Reviewed on Thursday May 14
It was painful to watch Los Hombres Del Diablo. Not only because it was the un-rock’n’roll time of 7:30pm, but because the sound guy had presumably pushed every single level into the red and promptly buggered off for smoko. Openers are oft victims to poor mixes, but Los Hombres were cut one of the rawest deals in recent memory. A shame, given their blues-tinged stoner rock is formidable when it’s actually able to be made out.
Faring much better in the grand scheme of things were Lo!, the Sydney-based doom-and-gloom delinquents. Their approach to the genre concerns a taste for the sprawling and atmospheric as well as white-knuckled rampaging, working in tandem to great effect. Vocalist Sam Dillon was restless, parading about with all the confidence of an arena act like Alice Cooper, whose shirt he donned for the evening. As far as heavy music in Australia is concerned, Lo! rank considerably high.
King Of The North, to be frank, were a lot better when they were called Jackson Firebird. They were better when they were called The Fumes, too. Whatever happened there, anyway? Nevermind – we’ve got the diluted equivalent right before our very eyes. The kind that the James Young (not to be confused with the writer of this article) crowd salivate over, claiming them the saviours of quote-unquote ‘real’ music in endless comment sections. It’s just all too similar to that summer we collectively thought Royal Blood were going to reinvent rock music – there’s no dynamics in this allegedly dynamic duo.
Red Fang are incrementally shifting toward the end of a two-year touring cycle in support of their last album, Whales And Leeches. Not that you could tell from their demeanour – this was a set full of raised fists, gargantuan riffs and rolling-thunder drums. It was a strongly built performance from a band that had every right to be worse for wear. Perhaps this is what made it so entertaining – Whales cuts such as ‘Blood Like Cream’ and ‘Crows In Swine’ still felt sharp, while a preview of their upcoming fourth album saw the band try out both Zeppelin-esque groove as well as a slow-mo Iommi pastiche.
At the head of a decidedly mixed bill – both in the sense of stylistic approach and in the sense of overall quality – Red Fang made the night theirs. Rightly so, too – not only are they keeping Portland weird, they’re doing the same for the greater metal scene.
