Review: Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Fleece

How do you stand out in the increasingly crowded stoner/doom metal genre? Well, first bag yourself an eye-catching name. Then cultivate a vaguely sinister, interview-dodging occulty mystique, with plenty of covetable merch. You won’t get much further without some music, preferably putting a distinctive spin on time-honoured Sabbathy riffage. Voila: Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats – the most lysergic act to crawl out of Cambridge since Syd Barrett went doolally.

But first, Spiders. You can’t fault this quartet’s work ethic, but in the field of female-fronted Swedish hard rockers they trail a very poor second to Blues Pills. Indeed, it all sounds a bit pub rock, with forgettable songs and little else to hold the attention.

In a series of imaginative cut-price lo-fi found-footage promos, Uncle Acid (aka Kevin Starrs) and his hairy, degenerate Deadbeats have established their personae as sallow, dopesick post-Altamont burn-outs forging heavy metal in the white heat of disillusion as the love generation implodes. It’s a fully-realised vision that reached its apotheosis on concept albums Mind Control and The Night Creeper, the former wallowing in family values of the Manson persuasion (or “Charlie boy” as Starrs refers to him affectionately on stage).

The Fleece is absolutely heaving as they amble on, springing the first of many surprises for anyone who hasn’t seen or heard them before. You’d have thought, for example, that this stuff would lend itself to a retina-scorching light show of Hawkwind proportions. But instead, the stage is lit by static green lights with a fog machine working overtime to enhance the creepy atmosphere. Then there’s the music, opening with the striking sonic diptych of The Night Creeper‘s scene-setter Waiting for Blood and Mind Crawler from Mind Control. Yes, the songs are long, with crushingly heavy, repetitive hypnotic riffs and a light garnish of psychedelia, but the vocals are all sweet, Beatles-esque two- and three-part harmonies carried low in the mix. The result is weirdly catchy Healter (sic) Skelter Metal, if you will. When Starrs and Yotan Rubinger break out the lumbering melodic guitar duels, it’s like Neil Young and Crazy Horse gone over to the dark side. If only the avuncular sickos’ over-rated peers Electric Wizard sounded this good.

An extended encore kicks off with the magnificent Melody Lane, arguably Uncle Acid’s finest song, and concludes with the crowd-pleasing none-more-Hammer Horror Withered Hand of Evil. Intriguingly, despite a grand social media build-up to a big announcement, next summer’s Temples Festival has yet to announce its headliners. The organisers really ought to look no further.