Graveltones @ The Waterfront
A hollowed out buzz-fest that’s churned out with fervour
What’s that sound? Encroaching thunder, perhaps? Not quite. Leave your raincoats on the hook. It’s just Mikey Sorbello pummelling away at his drum skins – though you’d be forgiven for thinking that Thor himself was whipping up a raging weather front and sending it tearing towards East Anglia. Pitched alongside the powerful Australian is guitarist Jimmy O who wails away at his microphone and rips lick after ferocious lick from his fretboard to lead the duo through an hour and a half of fizzy blues rock with all the long drops and sharp lifts you’d expect but with a fistful of sandpaper grandeur that maybe you wouldn’t.
Devoid of the basslines that usually rumble through venues to whack you in the chest, The Graveltones build a sound with the middle scooped out; a hollowed out buzz-fest that’s churned out with fervour and leaves the pair drenched in their own effort. A grafting band on stage, everything falls into place even when songs get pushed together and long pauses mid-track keep the crowd on their toes, creating a mayhemic pacing that would feel off message with other bands but not here. There are times when the breakdowns can feel predictable, causing gaps where you might just spy the formula behind the bedlam, but these moments are few and it helps when, towards the end, O and Sorbello shift into a gear of intensity that moves beyond showmanship and into a pure and powerfully felt delivery of heavy noise. By cry and by crash the ‘Tones pedal the kind of rough artistry it would be hard to find anywhere else.
