Original bands, original music from Lincoln & Beyond

The Dark Mantra + The Collectors + The Talks + August Underground

Thursday, 09 September 2010

RaW @ The Mezz Bar, Lincoln

08 December 2007

Photos & Review by Pete

With The Bivouac presenting a destroy-all-other-promoters line up of six bands and an unheard of early start time of 7pm to accommodate them all it was nothing less than tough being anywhere else tonight.  But photographically there’s no one quite like Lipstick Entourage and they were headlining at the Mezz which has the most souped up lighting set-up any photographer could dream of.  They are also an immense band - so it was a pisser LE bailed late on.  As did crackin’ indie outfit White Light Parade from Leeds who were another no-show.

Local five piece August Underground opened.  Stand out was Fred on a pummelling bass guitar who, when getting good back up from drummer Kev, put together a gutsy, half-decent rhythm section.

Last minute replacements “all the way from fuckin’ sunny ‘ull” were The Talks. They were well cheeky with cracks like “It’s like playin’ in someone’s living room here”  but we’ll let ‘em off cos vocal Pat Pretorius smirked a lot and either had just injected something tasty into his arm downstairs or gets off on playing live.  He is flippin’ good at it.  I was never a big Clash fan but it was a treat to see Joe Strummer’s spirit invoked, made to shimmer and burn, complete with that same ambivalent constructive-destructive persona.  Appropriately The Talks are playing a rock against racism gig in a couple of weeks time in Hull (with The View no less!), the sort of event that Joe Strummer himself would have been totally up for.  As for the band’s sound, yeah pretty much The Clash doing their punky-reggae-rock thing that reached fruition back in their Sandanista halcyon days.  Lively set, full of ‘tude.

The Collectors, over from Norwich have lots of ideas but they are just not very interesting ones. The songs lack progression and as a result fall flat.  They may think this irrelevant, of course, and, ironically, they would be right.  Everything is irrelevant insofar as nothing could save a band with such wank vocals.  N O T H I N G.  Yes, I’m a bit nervey that they might actually read this - but I reassure myself that if they did they almost certainly won’t actually believe any of it.  Phew.  BTW, other bands from Norfolk who’ve played here are The Brownies who were dazzling and Rigo Jancsi who were more than competent.

Finally three-piece Alex, Rob and John, the Dark Mantra, from round here.  They looked like they might have it in them to blow us all away and vocal Alex has a nice look for a front man but alas not the voice, it’s way too insubstantial.  The music is capable prog-rock and when tapping into the fx pedal in the slower sections the result is effectively atmospheric and would sound nothing less than wondrous on CD when chilled out at home.  Ah.  But.  These slices of delicate wonderment are routinely discarded for inane overblown pacey bits that aren’t especially convincing.  C’mon.  As with openers August Underground though the bass guitar playing was again spectacularly high quality throughout, this time with some shuddering lush bass lines.

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Full size pics at Pete's website www.shine.clara.co.uk/gigs

Band Websites:

The Dark Mantra
The Collectors
The Talks
August Underground

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