Wednesday 01/11/06 Daughters, Trencher, Cutting Pink With Knives @ Islington Bar Academy, London

AN APOLOGY – today’s review will contain no song names or set lists. This is for two major reasons. Firstly, it’s ****ing freezing, even in the depths of the normally very sweaty Islington Bar Academy, rendering this reviewer’s note scribbling fingers useless. Secondly, distinguishable melodies, and recognisably different vocals are not normally the first thing that springs to mind with your general noise/grindcore aficionados, and tonight is no exception.

Take Cutting Pink With Knives for example – clearly plagued with terrible sound problems, and missing iPods, their set is an impressive blur of completely distorted synths and chaotic guitar/bass that warms up tonight’s early birds a treat. Between them, the guys must cover at least a half marathon in the space of 20 minutes, running across the front of the stage relentlessly. But despite this stoic attempt to get things moving, the crowd is a bit too disengaged and static to really enjoy this kind of tumult. When Gigwise caught these boys early 2006 at the brrrriiiilliant Overkill club night, there was a real sense of crowd interaction, with the boys spending much of their time on the floor, amongst a mess of crowd member’s limbs. Not so tonight – shame.

The same is not true, however, by the time casiogrindcore three-piece Trencher take to the stage, and a packed out crowd gets rowdy. The shirtless trio wade their way through epic tune after tune, combining totally complex drum patterns and time signatures with threateningly savage basslines. Add the idiosyncratic high pitched casio wailing that gives the lads their characteristic ‘Hammer House of Horror’s’ backbone and it’s like Halloween never ended (made all the more true by bassist Pox’s totally awesome mask through which he provides perfect backing screams to Mr M. Shit’s vocals – all names lifted straight from myspace … I’m pretty sure they aren’t real). The crowd warm up even more as the boys fly into newer numbers from their latest album ‘Lips’, although the room temperature is raised a degree or two by drummer Lock-Monger alone, who radiates a red glow of sweat and heat throughout as he expends ever last ounce on energy to keep up with the erratic rhythms. Each splurt of chaotic metal is like a welcome kick in the balls – sometimes the pain’s worth it …

… and sometimes it isn’t. Daughters set begins very promisingly – a skatty looking bunch of long hair trailer trash type American lads take the stage, and begin to belt out some pretty furious sounding noisecore/rock mash-up that straddles the fine line between cheesy Metal, and avant-garde experimentalism. Great! Enter lead singer Alexis Marshall … not so great. Rock legend and downright top class gentleman Lemmy is on record stating that if he ever sees anyone spit towards the stage, he will walk off, and cancel the show. Quite right, nobody wants to be covered in spit – it’s frankly a little bit gross.

Despair, therefore, when Marshall's entrance is accompanied by the ludicrous sight of a full grown man, forcing endless strings of phlegm out of his stupid face, and flicking it at the crowd, lighting rig, band mates, EVEN THIS ****ING REVIEWER. Not impressed. ‘Get over it’ I hear you cry, ‘It’s only a bit of spit’ – but regrettably this misplaced ‘controversy’ pretty much becomes the centre piece of the performance, completely overshadowing the music – as Marshall jumps into the crowd, takes a piss in the corner of the room and parades his pure filth of a carcass around the venue, the audience becomes divided between those adolescents who are still too young to care about being covered in another man’s body juices, and those of us who only have one jacket that they need to wear for the rest of the winter, and that cannot be covered in urine.

Musically, the band are as tight, raucous and threatening as they come across on record – in fact absolutely phenomenal, the fast-paced  bursts of noise, displaced by well timed rests in the chaos and dirge/terror/fury genuinely sound like something that would almost make you piss yourself in fear – just not all over your audience!