Vein + Higher Power + Narrow Head
The point ought to be made that I had never (until last night) been to a hardcore punk gig, nor had I listened to much. The evening had unmatched viscerality and primality. The appeal, to me, was unfamiliar and surreal – the best mix.
After entering quite a sparse, quiet Waterfront Studio ‘Narrow Head’ came on stage – they had a relatively mellow grunge-y sound, they definitely maintained some level of melody and elicited some sort of light to heavy head banging. They were good, but perhaps not as engaging as the joint headliners Higher Power and Vein.
Higher Power sped the night up a bit, the diverse crowd started to get more into it as the moshing got more cultish and violent- fists and feet flying in every direction. Jimmy Wizard armed with his Green Day tee and microphone addressed the crowd like a Satanic preacher from a very unholy pulpit. The guitars crunched and screeched away on the foundation of a rumbling bass.
Despite the size of the stage, the bands all seemed to have no quarrel with it, in fact it likely helped the atmosphere, plus the moshers still managed to cover a remarkable amount of ground despite the size.
Vein were intense, and very memorable- the energy, power and viciousness guaranteed that. A wall of noise, complex drums, a deep rumbling bass and guitar created a persistent feeling of threat, no doubt complemented by the animalistic, irate thrashing in front of the stage.
Midway through one of the tracks, Jeremy Martin (guitar) scaled the eaves of the Waterfront Studio, hanging by his legs above the chaos beneath. Vocalist Anthony DiDio showed off his lungs, he screamed as loud as possible while Jon Lhaubouet (bass) maintained a wide smile throughout, admiring the sonic carnage no doubt.
Despite never seeing a gig like this and being completely unfamiliar with this sort of punk I was pleasantly surprised – the cathartic nature of seeing people screaming along, going berserk or simply being mesmerised by what was happening was astonishing.
The eclecticism possible in Norwich is often underappreciated, last night most definitely showed that you could see a worthy variety of stuff. As an end note: everyone should, at some point, go to see Vein.
