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.