Gig: Fuck Buttons, Dead Meadow @ The Powerhouse 16/1/2009

Written on the 21st of January 2009 by The Professor

Who would’ve thought that the punctuality of a venue and not the lack of it would prove to be a problem? With doors opening at 8pm I thought an 8:40 arrival would be appropriate to catch the intriguing and esoteric Afrirampo – no such luck. It must’ve been one helluva brief set, as the crowd was piling out of the theatre as I entered. Ah well, certainly not the first reviewer to miss the first support and I doubt the last.

DC band Dead Meadow saw the potential provided by the cavernous theatre space provided to them, leaning heavily on the psychedelic end of their material for their set.  For those that haven’t heard them before they're a strange triangulation of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Kyuss – but unfortunately the only comparison I can come to for singer Jason Simon’s tone is Craig Nicholls from The Vines (sorry Jason). For the overwhelmingly white crowd this was white man rock to really knock you backwards. While at times verging on the self-indulgent, they seemed to rescue their momentum at just the right moment each time – delivering blistering solos over the top of their rock-solid rhythm section. The minimalist chatter was more than appropriate for this style of rock – letting the shredding do the talking.

Headliners Fuck Buttons were also complimented well by their performance space – with the soaring brick background and sparse lighting display amplifying the hypnotic nature of their sound. FB deviated little from their debut LP ‘Street Horrrsing’, in fact for a band whose sound is largely chaotic they were surprisingly anything but that in the live arena – appearing controlled and calm for the most part. That’s not to say they were predictable or dull, if anything it made the anticipation of the infrequent progressions almost torturous. The tribal ‘Ribs Out’ was superb – with the drumming and primal screeching against the stark backdrop of the stage combining to menace and entrance the crowd. While I can only speak for myself and not the rest of the audience, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a lot of people that experienced the same strange sort of waking dreams that occurred to me as Andrew and Ben built some of their slow burning tracks. Pleasingly they eschewed the seemingly mandatory encore – the abrupt finish waking the audience from their trance like a therapists clap. Polarising is a word that comes to mind having seen FB – but that’s what ATP is all about, pushing safety to one side and jumping headlong into something you didn’t see coming (The Professor).