: : Gigs - The Icarus Line : :

Two Very Loud primal rock bands suffered from muddy sound and apathetic attendance tonight; but with second albums out each, Modey Lemon will have done themselves no harm with an energetic performance while The Icarus Line sank disappointingly below the mud.

The bands were pitted against a truly awful sound in The Basement tonight - more than one instrument playing at a time simply merged into a wall of muddy noise, and any subtleties the bands may have possessed were lost to a sparsely populated room.

For local band Shooting Victor Francis however I doubt this was a problem. Mark Jasper's vocals were for the most part barked out over a thrashing backdrop of noise with no discernible structure (while he wandered around amongst the crowd and on top of the bar - plenty of rock points there). Nowt wrong with that of course, but there was no new twist to mark the band out as any different to the scores of others in the genre. Until, that is, they began to show the tiniest hints of some monster grooves occasionally peeking out from under the noise - if Shooting Victor Francis could make a little bit more of those moments, we could actually have something rather special on our hands.

You know where you stand with Modey Lemon really - they're going to rock you in a down and dirty way. Seemingly without a bassist for tonight's show and taking the intriguing step of having their merchandise guy (an impressively turbaned and bearded ultra-layed back gong player to boot) warm up the crowd with a build up speech, the muddy sound nevertheless seemed to stifle a little of the band's groove - riffs were simply submerged under everything else. Nevertheless they put on an intense show with a few numbers building to an almost trance-like crescendo of...

Next
d