Your cart is empty
Looks like you haven't made your choice yet
Words and photos Daniel Oh – Criminal Indifference.
Cherry Rock Festival not only warms the cockles of our loins with its beer soaked AC/DC Laned magnificence, it also bares host to an impressive round of Cherry side shows. A lot of people I met at this show had travelled up from Adelaide for a full Cherry weekend experience. It is moments like this when you realise how lucky we are to have this fucking amazing music scene on our doorstep. Tonight’s show at Yah Yah’s featured a very impressively sludgey line up featuring the cream of the scene.
System of Venus were the first cab off the rank. This threepiece sounds more than sum of its parts. Heavy as hell riffs that not only groove but aren’t afraid to sit down on it and let it chug. Fatima’s vocals compliment the heavy grooves perfectly.
Next up is Dr Colossus. Chuck a slab of sludge doom in a blender with all The Simpsons episodes you’ve ever watched and you’ve got Dr Colossus. “This is a song about Ned Flanders. Its called Stupid Sexy Flanders.” Boom. Complete with Simpsons samples played between songs you can’t help but wonder how this stuff actually works. But it does. Very big sounding two piece.
HITS from Brisbane:
“So you like your stoner doom metal shit? Well we don’t play that. It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow so we’re playing a song called Jesus Fucking Christ”.
Its not often a band takes your breath away like this. This five piece made Yah Yah’s stage feel explosive and dangerous. Not physical danger, but the sense that it could fall apart from its own propulsive and contagious energy. But it never does. Tamara Dawn and Stacey Coleman’s guitars fit together so well in their contrary styles and their connection is mind blowingly infectious. Evil Dick is intensely charismatic in a rubber necking a car crash kinda way mixed with Micheal Hutchense’s character in Dogs in Space 20 years later. This band needs some serious consideration in your next musical purchase or live experience.
Horsehunter. Whoa. Fuck me. Jesus Christ. Holy cow. Someone change my pants! Why can’t I close my mouth? Is this real life or am I trapped in a constant throbbing doomgasm? I still don’t know. Horsehunter are at the top of the game on the local doom scene. Their songs groove in heavy riffage and progress into epic psychedelic sludge prog journeys of heaviness. This shit was transcendental.
Beastwars. I heard Cherry Bar’s James Young bang on to Nicole Tadpole on RRR’s ‘Respect The Rock’ about the largeness of New Zealand’s Beastwars. “When I see them play live, I honestly cant tell whether these guys are playing guitars or chopping down mountains.” The intensity of a Beastwars gig is visceral. It’s like you can almost see the lightning coming out of singer Matt Hyde’s arms and hear his thunderous stomps. Beastwars are much loved this side of the ditch and their show proved why that is so. Brutal. Intense. Beastwars.
I give this night five stars.
