This is the first night of Big Sexy Noise's European tour and for a change Baba Yaga's Hut has moved from Corsica Studios to the M.O.T.H Club that for those not in the know is an Ex-Servicemen's club for anyone who served with The Memorable Order Of Tin Hats under General Browning who the building is named after. So when we go into the main bar there are a bunch of Veterans with medal boards on their blazers mixing with the usual Lydia Lunch Big Sexy noise fans.
We went into the Reg Miller Memorial hall which is the Gig venue in time to see all of Repo Mans support set they come from Bristol and sound very early 90's to me, they are very angular in a Wire meets Big Black and tries to sound like Gang Of Four only the vocalist is more of a shouter than a singer and he's mainly unintelligible throughout the bands sets and with no announcing of song names for a neutral like me I haven't a clue what they played.
However the best bits were when the singer strapped on his sax and gave us some serious skronk jazz solos to go with the wall of off centre riffs and pounding drums rather than the bits during which they sounded like a dissolute P.I.L. Oh and the bit during the last song or was it one from last song where the singer attempted to play Violin were cool but it cut out and he gave up on it.
After the break Big Sexy Noise came onto the stage with the perfect stage side sign telling everyone to make sure all children were off the dance floor by 9.30, which is very important at Lydia's gigs. The venue was also pretty rammed with a much bigger turn out than for Lydia's last London show with Retrovirus earlier in the year.
They opened with Mahakali Calling it was a touch ragged round the edges but as powerful as ever and Lydia was in fine form, I think the soundman was still trying to get James Johnston’s guitar to sound right as it lacked any bass notes. I Crossed the Line was next and it got a good part of the crowd going and it looked like a Mosh pit was starting as Lydia told us how she crossed that line as the song morphed into Pushing Too Hard for the last minute or so making that classic sound far darker than it normally does.
Balling The Jack finally had a good guitar sound with the bass notes James was hitting coming thorough clearly at last as the tale Lydia is telling unfolded and she had to have a go at the sloppy bitches who managed to spill drinks over the stage.
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That was before she invoked all the women in the audience to join her listing all the things wrong with the sort of useless men who profess there Love and not much more on Your Love Don't Pay My Fucking Rent that was greeted almost like a hit single with most of the audience joining in on the chorus as Ian White nailed it on the drums.
Then we went nice and dark on Gospel Singer as you'd expect as the Mosh Pit seemed to be growing as the almost tribal beat seemed to be driving us all into frenzy. Trust The Witch was perfect for a gig that had a good number of people in Halloween costumes, as Witches or were they real witches, it was hard to tell.
I think it was during one of the two songs I can't identify in my notes that James slipped over mid guitar solo and barely missed a note of the wall of noise he was creating it was scary and intense as it has to be.
Kill Your Sons was as dark and malevolent as it always is in Lydia's hands as she makes sure we know the sort of hurt and pain the song is about. They then closed with a long and very spooky version of Something Witchy in the air tonight that could have been caused by all the memorials to various fallen soldiers in wars gone by that line the walls of the venue as much as by the musical and lyrical spells being spun by Lydia James and Ian all night long.
As usual Lydia left the stage telling us they don't do encores no matter how loud everyone cheered for more as they certainly deserved an encore. This current tour will be well worth catching if you're in the right part of Europe this month.
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