MACHIAVELLIAN ART / SQUALOR FAN / HORRIBLE MEN / HAQ123 | LIVE REVIEW
The Moon, Cardiff, Fri 10 Jan
The most remarkable thing about Haq123 is not that they consist of two under-12s and one of Evil Blizzard’s bassists. It’s that they’re not a novelty act – quite the opposite, in fact. That the trio hail from Birmingham, the city that gave us both Black Sabbath and the Supersonic festival, is immediately and abundantly evident. Vocalist Millie is unfazed at being without her voice-changing mic for Machines Don’t Bleed and singles out individual members of the audience with an accusatory finger during the brilliant Ugly Baby: “All of the mirrors in your house are cracked – why do you think that is?” Us parents in the crowd are left to wonder why our own offspring aren’t playing noise-metal in busy venues on Friday nights – where did we go wrong?
Horrible Men are such mavericks that they don’t yet have any kind of web presence – won’t someone please think of the poor local music journalists? What they do have, however, are members of crusty hardcore punk crew Shishū and a gabbling, frenzied frontman who looks like Phil Lynott and is dressed in army fatigues and armed with a keytar. Somehow it sort of works.
Two bands into the evening and still no guitars, then. Squalor Fan make it three, summoning up an unearthly din with a synthesis of samplers, bass and drums. These eerie soundscapes of slow brutalising grind, electro-static and disembodied voices are an excellent artist’s impression of what it might be like if the pitiless robots of Haq123’s Machines Don’t Bleed ever succeeded in their mission to destroy the human race.
Headliners Machiavellian Art [above] make marginally more concessions to songwriting convention than guitarist Joe Parkes’ other band, grindcore extremists Vile Sect, but that’s not saying much. Basslines and sax blasts fight through a glorious fug of earsplitting feedback, the result a maximalist mess of everything from Joy Division and Black Country New Road to black metal, hardcore punk and no wave.
And now for a long lie down.
words BEN WOOLHEAD photos NOEL GARDNER