"A NIGHT OF BRUTAL GRIND AND METAL" - THE DOGHOUSE, DUNDEE 20-05-05 - Allergo/F.M.W./Self Made Man/Pigscum
I hadn't planned to go out at all - let alone to this. Arriving at the Doghouse, I found this crazed band delivering riffs with rifle-fire intensity and a ficus that would make a professional archer look inadequate. Eager to hear more, I sat down only to find it was the band's last number - hey ho. Turns out that this was Allergo - must try to catch them again sometime.
Anyway, beginning to become aware that this was not a night for the faint-hearted (as I still hadn't seen the posters), next up was a band I later leaned to be F.M.W. Now this band were just fantastic - they could riff their way to Heaven then Hades and back again, without blinking an eye and leaving several minor deities with ears bleeding. Their set was built around this incerdible sonic barrage in which the lead guitar woould occasionally rise above it all and solo as though the guy's life depended on it, but then it would be all heads down on the train-ride to oblivion as this mass of loud, aggressive and furious swirling, seething guitar riffs took on a life of their own as the rhythm section did its level best to pound so hard you almost expected them to disappear through the stage. At one point the band played this one track that was just so rhythmically fast and so intense that you half expected the band to explode before the end of the track. But they held it together with ease and proceeded to play this incredibly hard, fast and intense set ,but also managed to play several passages with a more dynamic approach just to show that this band is not ALL about thrash and thrash again - indeed, some of the songs really rose above many I'v heard. But the main impression was that this band not only enjoyed what they were doing but also had a sense of fun that translated itself to the audience and that's why, for me, this lot were the highlight of the night - serious about what they do, they didn't take themselves too seriously.
Next up weere Self Made Man - a quinetet with a lead vocalist who just shone like a metal messiah - you were entirely focused on this guy when the band started up as he delivered the lyrics with a passion that was intense even for this sort of music. The first thing you noticed about this lot were that they are clearly a much more "song-oriented" act in the sense that the lead vocalist clearly had a lot to say and he was gonna say it - lyrically a lot fuller than the previous band, the first track was very much a wickedly heavy brew of anthemic hardcore proportions, while subsequent tracks revealed their fondness for jerky, twisted time signiatures as the song seemed to change direction often several times within the same song! The songs here were altogether more "intricate" than F.M.W but, that said, they made up in sheer overpowering intensity what the previous band exuded in hardcore thrash fun. Their set built up to a raging inferno, with, I think, the fourth track a major slice of ultra-heavy, dense-riffing heaven, as the singer, for the next track,left the stage and proceeded to walk among us -stil hollering the lyrics like a thing possessed. All in all one storming performance that culminated in the track named after the band that ended the set on a sea of brutal intensity as the guitars, drums, bass and vocals hammered out the message.
The delightfully named Pigscum finished the evening with a relatively short set but when you hear and see the intensity that this mob put into their work, you can understand why. For a start they have a lead vocalist who you just don;t mess with - this is a guy who could put you away just by looking at you and you get the uneasy feeling that he's definitely got an attitude problem somewhere down the line and that the men in the white coats should be standing by, as, with a steely glare set firmly on the audience (god help the front row), he shouts and rages and sings his way through a massive sounding musical maelstrom, with the two guitarists on fire and scything their guitars through the air like longswords in battle, while the drummer is hammering out such punishing beats you swear that you're gonna meet your maker any second as the sheer volume takes over. Song after song is like being in the middle of a small musical nuclear explosion as your ears ring to the sound of punishing metal on an epic scale, the intensity almost scary. After about 25 minutes and a drained audience, their work is done and they stop short of pulverizing the place. Insane but incredible.