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Live Review
by SashaS
3-12-2001
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| Static (left) and Riz(la) Story |
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Live: Kerrang! Festival 2001 (Day 2)
Astoria, London
Sunday, December 2, 2001
Mark Lanegan gets overshadowed by the supporting cast at the K! Festi
The second evening of, by now, the annual Kerrang! magazine HM Festi presented a rather strange line-up that rocked interestingly if offbeat-ly. Also, it was an all-American affair that is strange when the US musicians find it frightening to fly over…
Anyone’s stage appearance with bassist Static’s head wrapped in a gauze-like ‘scarf’ and singer/guitarist Riz Story’s elaborate hairdo signalled that this is not going to be your bog-standard HM feast. Kicking the evening with an aggressive attitude and music that is wide-ranging and refusing to conform to a format which appeared to shock the audience nurtured on straightforward intensity of digestible soundbites the nu-metal has been churning out for a decade and a day. Not often a reviewer thinks of arpeggio at a ‘metal’ gig…
Story’s trio prefer a vocabulary of free-form rock where gigantic bass-drums combo is decorated with innovative guitar phrases and plenty of poses – there is something theatrical about them although they have none of their usual props or back projections. A short selection of material from the self-titled album, ‘Peace Love And Toxic’, ’Running Dry’ and ‘Giving Thrills’ being the highlights, they call ‘Maximum Acid’ on account of its psychedelic echo but it is a rather complex sonic picture altogether.
Masters Of Reality’s line-up sports two Queens Of The Stone Age members, guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri, firing riffs aplenty for tonal trippings. These are songs that are hard-rocking but have incredibly catchy choruses with lyrics and vocals that are serious…ly frivolous. There is a sense of playfulness to it all but with (musical) twists that witness music bouncing between laid-back, intense and spaced-out. Even some elements of Indian sounds enrich this really fun music with song titles like ‘Why The Fly Eats The Fly’ (singer Chris Goss dedicating it to “CNN”), ‘Dinner-bell lady’…
Mark Lanegan lowers the mood down, to a more traditional-songwriting level and presents his convention-bogged music that leaves one wondering why doesn’t he realise that he’d be better off by just being a singer with Queens Of The Stone Age or getting The Screaming Trees back together. If I had been the organizer I’d have had the running order reversed…
It was a strange evening but, nevertheless, a refreshingly different one.
SashaS
3-12-2001
Anyone album 'Anyone' is out now on Raodrunner Records
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