CROWBAR, INHUMAN NATURE & KULK
Heavy music is alive and well.
Off the back of three gigs in a row where the supports have blown away the headliners, will Crowbar at the Waterfront Studio buck the trend?
Local duo Jade and Thom AKA KULK open the evening in fine style with their trademark sludge-drone-noise rock. Heavy and intense, theirs’ is a noise both fierce and fearsome. I suspect that they will have been new to most of this audience but, like their support for Pigs X7 in Ipswich about a year ago, they soon have a good proportion of the audience on side. Roll on the new album.
INHUMAN NATURE offer up the kind of late-80s thrash metal that I would have loved as a teenager. I am hearing the Germanic likes of Kreator whilst my gig buddies mention the Bay Area sounds of Metallica, Exodus and Testament. Being honest, I left my love for this kinda thing behind long ago and I won’t be rushing to hear it at home. That isn’t to say it is bad. The playing is good, albeit the solos are a bit too widdley for my tastes, and the band are definitely into what they are doing. The hints of UK street-Punk/hardcore are definitely up my street. There’s some showmanship - an intro tape that recalls Manowar, Christopher Barling waving a battle axe around in a faintly ludicrous manner, without either the conviction or menace of Bob Vylan and the baseball bat - but it is all good, denim-leather-and-studs fun.
CROWBAR start their set with little fanfare, taking to the stage whilst Annapurna by OM is playing over the PA, tuning up and kicking into Burn Your World. I’m pretty certain that this is the same line-up as I was blown away by at this very venue back in 2018 - sole constant member Kirk Windstein on vox and guitar, drummer Tommy Buckley, lead guitarist Matt Brunson and bassist Shane Wesley - but with a history as convoluted as theirs it is hard to be sure. Whatever, whilst they don’t impress me as much as last time, they still deliver a set of thoroughly enjoyable, sludgy, doomy metal. Crowbar are not so much about the songs, even though there were several people bellowing along to almost every song, as about the riffs and the mood. The faster stuff recalls Motörhead more than I remember - but maybe that was just the subliminal impact of Windstein’s tee - and the band are as tight as the sound is dense.
Crowbar may not be taking this sound into new territory in the same way as, say, Sunn 0))) or Amenra, but there’s something life affirming and strangely joyous at seeing a band like this playing to an audience that ranges in age from teens to, well, those whose teens are long behind them and who happily throw themselves into the mosh pits that break out.
Obviously, none of the bands tonight are for everyone but all are well worth checking out of you like your sounds heavy and, in the case of both Crowbar and Inhuman Nature, on the old school side.
