Strange Brew, Bristol
6 April 2024
Oh, a festival of ugly music – how could I refuse? Quite a varied line up too, the action split between two rooms — the main stage and a cellar-like space further into the venue.
Arriving a little later than expected, the energetic grindcore of Ona Snop filled the bill in the main-room, the bassist pulling funny faces, his long black hair circling round as he played. A bewildering jab to the senses, the lead launching at his mic throwing some effective shapes; could have done with some karaoke sing-a-long type shizz to help decipher as I had no idea what was being screamed at all.
Housed in the subterranean gloom of the back room, Bath’s Distraxi was simply awesome; probably the best noise act I’ve seen in a long while, loads of swishing layers and abrasive grit seamlessly stealing the occasional darkened ambience to boot. A brutalised contact mic-centric show full of clanking shrapnel and rippling screamage that found Distraxi smashing her face into the baking tray as she fell into the audience, her screams echoing through the screech-o-delics like burning fairies spiralling downward. Returning to the stage, she pushes her fingers down her throat, the choking results rhythmically looped force-fed into more scorching dynamics. Her use of noise is an inventive one that instinctively leaps and fractures within the room’s tight confines, later crunching up a mouth mic she adds a dizzy chorus of scattering feedback that dances your ear like an unholy prism to which she adds the sound of her strangling herself with a cabled noose. This was extreme but strangely compelling stuff that wedged worryingly in your mind long after it had finished.The Parisian trio Cavalerie were super loud and no less abrasive, that black metal gravelling vox a commanding linchpin for that taught guitar squall and drums to fold around / dart across, their set ending on a great Iggy Pop cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. For the next act Iffernet, I decided to sit on the back sofa due to not being able to get close enough, letting their rumbling roar transform the seating into an evil massage chair as the walls behind me seemed to close angrily around.
Berlin’s Cuntroaches were straight in there, securely entrenched in the noise end of the hardcore spectrum — nice pummelling drums and loads of spiky feedback that at times sounded like a speed-fuelled Birthday Party. The lead singer’s effect-soaked vox full of serious sore-throat dynamics, as if she was singing through sellotape. Really like the insanity they brought to the mix; the merch table had her dirty underwear for sale apparently and stinky socks — wonder if there were any takers. Unfortunately missed Psudoku completely, but was straight back for Guttersnipe. Was really looking forward to this, having missed out on seeing them so many times in the past — and they didn’t disappoint. Their scribbled reality was explosive — totally bound in the elastic of the moment. A vivid and volatile guitar / keyboard / drum sandwich that tractored in wrong-angled scuffles and sick undercuts, hitting a lovely tribalised stride at one point that totally soothed out your jagged edges, then spontaneously switching to an improvised spasm of waving arms and yelped nonsense.Gretchen wiggling off into the audience like a comedic epileptic, the drummer Robert standing atop his stool jibbering some weirded-out morse-coded jazzeration. Both returning to their wares, the guitar transformed into a gnarly spring, injected with a mad-acidic roar to a metallic melting pot of pickling percussive that terminated way too soon.
Aptly brooding in darkness, Gnaw Their Tongues’ tonally torn horrorscapes were amazing. A bleak bloom of rupturing squalor and coffin-nailed monolith. The squalling roar inverted to this see-sawing noose that flexed feral. Seismically shot into a Tunguska-like bow wave, scattered with filmic shivers that sizzled in your imagination – like a Nibelungenlied nitrate oozing a persuasive evil, Mories pacing behind his electronics adding ghoulishly garbled shouts and screams illuminated by the occasional flashes from people’s phones. This was pure physical theatre, jet black and fucking gruesome. The death metal outfit Vacuous were a bit too much for me; fronted by a tattooed chap screaming his head off over a sped-up cacophony. It was so fierce at one point you could hear them from the other room as the next act set up. In contrast the industrial noise outfit Ovo totally jivered my mojo, along with Distraxi and Gnaw Their Tongues they were another welcome musical discovery of the day wrapped in a tribalised floor tom and snare bite.That waspy guitar and her mantra-murmuring vocal growl were something else, waving her Medusa dreadlocks, both band members had painted faces and were dressed in ritualised rags; the avant-metal they were plying had a divine shamanistic shimmer with a touch of Diamanda Galás holding to that cackling glow — yeah, lots to love!
The headliners Aluk Todolo turned out to be the smoothest experience of all. An instrumental verve clinging relentlessly to a hypnotic groove into which waves of spectring guitar and spiralling bass psychedelically smashing into each other, feeding the large bulb’s glow that sat front and centre. Really lengthy tracks that esoterically wavered, curving into soft tusks of swirling feedback that clung greasily in the air, plunge-puddinged by that heavy percussive cavern of a backbone.Tussling a spooky space-rock edge with a lovely investigative kraut-leaning, this was my kind of metal — a dark-hued river to lose yourself in. The guitarist at one point ditching his instrument to cradle his petal board, twisting in extra flavour that pawed at that tightening imprint. The lights fanning out to a fresh injection of dry ice as the music hooked into a blinding finale. A crescendo of off-coloured harmonics that ended a fantastic eight hours.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
