Fusion, Sam Bentley, Cyanide Eyes, Dirty Mindz - The Way Inn 19/4/08

Published by Al Young | Filed under Music

A Church building. A Church building. A gig at a Church building. Me at a gig at a Church building. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect: the bigot in me would have loved a sing-along around a fire, but the reason within me supposed that it would be no different than any other gig: music is music, after all, no matter what religious bent it may have. As soon as I entered the room, however, all of my worst fears came flooding back to me. Painted on the walls were instances of capitalised accusative third person pronouns, and memories of my days of indoctrination filled me once again. I actually started to panic at little. Luckily for the sake of my sanity, the music was soon to start. First up were Fusion.

Fusion -MySpace

Shoegaze, psychedelia and modern rock and post-rock: perhaps not the most immediately combinable elements, but Fusion really pulled it off with casual aplomb and a good sense of humour. Members of the band were holding small conversations with people at the front and consistently making jokes between the songs: audience participation perhaps at its finest. Energetic and enthusiastic instrumentalism perfused their performance, with guitar and drum solos of a great technicality being used to great effect. However, the vocal performance of Freddie Odong left a little to be desired: it was all around quite flat and without any real character.

Sam Bentley - MySpace

Following Fusion, it would be a reasonable assumption to make that the next act would not be an acoustic set with the instrumentation of two acoustic guitars, a keyboard and a violin. I guess that consistency wasn’t really a criterion of the selection of the bands for this event, but none of that matters. I’d been talking to Sam himself prior to his ascension to the stage, and (as well as selling me a copy of his EP for £1.74 instead of £2.50: doing this does have its perks - also: he’s a nice guy, obviously. Always good) he stated his worries of playing acoustically in a room such as the one he was in: small, and full of talking friends. Unfortunately, his fears were to be confirmed and further accentuated by issues with feedback and other sound malfunctions (not to mention a sore throat). However, he managed to play convincingly and fluently in spite of these disadvantages. Starting with Outside, from his Starve in Heaven-loved Colours EP, the Elliott Smith-esque nature of his vocal delivery become almost immediately apparent: the paradoxical strength yet exterior fragility of a whippet would be a good comparison to make. The slow vibrato of the violin came to accentuate this. Covers of Outkast’s Hey Ya! and Justin Timberlake’s LoveStoned brought his crowd (which, admittedly I was envious of) of mostly attractive girls to attention, and served as a testament to his vocal ability. His lovely set was about as close as we got to singing around the campfire.

Cyanide Eyes - MySpace

From the first chord played, I was expecting yet another oh-we’re-so-hardcore metal-esque band with no redeeming qualities. I am beyond proud to say that that is not what we got: we saw a band, whilst clearly showing influences such as Machine Head, Deftones and Alexisonfire’s earlier work, with several original bones in the collective corpus. They effused such a raw energy that even the likes of Neil Perry and Pg. 99 would have been in awe of their performance. The vocal delivery was teeming with emotion and ranged from a whisper to a yell to a guttural scream: and by god, were all three of these beautiful. Coupled with his movement, this was performance art: music beyond music, it told a tale. Riffs, fills and solos were played with an air of an almost throwaway attitude: it was as if this came oh-so easily to them. Also rare for a band of their age, the bassline actually played a role in their songs: it was audible and drove the rest of the song along, something which I found to be genuinely refreshing.

Dirty Mindz - MySpace

I suppose it could be said that I have a little history with Dirty Mindz, haha. I’m more than willing to admit that I was wrong, however, given the events of the evening: it started with me having a conversation of sorts with Izaak, Stuart, Jake/Skidz and their homosexual roadie/groupie whose name I never picked up. It was about the prior article and certain misinformation included therein. From there, however, it got more sociable: we discussed punk, politics, religion and certain other Birmingham-based bands. It went well, I’d say: certainly could have gone a lot worse. As far as their performance goes: it really was excellent. Izaak, as I remarked at the time, was ‘fucking insane’ on stage, using every punk performance pastiche yet adding his own little mannerisms to make it that bit more unique. Ostentatious though it was, Luke epitomised the band’s musical prowess by making a point to play his guitar behind his head. Again, the ‘wanker’ reflex was only held short by my realisation of jealousy of his ability. The drumming was more than just the usually expression of I’m-just-trying-to-keep-time, it had a soul to it: the drummer really got into what he was doing, and the music benefited immeasurably for it. They were really getting off on performing, and that is what performing should be about: hedonism.

See full entry for pictures.

Sam Bentley Pictures
	There was a picture here, honest.
Cyanide Eyes
Dirty Mindz