By: Phil Weller
Photos by: Jack Kirwin
Reality is merely
an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
- Albert Einstein
The place is empty, Mutoid Man suck more arse than
imaginable and Ben Koller politely tells me, as I sheepishly approach the
stage, that I don’t have to get too close to the stage if I don’t want to. The
atmosphere cut be cut with, not so much a knife as it could with a tea spoon or
feather and is dead as the Dodo. They end with ‘Bridgeburner’ and I lose my proverbial shit, as I’ve been promising
my close friends for weeks. I do a double 360 backflip, nearly knocking over
Matt Bellamy and Sting in the process. It was an atrocious show but at least I
could take away an impressive gymnastic fete from the evening.
Then I wake up and review the messed up dream I
just had. Today is Mutoid Day and I’ve not been this excited
about a gig for a long while – and considering just how many gigs I go to, says
a damn lot. ‘Bleeder’ is, in a year choc
a bloc with outstanding releases, arguably the finest release of the year. To
see it live is a tantalising prospect. So I pray that what just played out in
my head is just some augmented bullshit and not the foreshadowing of the
greatest embarrassment since Chris Cornell tried to make a hip hop album.
Backstage the band are in a jovial mood,
chatting to yours truly about everything from jamming stoned to drunken,
grunting Irishmen pissing and getting naked in alleyways and putting a copy of
The Holy Bible in the microwave. As our conversation winds down a member of
their crew comes over to the band, a hybrid blend of utter confusion and
bemused joy spread across his face. Breathlessly he turns to Steven Brodsky and
says “you have to come see this band, they’re fucking weird!” So off
we trot to the main room of The Deaf Institute through a flat now
converted to a green room, up a winding steel staircase and out into the crowd.
It takes seconds for me to appreciate just how perfect a description of the
band weird was.
Spasmodic, King Crimson
styled twists and turns shape their sound which are draped in a psychedelic
cloak and made to sound as unpredictable as possible. Not particularly for the
feint hearted.
Things get a little more digestible for Woking ’s Palm Reader. If I’m honest, their take on
hardcore, as brazen as it may be, isn’t my usual cup of tea. Yet they play with
so much passion, grit and gall that I can’t help get on board with their
fist-shaking revelry. Often times when you’re hearing a band for the first time
in the flesh, it’s not so much about what they play as opposed to how they play
it and they are a perfect example of that. Frontman Josh Mckeown is powerfully
engaging, towering over the crowd as he empties his lungs down the microphone
with a furious panache.
Revisiting their stuff on record after the show,
intrigued enough to hear more – and I know I’m not alone with this, such is the
impression their presence made upon the room tonight – it gives off a different
atmosphere. Softer and more airy, they are a completely different beast live
and I like that. There’s a ying yang thing going on and the yang we got tonight
was belting.
Fast forward 90 minutes and Mutoid Man walk off stage as
Brodsky’s Blackstar stack bleeds a flurry of feedback, their smiles mirroring
the Cheshire Cat grins spread handsomely across the crowd. Those
celebrity-pocked, kooky and outlandish visions my imagination had conjured for
me in my sleep, like a Punch & Judy show to keep me amused as I rested, are
left looking resolutely daft. Reality couldn’t be further away from what I
dreamt – there’s no sign of Sting, for a start. The place is rammed and
the band stop at nothing to entertain the living shit out of you.
The band share a great level of comradery on
stage – this is more like watching three best friends take the piss out of each
other than anything else. They jokingly toss their middle fingers up at each
other like targets at a shooting gallery, all done while spinning through
guitars that share a sonic kindredicity of a wasp stuck in a glass a la ‘1000 Mile Stare’. Koller does it
between fills, catching the other two with a cheeky gaze as he does and it all
combines to fizzle in the atmosphere. Good time vibes simply drip off the
ceiling and the walls while they rollick through an adrenalised ‘Sweet Ivy’- and hell, I know that
sounds as corny as maize but it's true. Not only can this band write a song
that's both ram packed with a jaw dropping, three-headed technicality and
oodles of bold and fiery vocal hooks, ‘Scrape
The Walls’ and ‘Reptilian Soul’
exhibits A and B, but they do it while having the time of their lives. This
doesn't look like a road-worn or depleted band, these are three dudes doing
what they do best and doing it while laughing like pissed hyenas.
Their heavier yet respectful take of The Animals' ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,’ renamed
as 'The Manimals' is well
anticipated and goes down a bona fide storm as a result. It turns out more
people are in love with this bonus track than I thought. Steven Brodsky
introduces it by joking that The Animals song they’re going to be playing 'is
not House of the Rising fucking Sun'. The original's bounce and
definitive character still remains, but it sounds revitalised by its
reimagining into an altogether more incendiary approach.
I
t all boils down to ‘Gnarcissist’ with its straight forward yet steam rolling pentatonic
riff that shakes the room before avalanching into a simplistic yet colossus
chorus that unites the crowd. It’s ridiculously good and it’s ridiculously
impressive too how something so uncluttered, something so short and sweet can
be so anarchically brilliant.
Sting missed the fuck out.
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