The place was almost full with long hair, body-odour and scrawny youngsters in Korn T-shirts; squeezing themselves to the front, ready for Schism, the support, to make their presence felt. Me, sensing madness in the air, moved slowly backwards…
Schism take to the stage, looking like the bastard offspring of Sid Viscous, Axel Rose and The Village People: all devil horns, RAAAAWWWWKKKK! screeching and songs about carnal knowledge with a friend’s mother. The kids go nuts, invading the stage, crowd surfing, bone breaking. I edge further back and smirk at the terrified parental contingent cowering at the bar, watching their twelve-year-old get swallowed up by the pit; all to the haunting strains of ‘Shoot Da MuthaF*ker In Da Head’.
HA! I drink another beer and grin when Cherry the bassist (yeah, they’ve got comedy band names) grabs some kid whose clambered on-stage and gives him a big sweaty hug.
YEAH! I’m cheering when Sickboy unleashes an awesome heavy-metal solo that, and I say this honestly, would have Iron Maiden running to the hills.
RAAAWWKK! I’m spraying beer when they close with a beautiful re-working of ‘Summer Loving’, (Met a girl / We had a blast / Met a girl / Put my d**k in her a**)
NNNOOOOO! When they exit stage left to sound of 300 pairs of roaring teenage lungs. Schism is pop – punk metal at it’s absolute dumbest, but that’s the beauty: its all fun, fun, fun without a trace of pretension anywhere. True, parent – child relationships may have been broken, but who cares about the crusties when a band finishes playing and starts shaking you by the hand, thanking you personally for coming?
Ok, I know I’m supposed to be talking about Violent Delight here, but I’m just trying to set up a contrast of atmosphere between Schism’s blow-out riot and Violent Delight’s sulky, damp squib. On their website, Violent Delight look like another bunch of day-glow scamps, but they walk on stage dressed all in black, don’t say much in the way of a hello, and launch into a really dull set that soon has the mosh-pit kids mooching into the corners to lick their battle-wounds.
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To my ears, V.D sounded a lot like some of the young angsty / political bands around like INME but without any edge or fire at all: it was so samey and flat, like an open beer sitting on a hot window ledge all weekend. I know I’m supposed to take a band on its own merits, but after the lets-all-get-wasted funfest of Schism, Violent Delight really did suck the fun out of the proceedings. Gone were the devil horns, the crowd surfing, the stage invasions, and when their song ‘This Is Not Living’ ended, only a couple of pathetic claps could be heard rising painfully above the growing apathy.
And the band didn’t seem to be enjoying itself either. At one point the front man complained that their new single was only going for £1.99 in the shops, as opposed to his £4.99 alternative. Basically, band and audience fed off each other’s bad vibes and the night, which had started do promisingly, withered and died.
Now I don’t pretend to be a fountain of knowledge on Violent Delight, but their band bio’s and choice of support made me think that their brooding, all black image was an attempt at credibility, but it just didn’t work. The songs didn’t work. The crowd didn’t work. I was bored. I guess the T-shirt stand is a good a place as any to end with: which shirt would a hyperactive, bug-eyed kid rather buy at the end of the night? Violent delight’s FAKE IDEALS or Schism’s HEY DUDE! I F*CKED YOURE MOM LAST NIGHT!
Exactly.
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