I had been waiting quite a while for Earth Tongue's debut album, after seeing them play live supporting the Mermaidens in Dunedin a couple of years back.
Gussie Larkin, of Mermaidens, gets a lot heavier in Earth Tongue and gets to express her inner metal head with drummer Ezra Simons backing her up on vocals as well. The album itself is great but I was a little disappointed with it at first as I thought it was not quite as wild as I was expecting after that live set I saw. They had not long got back from touring the new album in Europe earlier in the year.
They had two other bands in tow for this gig. First up was Enfire, a local Christchurch three piece who I had kinda seen play at the Doomfest a couple of years ago, but I was distracted during their set and didn't hear much of their music. They kicked things off with a very impressive and longish instrumental heavy post rock kinda thing that really made me take notice and they were really rocking out with hair flailing all over the place causing me to think they needed a bigger stage to accommodate all that flying hair. The rest of their set was great heavy metal type rock and I really enjoyed the bass player.
Night Lunch were completely new to me. Turns out they were up from Dunedin. A duo of drums and a block of wood. The drummer, supporting a Jack Goodhue mullet, sounded fantastic and wild and he was supporting his mate who had a 4 foot long piece of four by two timber with one or two strings stretched across it with pickups and wired through a small console. He hit the string with a drumstick and produced an awesome and heavy sound. I was very impressed with the post industrial sound they produced and they reminded me a bit of Wellingtons Wax Chattels. A great alternative band.
So Earth Tongue hit the stage and played a great set. I think I enjoyed their live versions even more than the record. It was heavy and bruising and Gussie plays her guitar in a lower register perhaps to make up for no bass and the drumming was great and hard and overall it was a wonderful sonic experience. The LP sounds even better now I have seen them play the songs live. The place was sold out and an encore was demanded but the crowd and so they did play one more song. A great night with three great band.
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