Music / American
Review: Effigy Weekender
Metal is at its best when it veers off-piste. In Bristol, team Effigy, a small clan of riff-savvy promoters, are the most surefooted guides on expeditions into the hinterlands of heaviosity. These industrious advocates of noise are experts at tracking down the fiercest, most unique axe-wielding talent from both home and abroad, and have staged some of the most notoriously lairy gigs the west country has probably ever been privy to.
Ostensibly, this two-day riff love-in is a warm up for some of this summer’s meatier events, including Bristol’s very own premier post-metal pageant ArcTanGent, but thanks to the top-drawer line-up and unflagging levels of intensity on offer this weekender is a tasty main-event in its own right. The wealth of quality acts on display throughout is staggering, with many of the bill’s littler-known acts outmuscling the bigger-hitters.
Friday evening finds an abundance of duos and trios that, despite their slim packages, could shake the very foundations of hell. Male-female two-piece sludge-mongers Monolithian make other “rock ‘n’ roll” duos like the White Stripes look like Sooty and Sweep. The pair’s filth-encrusted strain of doom is ludicrously tight and their fine line in crushingly drawn-out breakdowns doubtless ensured that most skulked off with soiled trousers.
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There’s a buzz around Whores. The Atlanta-based noiseniks, who mine a similarly fuzzy seam to Metz, have already built a solid following despite this being the first time to step onto these shores. And the trio immediately make up for lost time, flying into action like an attack dog let off its chain. Their taut, snapping songs, packed with gut-slicing bass and Buzz Osborne-esque howls, are hardly technical advances in rock. But what they lack in innovation they make up in sheer brute force.
Touring their latest album Command Your Weather, the Melvins wingmen Big Business roll in like a dirty thunderstorm. So business as usual then for bassist-singer Jared Warren and sticksman Coady Willis, who kick up shudderingly loud dust clouds of psychedelic stoner rock. Bristol-based sludgy math-rockers Memory of Elephants steal the show, though, bringing a touch of devil-may-care abandon to a genre known for its almost academic-levels of po-facedness. These guys can barely contain their own ecstasy as they unleash wave after wave of furiously off-centre free-metal.
On Saturday, it’s great to see a healthy smattering of female band members, even though metal still remains a largely man-only zone.
Dead Hands’ vocalist is a dead ringer for famous couch potato Jim Royle. Yet despite his schlumpy appearance, enhanced by a tatty pair of Bermuda shorts and LED-flash trainers, he is far from a slouch. He frantically maraudes the stage like a bear with a sore head, growling and ranting uncontrollably over his band’s twisty, crusted hardcore. Birmingham’s Conjurer are positively bleak – and all the better for it. They encompass all the best bits of doom, death and black metal, linking up the contact points between Gojira, Mayhem and Neurosis. Give it time – these guys will be huge.
Another male-female duo come tearing right out of the gate in the shape of Manchester upstarts The Hyena Kill, probably the most straight-up rock unit on the bill. Three-chord thrashing is their trump card and each blast of punk fury is a surefire winner.
Forget the naysayers, team Effigy have proved yet again that the underground scene is not only thriving, but leading the way.
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