His Cosmic Carnage nights/all-dayers may have become a byword for noisy, thrilling chaos – first at the Windmill in Brixton and now at the Moon in Cardiff – but Rich Collins isn’t content to rest on his laurels. Tonight’s Le Pub live show, topped by Bloody Head and in conjunction with fellow promoter Lesson No. 1, is a first incursion along the A48 into Newport.
Those who’ve braved the stormy downpour to arrive at Le Pub early are greeted with ominous drones and loops courtesy of Jake Healy, flying solo from his band Sugar Horse. A tabletop of tech plus a poor unsuspecting turntable is (ab)used to create an industrial cacophony – the relentless grind of heavy machinery charged with demonic energy.
Light relief comes in the form of rough-and-ready hardcore dafties Cruel Prank, amateurism emblazoned on sleeves as a badge of honour. “We got that one right. Don’t get used to it,” says the vocalist, wearing a mask handmade by his daughter, presumably for that time Slipknot decided to rob a bank. A set bookended by blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em Napalm Death covers reveals them to be a political band only in the sense that they focus on the fraught politics of shared accommodation: the unauthorised liberation of cans from the fridge and the perils of pooing with the toilet door open.
Bristol’s Haul blew me away with their show at the Moon in early September – Rich too, who booked them on the spot. There’s a hell of a lot going on here: a frontman who ties himself up with his guitar lead; some delicate keyboard tinkling; a miniature gong; a guitarist who downs tools to scream through an old landline phone receiver with the irrepressible fury of a man who’s been kept in a call centre queue for 48 hours. Do they play one song? Two? Three? Who knows. Whatever, Haul’s intense amalgam of post-rock and noise is a tremendous racket.
As is Bloody Head’s: the seasick lurch of Pissed Jeans and The Jesus Lizard with the brawn to bash your brains in. Live, Bloody Head vocalist Dave Bevan is very much the Nottingham mob’s focal point. Imagine if John Aldridge had failed to cut the mustard as a footballer and instead fell into making a living by touring Toxteth pubs selling meat out of a sports bag and spending all the proceeds on speed.
Initially stood stock-still with a thousand-yard stare for opener This Could Be Paradise (from last year’s LP The Temple Pillars Dissolve Into The Clouds), he suddenly mutates into a howling, feral wrecking ball bouncing around the crowd. And there’s no let-up until towards the end of The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog, when he gifts Rich and a rabid/dazed audience his mic and wanders off his work – and that of his band – most definitely done.
Bloody Head, Haul, Cruel Prank and Jake Healy, Le Public Space, Newport, Fri 21 Oct
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos @vogonlaundromat