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Live Review
by SashaS
30-11-2003
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| Robb Flynn gets all Machine Headonistic |
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Live: Machine Head + Mark Lanegan Band
Astoria + Mean Fiddler, London
Friday, November 28, 2003
Machine Head & Mark Lanegan Band on Friday
Machine Head
Astoria, London
From the first riff Machine Head are in for no-nonsense, no-gimmick, nought-but-pure Metal-is-good-enough mode. Robb Flynn, looking like an archetypal Rock-God with his spread legs, head cocked, firing chords like it were manna of Armageddon, and his cohorts are certainly backing him with brutal force and at a ripping pace…
Machine Head’s new resolve and new no-bullshit policy has been acutely expressed on the new album, ‘From The Ashes of Empires’ and it is these songs that form the bulk of tonight’s show. Still, some goodies from the past are aired, as well, going back to the second album, ‘The More Things Change…’ (1997) for ‘Ten Ton Hammer’ and ‘Take My Scars’, to the debut ‘Burn My Eyes’ (1994) for ‘None But My Own’, ‘Blood For Blood’ and ’Davidian’ and, of course, to ’The Burning Red’ (1999) for ‘The Blood The Sweat The Tears’, ’Message In A Bottle’ and the title track.
Flynn is in fine voice, shouty and engaging, the rest of the band are simply turbo-charged, riding into the HM land that time appears to avoid for something lighter and more radio-friendly. Machine Head are extremists who do not like to obey any diktats from any quarters and honesty is their credo. They do a risible version of Iron Maiden’s ‘Number of The Beast’…
After a decade of music making behind them, Head-sters deal in powerful, huge and intense tunes that slaps you like a monolith, solos that are exciting but never indulgent, songs that talk instead of members… On a stage that required no extra dressing [like Marilyn Manson, for instance, to highlight ‘concept’ and cover for musical shortcomings], with lights bordering on frugality, the band simply delivered a wallop of violent tunes!
We wish this San Franciscan mob a Merry Chrimbo and many more Happy New Years; bands like Machine Head are required as much as water!
*
Mark Lanegan Band
Mean Fiddler, London
There is nothing nicer than arranging your own support entertainment and we elected to visit artist who was playing in the cellar of The Astoria, otherwise known as The Mean Fiddler. [Wonder what used to be stored here in the long gone days when it was Crosse&Blackwell Jam Factory?] Anyway, Mark Lanegan Band paid us a short visit to mark the release of their EP ‘Here Comes That Weird Chill (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities)’ and it was on the opposite end of Machine Head’s blast.
Lanegan, member of Queens Of The Stone Age stoner-rockers, is interested in softer, dreamier, psychedelic country-blues rockers, that he plays with delightful abandon. He is happy to be standing there [no, not much movement] and deliver songs as it were an intimate affair. The fact that it is - is what makes it even more surreal.
The singer, looking somewhat like Paul Jones [during the Manfred Mann’s days] going on Tom Waits, hardly talks but it is his magpie-creativity that fuels the artistic engine along, from ‘… Weird Chill’ to ‘Beggar‘s Blues’, off the ‘Whiskey For The Holly Ghost’ album (1994). His new long-player is due in May and promises to be worth investigating for the emotional investment.
A well-rounded evening to launch a stormy weekend.
SashaS
30-11-2003
Machine Head album ‘From The Ashes of Empires’ is available now on Roadrunner
Mark Lanegan Band’s LP ‘Here Comes That Weird Chill (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities)’ is available now on Beggars Banquet
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