It’s a damning example of the squeeze being put on UK music venues that tonight’s show is due to finish before 10pm, on a Thursday, so a club night can pile in afterwards. There are no winners. Least of all London-based crust explosion DYSTERIA [7], whose pre-7pm onslaught of monochrome, hardcore-laced dirge mauls far too few.
Numbers have swelled considerably by the time THE ATROCITY EXHIBIT [7] begin to disgorge their diseased sludge/grind, and the Midlanders seem particularly chuffed with their reception, their humble demeanour rather at odds with their gleefully appalling racket. THE AFTERNOON GENTLEMEN’s [7] self-evoked, ‘cheeky-Northern-monkey’ demeanour, however, grates even faster than their riffs. Which is a shame, as tonight their ferocious powerviolence sounds like a rusty chainsaw chewing through a dead rhino. Singapore’s WORMROT [9] have been around long enough now to consider themselves ‘established’, and it shows. Tonight their impeccably tight assault captures both the searing intensity and the shattering clarity of their records as a rapturous sea of bodies constantly erupts on the floor in front of the trio. That the baying crowd draw them back for two encores – before that bloody disco arrives – says it all.
