The excitedly assembled audience has suddenly tensed up. Why? An incoherently, angry-as-fuck drunk who’s clearly been on the Castlemaine all day, has somehow wandered his way in.
Luckily, Metro Manila Aide are angry-as-fuck too, but thankfully possess more charm and articulacy than this 25-stone worth of gob who is heckling them.
Combining the energy and power of early Suicidal Tendencies and the powerful, rambling prosaic’s of Radio Ethiopia-era Patti Smith, MMA are astoundingly confrontational and delectably damning. (Front Man) bounds through the audience like a reneged preacher, grabbing audience members by the head and pushing them down onto the floor.
‘Geeerroofff the stage lad, yer shit…’ wails the heckler, during opening salvo (song title), an atmospheric and curt piece of prog-punk ironically bashing the inherent negativity of the home towns populace.
Brooding and altruistic, their passion and energy is intoxicating and fresh. The heckler, meanwhile, is still shouting proclamations to the contrary. It’s almost too good to be true to have a live example of the exact sort of villiage-idiot, Carlsberg culture which MMA so vehemently rail against.
Thankfully, the village-idiot has mysteriously disappeared by the time SSS take to the stage. And not a second too soon either - a mere few seconds worth of SSS’s swelteringly fast-paced thrash-metal could devour a man like that whole.
SSS are something of a Liverpool thrash institution - a fact exemplified by the heaving pit of fans who never miss a lyric to chant along with, or a pummelling drum-roll to pound their fists to.
Songs (song title, song title, and song title) are performed powerfully and feverishly, and prove the bands prowess for the heavy and the unrelenting, though the entirety of the set too, is flawless and taut. Each song a vigorously heavy purr of disorder that pounds inexorably.
The bands finely-tuned set is heightened by a tight and continual banter with the local audience, constantly reminding one to ‘pull yer keck’s up lad’ and providing the sort of comedic observations about life in Liverpool which are rewarded with high-fives and cheers every time a song finishes.
Courtesy of Rockindustry.co.uk
The band members of Fucked Up are plugged in and waiting onstage. `Damiaaaan`, bassist Sandy wails down the microphone, impatiently. `I’m sorry…` she continues, softly addressing the audience, `we’re just waiting for someone`. That someone finally arrives, bounding through the crowd to the sound of their raucous adulation.
When Fucked Up finally begin, the audience is joyfully baiting for their blood, and the band are more than willing to deliver it. The songs are furious imprints of everything that makes Punk-Rock amazing. Each one is a vigorously heavy purr of disorder that pounds inexorably and with a cocky exuberance.
The enigmatic Damian Abraham parades about the stage and floor, a sizeably shirtless sweat-fest whom the audience eagerly get up-close and personal with. He picks up members of the energetically flaying audience up over his shoulder mid-performance and bowls them back out into the pit, masterfully conducting the chaos that is fervently escalating before him.
Fucked Up’s charm is vibrant and intoxicating - they engage with the audience in a playfully intimate manner that enhances, rather than retracts from, the actual music. Liverpool is endlessly ribbed by Abraham, who brings up the recently ruined Premiership chances of Liverpool F.C. and muses over the existence of John Lennon.
When some of the exhausted pit members before the stage beg him for some of his bottled water, he pours it into their mouths and makes a comment about how Manchester `warned him` about how `Liverpool will steal the shirt off your back…` - the crowd laps up the jest - a punk pantomime - reacting to him with a good natured onslaught of boos that breaks down into a united cackle.
The finale showcases a cover of Black Flag’s `Nervous Breakdown` , rewarding one of the most clearly excitable audience members with the chance to provide guest vocals for it, before Abraham takes back the mic to finish with a disjointedly merry (if weirdly predictable) cover of Blitzkrieg Bop.
Fucked Up prove themselves to be more buoyant than their name may suggest - a powerfully guttural example of how Punk-Rock should be performed, leaving tonight’s audience completely bowled over by the Canadian bands unstoppable charm offensive and their beguiling, driving sound.
First published in Clash Magazine (issue 37)May 2009.
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