The first night of a trifecta of gigs for the labour weekend holiday, and first up we have Wellington's Spook The Horses with, I believe, a delayed tour in support of their fourth album. This album sees the return to the heavier music and screaming vocals of their second album after the more subtle record"People Use To Live Here"
This was my first visit to Arcadia, a retro gaming parlor with bar and stage for live events. I got to play my first game of pinball in over 30 years between the first and second bands. Talking of the bands, first up was Troika, a local three piece that plays atmospheric heavy post rock. I had seen them before and have one of their CDs which I enjoy. Tonight their set was enjoyable juxtaposition of light and heavy as they ripped through their set. The lead guitar was a bit drowned out by the bass and drums, I would have liked to hear a bit more of what he was playing as he is a good guitarist had they have some good tunes.
So after my game of pinball, I settled in to watch the next band. Blindfolded And Lead To The Woods are another local band, a five piece with twin guitar, bass and drums with the inevitable growled/screamed vocals for this Death Metal outfit. I wasn't aware of them until this evening although they have two CDs out and appear to have been playing since at least 2011. Probably my first experience of this type of music live and it certainly was bloody heavy. They started their set with an almost Floydian piece of noise/drone with their backs to the audience and I thought this could be rather interesting, but then they turned around and plunged in to their relentless wall of heavy noise, shredding their guitars and appropriating the required stances. I didn't mind the wall of noise they produced but if course it wasn't easy to make out too much of what they were playing and so the songs all tended to sound similar, they had great energy. I think I prefer this music live than recorded.
Spook the Horses took the stage around 11 PM, also a five piece but with three guitarists including the singer. I was thinking how much more of a wall of noise this was going to be but was quite surprised when they ripped into their first track how much more I could hear what they were playing. The first two tracks were relentlessly stunning and had me moving and nodding to the energy as much as my battered body allowed. The screaming vocals were better than I expected and the singer is very good at that style. The middle of the short set was intense but seem to loose a little of the clarity of the first couple of numbers, but the last couple of numbers really lifted it back up, I believe one of the songs was "Inheritance" which is the closing track in the new record and it is brilliant. I do find this sort of music a little difficult to recognize the songs from the record but that one stood out. This band far exceeded my expectation of them live and really took it to the next level on several songs. Great gig.
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