Gig: Jeff Martin & The Armada @ QUT Guild Bar 15/11/2008

Written on the 19th of November 2008

The anticipation to get a taste of Jeff Martin’s latest heavy-rock assault was mounting as the eastern intro rang out of the speakers for Brisbane’s debut of The Armada. With only two tracks heard prior to the night, I was eager to hear if the full banquet would rise to the quality level of past works. They opened with the smashing new single ‘Morocco’ before pulling out a surprise with the heavy as fuck ‘Overload’.

By this early point in the game it was already more than clear Martin had put together a new band that meant some serious business. Newies ‘Chinese Whispers’ (no, not the classic prog-metal song by Alchemist), ‘A Line in the Sand’ and ‘Broken’ continued on the rock fest, before a transition into a small acoustic section lowered the collective heart-rate a little. They smashed back into the main course providing another welcome surprise with ‘Cathartik’, proving that Martin doesn’t need to rely on greatest hits to represent the power of his craft. A few more songs debuted before I was brought back to the core of my obsession with a monolithic rendition of ‘Coming Home’ (spliced with a section of ‘Fire in the Head’), which completely stole the show. The night came to end on quite a high note with crowd favourite ‘Sister Awake’, which merged sections of ‘Save Me’ and Massive Attack’s ‘Inertia Creeps’ into the middle, before being extended into a glorious percussion jam and then coming back full circle. It’s been a long wait to see Martin in the company of a heavy-rock band again, but it was well worth it. The Armada are surely a group that have many great things ahead of them (Jake 3).