two members on the eve of leaving for Europe, were plagued with an appalling sound, and hamstrung themselves with a poorly sequenced set. This time, everything went right. Aryn Jonathan Black is a hip-thrusting, microphone-swinging belter of the old school, going walkabout among the audience and cheekily snaffling some girl’s bobble hat, while the addition of keyboard player Aaron Vincent’s Jon Lord-style flourishes brings a welcome extra dimension to their sound, subtly repositioning Scorpion Child on the cusp of psychedelia and early heavy metal. The impressive new material showcased tonight suggests this will be a mightily fruitful direction for their upcoming second album.

Rock radio fave Polygon of Eyes closes the set, as it always should have done. Now what they need to do is bag themselves a major tour support like tonight’s headliners, who’ve benefited from a hefty leg-up thanks to Black Label Society.

Crobot hit the stage running and don’t let up for a moment, inspiring a sea of headbanging from Legend of the Spaceborne Killer onwards. They’re quite a spectacle. Engaging red-jacketed singer and occasional harmonica player Brandon Yeagley, who appears to have purchased Bob Seger’s old 1974 sideburns on eBay, threatens the front rows with hair whiplash injury; guitarist Chris Bishop attempts to clamber aboard his amp, only to find that the Exchange’s ceiling is so low that he’s forced to play in a stooped position; and Jake Figueroa, who does an exceptionally good impression of someone who’s completely stoned out of his gourd, is the most animated bass player you could hope to witness, playing his high-slung instrument like a jazzer who’s overjoyed at being given permission to rock.

We get every single song from their sole album, the high-energy rush of Fortean groove metal that is Something Supernatural, thunderous highlights including Cloud Spiller, La Mano de Lucifer, Chupacabra (by my reckoning, only the second song to be written about the cryptid goat-sucker), The Necromancer and minor US chart hit Nowhere to Hide. Queen of the Light takes the pace down just a notch, offering the briefest of opportunities to pause for breath. Fleshing out the headline set are no fewer than five new songs, each of which is treated with delight rather than reluctant applause and a piss break, standouts being Serpent Shepherd and the unexpectedly funky Play It Cool. A sweat-drenched Yeagley promises they’ll be back very soon. Don’t be surprised if word-of-mouth has multiplied their audience considerably by then.