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Well after a short remise it's back on
the road for some live dates and starting this new season we travel down
to Bradford’s The Gasworks for another of Riot Promotions shows. A
show which once again highlights some of the best underground bands around
and like all of Riot’s shows, this one is right dolly mixture with
something to suit all tastes.
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Starting off the
nights proceedings are Hamburg’s glam sensations The Pleasures. A
band that defy definition as they mix traditional glam with a touch of
Industrial Metal, a fusion that is almost as insane as the band
themselves.
The band open up the proceedings in true
Pleasures style with ‘Hurray’ and from here on in it's "Vork Glam Technic"
as these Germans simply rock and shimmer their way into the hearts of
everyone in the audience.
They continue their infectious glam and
glitter set with ‘Juicy Jacuzzi’ and what can I say, any song that
includes lyrics about Paul Stanley’s hairy chest is just superb! The
band really set out their stall with the excellent ‘Glitter Doesn’t
Sparkle Without You’ which quickly follows. This is what the band are all
about, the glitz and glamour with a yen for metal.
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The band are always stretching the
boundaries of Glam as they take the back door approach with the chant
along ‘Glory Hole’, always a crowd pleaser, the band have never been shy
of giving their hero’s songs an airing and tonight is no exception as the
band simply rip through The Sweet’s ‘Ballroom Blitz’.
It was time to toughen things up a bit with the
Industrial Glam of ‘Voyeur’ as bassist Neo Patra powering through with
some fine metal vocals along with Dancette.
But one track that really got the crowd going was
the salute to James Riot, ‘Skull Hammer’. This mighty glam anthem
simply rocked the venue to its very core as the crowd sang along to the
chorus as one mighty Pleasure infused mass.
This band are a must see band before you die.
They are 110% entertainers with an ace up their sleeves, they really can
play big style.
After the mighty
Germans it was up to our own Patchwork Grace to follow the Glam fest that
went before. This band are a totally different animal than The Pleasures,
for a start they have a female vocalist in Tori Trash, whose vocal style
and stage persona comes across as a cross between Hazel O’Connor and Cindy
Lauper.
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The band opened
up with ‘East My Ten’ and ‘Estelle’ both highlighting both Tori’s
mesmerising stage antics and her very distinct vocal. This along
with the guitar strutting Crip and the larger than life bass thumping of
Joey Savage, the band were definably winning some new fans tonight.
The angst filled
set continued with ‘Shminonio’, again all eyes are on Tori Trash, as she
seemed to hypnotize you with her stage antics as she snaked around the
stage.
It was pretty
much the same for most of the set, but undoubtedly the highlight had to be
the bands version of The Cures ‘Love Cats', which guitarist Crip just made
his own as he tore lick after lick out of the six string, and really was
the star of the band for me.
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Next up saw the
return of Canada’s favourite Glam son Robin Black. The band have seen a
few line-up changes since I saw them and the Intergalactic Rockstars
moniker has gone. Now it's just Robin Black, but Chris ‘Starboy’
Cunnane remains and has always been a favourite of the young girls in the
crowd and a few young boys if let be known.
Joining the pair
are Peter Arviddson on lead guitar, Robbie Ruchus on bass and completing
the line-up Aaron Verdonk on drums.
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This is again
one of the shows I’ve long been waiting for since James Riot told us last
year that he was bringing the band over for a tour and the headline slot
at this years Trashstock, so we couldn’t wait.
The band opened
a very impressive set with the explosive ‘Better Than You’, this one
really set the stall for the rest of the show as Robin showed what a great
frontman he really is, and with this new incarnation of the band the sound
was a tight as a fishes what's-it.
They continued
to rock the foundation of the Gasworks with ‘She Aint Dead’ and the
fantastic up-tempo rocker ‘TV Trash’, both going down a storm with the
crowd. |
This band is all
about good time rock n' roll and bringing it to the masses as they
continued to rock big style with the gender twister ‘More Effeminate Than
You’, which always sounded much better than live than on CD.
Another stand
out song of the set was ‘Outta The City’ which Robin introduced as a
celebration of "Sex, Drugs and Rock N' Roll", all good Christian virtues
that I’m sure are ranked up there as favourite pastimes of the band.
With such a high
octane set the band were surely gonna self implode but this wasn’t the
case as the feel good rock just kept on coming with the likes of ‘Why
Don’t I Love You’, ‘Plastic Fantastic’, and one of my all time favourite
songs from the band ‘Some Of You Boys (and most of you girls)’.
But song of the
night from the band had to be ‘Hellraiser’, again The Sweet are given the
cover treatment as Black and the rest of the band simply took the song
apart and put it back together as their own sleaze filled extravaganza.
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The main set was
topped off with the excellent ‘Time Travel Tonite’ before Robin thanked
James and Michelle Riot and introduced the band to us all.
After a
minimalistic interlude the band were back as Starboy put his humble vocals
chord to ‘Feel Your Seventeen’, a gentler refrain from the shy boy of the
band.
It was back to
the up-tempo rockers for the final two tracks ‘So In Love’ and the show
stopper ‘This One’s Gonna Hurt You Bad’, which rounded off a great set
from a band that should be a lot more high profile than they are.
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After tonight’s
show I for one can't wait for Trashstock as again Riot Promotions brings
us the best of the underground rock scene all under on roof and this year
it's an all-dayer, so bring your Red Bull as its gonna be a long day and
you don’t want to miss a thing! |
