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This is a very, very heavy experience, the melodies evoke the wordless incantations of the best Magma songs, Mat Thompson the surly bass player scoops up his bass into the sound of a million sirens with one pedal, whilst grabbing that sound and looping it with another pedal, then the bastard dives back down into the depths and rips our collective guts apart with acres of boiling, thrash distorto-bass action - the man is evil. Hell, the whole sound is evil; they've come very far from early Zorn/Ruins origins, skilfully avoiding jazz wankery and free form tedium along the way. Whilst it's difficult to pinpoint what makes the whole thing work, or even what makes the whole thing enjoyable, it's easy to get lost in the sound and let yourself get pummelled as massive fuck-off riff after massive fuck-off riff builds into one glorious shitstorm. Not for the faint hearted (or the faint trousered). Santa Dog Next up is what we’ve all been waiting for - Sweep The Leg Johnny. It’s already 23:45 and I think some people have had to go already and catch the last tubes, but the hard core are still here, and afterwards I hear of nightmare journeys home that take forever. I’m here verging on the edge of being very unwell, getting hot and cold with a blocked up nose and terrible cough, but we have to make sacrifices for bands such as Sweep. How can four men make so much noise, be this tight, and rock the place to the core with a capital R? No idea but it’s great! They somehow seem even better than when they were last on our shores back last June, which really just doesn’t seem possible. Right at the start of the set Chris (guitar) climbed up onto the bar and decided to swing by one arm from the ledge in front of the stage with his guitar still swinging wildly, and managed to accidentally smack Steve (JBMTS) in the jaw with the head of his guitar. (When I asked him the reason for the swinging afterwards, he told me that he was just trying to get the crowd going - as if they needed to do that!) One new track called ‘Sometimes My Balls Feel Like Tits’ went on for about ten minutes and was simply the most brilliant thing I’ve heard in a long time. During ‘Bloodlines’ that cheeky monkey Steve, even gave me a name check. "Dreams of...silhouettes - skippy...silhouettes" while all the time giving me that scary stare of his. How I laughed - but I don’t think anyone else noticed as the vocals were very low in the mix. Thanks Steve. They impressed lots of people with this gig, with the choice quote below coming from my message board from those Ursa boys... We know they’ll recover from the experience to play again, but music is never the same after going to a Sweep gig! skippy |