CARCASS, UNTO OTHERS & CONJURER
The grindcore legends and their openers deliver the goods in feral fashion.
Lee Harper
Sometimes, I get talked into going to gigs that I wouldn’t normally consider. Sometimes, the act I think I am going to enjoy most disappoints me and the act I expect to enjoy least blows me away. Those things were both true tonight.
First up, the band I least expected to enjoy, Rugby four piece CONJURER. The drumming mixes d-beat, blastbeats and footwork and the guitars range from clean, gentle, picking to doom powerchords and light-speed riffing, thankfully without the fretboard squealing that ruins so much of this type of music for me.
Both vocalists are equally incomprehensible but equally brutal. With the bassist ending the set closer to the sound desk than the stage, playing in a circle mosh, Conjurer are not for the faint hearted but were my band of the night.
The gothic/death-rock stylings of UNTO OTHERS is the type of thing I am most likely to listen to at home. Indeed, I’ve listened to the albums Mana and Strength a fair bit and enjoyed them both. Tonight’s set was disappointing, however. The subtleties of the recorded work were lost and it all resembled something a bit too late 80s MTV Headbangers Ball/Sunset Strip glam metal meets early 2000s Finnish goth-rock fodder for me.
Still, I can’t fault their commitment or technical ability, a fair proportion of the crowd seemed to love them and a couple of people near me were bellowing along to every word, so what do I know?
Despite being a fan of both early Napalm Death and Electro Hippies, with whom Bill Steer (guitar) and Jeff Walker (vox and bass), respectively, played before joining forces in CARCASS back in the mid-80s, I had never seen the headliners before tonight.
The sound was as fearsome and the playing as technical as I expected. Drummer Daniel Wilding and touring guitarist James Blackford fitted in perfectly. What I wasn’t expecting was what a good natured, entertaining frontman Jeff Walker turned out to be. His gentle ribbing of Wilding’s solo and the good-natured piss taking of the crowd were infinitely preferable to the none-more-evil role-playing to the point of satire malarkey beloved of so many extreme metal practitioners.
I’d be lying if I said that Carcass were the best thing I have seen so far this year but I am more than glad I was talked into coming to this. Carcass more than lived up to their billing as grindcore legends and anyone with a penchant for extreme music should check ’em out.
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