Monday 30/04/07 Zico Chain @ The Barfly, Glasgow

The past several months has seen an emergence of aggressive and angry British punk and rock bands. Following in the wake of the likes of Gallows comes the Zico Chain - an ear and senses shredding loud trio. Casually taking to the tiny Barfly stage there’s already a laid back rock n roll feel coming from them. Their posture is the only thing laid back about them, as the next 40 minutes simply unleashes an onslaught of noise upon listeners.

Debut single ‘Where Would You Rather Be?’ is the pick of the bunch, with a twisted screech to it that makes it sound like, of all things, a distorted cousin of Marilyn Manson’s ‘The Beautiful People,’ vocalist and bassist‘s Chris Glithero’s formidable bellow reaching out and sounding like he’s having his soul sucked out of him with a furious backing of frantic drumming and crunching guitar. The majority of the Zico Chain’s set consists of punk and grunge having a loud and lengthy argument and some of the tracks, like ‘Rohyphol’ do bristle successfully with enough rage and despair that you can’t help but take notice. There’s other elements bounding in from time to time too, with hints of a more one dimensional Queens of the Stone Age creeping in.

Sadly, too often the Zico Chain let themselves down. The sound is muddy, meaning there’s simply a generic din coming from them. To top it off, some of the band lyrics are truly dreadful, with the likes of ’Social Suicide’ being as insipid as the name suggests. It would also help if some of their songs didn’t sound like they were being dragged downwards in a swamp, letting off only an aggressive gurgle in their wake. It’s no surprise that the longer the set goes on the more people head for the exits, having seen enough. There’s only so many times a straight forward tirade can take place before you lose interest and there‘s not nearly enough to differentiate each song from the last.. And aside from an (admittedly enthusiastic) small mob huddled at the front, most of the crowd that stays seem fairly disinterested in Zico Chain.

There’s no doubt that there’s some impressive influences at work with Zico Chain. Yet they’ve been unable to distil that into a particularly potent brew, instead leaving them with some dull, moany grunge that all sounds the same. Before the Zico Chain move onwards they’ll need to ditch the ball and chain of unoriginality that is hampering their work.