Thursday 30 August 2012

Live Review - COMBICHRIST W/ Jayce Lewis and Surgyn @ The Electric Ballroom 28.06.12

The first band on was Dundee duo ‘Surgyn’, the pair came on wearing surgical aprons and some weird and wonderful medical paraphernalia. Armed with a mac full of synths, loops and drum beats the pair took turns at singing the lead vocals.

The vocals were harsh but still easily decipherable, but because of the lack of live instruments it did feel a bit like a karaoke session in places, that being said I enjoyed Surgyn’s set and most people were up and dancing by the end. Their best song was ‘Aesthetics [are a moral imperative]’, which had a catchy and easily memorable chorus.

The main support act was ‘Jayce Lewis’. The first thing I have to say is I think he needs to rethink his stage name, because to me it sounds like a rap artist and his music is far from it! Lewis writes, produces and plays all of his own music on his album but was joined on stage by session musicians for the live performance. Lewis takes a lot of inspiration from the guru of gloom Gary Numan and adds his own twist, with the use of heavy industrial drum beats and guitar riffs.

From the start Lewis’s music was infectious and had everyone moving, and it wasn’t long before Lewis leapt up on a speaker and held his guitar triumphantly above his head, lapping up the audience’s excited response.

One thing that was clear was the effort that had gone into the production and performance, Lewis had TV screens rigged up projecting dark and macabre images of himself and it looked like every detail of the performance had been carefully planned.

I really liked Lewis’s brand of dark rock and industrial influenced music, there is something unique about him and I’d certainly go and see him again. The stand out song for me was ‘Solitaire’ because of the incorporation of raw, tribal drumming and cleverly placed synths.

 I wasn’t too sure about headliners ‘Combichrist’ because having listened to a few of their songs online I thought they sounded a little like an electronic Steel Panther, using very simple loops and monotonous use of the words “Fuck” and “Slut”.

From the first song Combichrist played it was obvious the audience were going to enjoy themselves. The music was aggressive and delivered with a furious passion and the audience responded accordingly with frenetic moshing and dancing. I’m not going to lie, I’m 5ft’2 in my little cotton socks and when the third person wearing cyber locks and huge New Rock boots knocked me over and spilt their pint over me, I had a panic attack and had to exit the main crowd. Never fear, I sat at the side and listened to the rest of the set unimpeded by the rest of the audience.

Although Combichrist had a unique line up which involved 3 different drummers, for me their songs sounded very bland and generic. There was nothing that hooked me in and kept me on my toes clamouring for more.

There were a couple of standout songs, but they stood out for the wrong reasons, ‘Fuck Machine’ and ‘This shit will fuck you up’ both have uninventive, repetitive loops and feature misogynistic lyrics such as “You’re such a dirty whore, you’re such a fucking slut.” and “You are a fuck toy, you get what you deserve.” Whilst I assume these were meant to tantalise and excite the audience these lacklustre songs failed to get me shouting “How do you want me? From behind, or on my knees, I am a slut, please hold me down”, back at front man Andy LaPlegua.

I think the audience really enjoyed Combichrist’s set. However I was not swayed from my original opinion. I guess it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I did enjoy the gig though because it gave me the opportunity to discover two acts I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise.

Eleanor Knight