Firewind – Relentless Garage, London – Friday 7th January 2011
Familiar sounds surged upon the senses when we entered the Relentless Garage. Any of the comfort usually afforded by the familiar appeared to be denied from the off. Here our wish to preserve the present, to seek a hardy musical bliss from the eminent Greek headliners, burst almost immediately.
We trudged off the gum-specked boulevard-run of Holloway Road, pushing through the queue of last-minute attendees, hoping the late hour to be less late than thought. In the scene newly disclosed urchins dropped off their coats and wilful emissaries stomped forcibly to the bar. Meanwhile, the flood of evocations grew strong, a rush of metaphysical points impacting on the brain, causing a twitching remembrance to halt the approach. A band on stage, too familiar – but at the same time, not that familiar; a set of sounds dialectically entwined in some cyclical routine of remember, forget, remember, forget. Then the memory became concrete. A few months ago, beneath Camden’s sickening surface, Primitai played as support for White Wizzard. Tirelessly forgettable, they played their nostalgic Classic Metal to a Sunday night crowd of groaning lepers and gulag rejects, underlings, the hung-over and the bitter – steel glances, frosty looks, figures held in place by the nearby bar, it and only it, far from immersion, far from the promised pleasures. After, we tore viciously into the sad letdown that was White Wizzard, casting our memories of the support bands into the abyss, a pitiful display never to be recalled – that is, until this day.
Soundtracking our ascent to the bar, Primitai pumped out their indistinct material with the usual blend of fist-pumping and gentle, intermittent headbanging. Their wielding of standard Metal techniques and tropes, however, hinted at a larger project, a more refined intellectual pursuit that might have been overlooked by the casual witness. Perhaps, rather than the unoriginal recapitulation of bits and pieces we’ve already heard before – compositions pre-composed by a thousand others – Primitai are actually mounting a sweeping study of the forms and practices that constitute the musicological veneer of Metal, an inclusive inventory of component parts that get assembled into songs, or “songs” – mere containers for the collected references identified by the undertaking. It’s what Walter Benjamin might have done had he been a Metalhead. Primitai, perhaps, are involved in this dance of quotation in order to highlight the hyper-reflexivity and celebration of superficiality that supposedly marks postmodernity. Furthermore, perhaps this is a commentary on the cessation of creative endeavour, the damning of imagination, the dismissal of experimentation, all curtailed by a homogenised culture whose process of commodification knows no limits. Perhaps what Primitai are offering is an incisive critique of twenty-first century cultural conditions; perhaps they reside at the very nexus at which global capitalism means the aesthetic. Or then again, maybe they’re just shite.
The philosophising of Breed 77, on the other hand, proved considerably less ambitious. Even though their incorporation of Latin melodies into a generic Metal framework signals the interchangeability of style in the grand moment of globalisation – in fact, the redefinition of the local as just another pot from which to extract additional fodder for the market, more gimmicks with which to shield the absolute banality of the system, used to simulate nuance in an enterprising invention of multivalence – despite this introduction of formal variety, the band spent most of the time gesturing half-heartedly to the better band they could be.
The phantasm created here, an alternate reality projection, emerged by dint of the aforementioned use of exotic scales and gypsy colouration, as well as the rather superb vocals of the singer. Combined, they form a unique and affecting soundscape, the antithesis of Primitai’s policy of ceaseless regurgitation. Breed 77’s acoustic exercises in channelling a desert ambience and the singer’s idiosyncratic nasal ululations are the residual phenomena of a better Breed 77, one where such characteristics are underscored and amplified. This better Breed 77 stands out by using these elements more frequently and more effectively. Moreover, the latter avoids the net of what can only be described as – to use the vocabulary of 1999 – “nu metal.” The rhythmic staccato advances of these particular inclinations not only undermine the actual value of the music, but they also largely erase it, leaving only the faint intimations of something better.
We might assume that there are 76 other Breeds, with each preceding version slightly inferior to the next, and that a Breed 78 could potentially be that better band we can vaguely sense. Inscribed upon each generation are the traits of the next generation – a dormant genetic code that occasionally breaks the bounds of latency to exhibit itself. If Breed 77 are part of a manufactured species, and if the canisters of Breeds 78 and 79 are already incubating the succeeding generations, then we will assume the newer incarnations’ musical outputs will consist of more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff. But as it stands, the world has Breed 77, an intrinsically flawed creation that’s yet to fully evolve past its blandness.
Breed 77 have been treading the stage for too long now, having brushed with the tag of future stars at the beginning of the “career” but it is evident within two minutes of viewing even through alcohol-laced perception why they are not more critically and universally acclaimed than their current status. It begins with the singer’s attempts to rouse a crowd that frankly cares not for his feather-ruffling banal entreaties to rouse the crowd into some theatre of pretence of interest that, unfortunately, litter his mid-song monologues that leave one yearning for the warm embrace of an alcoholic stupor. The second, and most important, factor is one of technique. The flamenco fusion with what is now universally known as nu-metal, does not fit seamlessly with its heavier musical counterpart. This, however, is forgivable as it is these acoustic interludes which offer so much more for the band but they are heavily let down by the technical performance of the (what can only be described as a stand-in) drummer. Watching the drummer perform is like watching a retarded child finally grasp the simplistic instruction given by his carer to count to four. Gleefully showing off between beats by contorting his rhythm in the style of the debauched incompetence of Tommy Lee, it was quite plain that all thoughts of musical perfection, respect and honour of technique and the paying crowd, were far from the probably image-obsessed mind of an incompetent and mediocre performer. A charlatan that wowed the baying hounds with distracting showmanship.
And with the end of that, our parched throats led us to the bar. Many others shared the pilgrimage, progressing to the rear as a unified body, some of them sighing, relieved at the termination of the set, others buzzing, having actually enjoyed the band. Drab support bands are almost inseparable from the London Metal scene. If these gigs are journeys, figurative treks peppered with obstacles and lit by peril, then the opening bands are inevitably the ogres and tyrants that one must battle and destroy on the way to a denouement of lusting damsels (i.e. the headline act); one must conquer the foes before entering the orgiastic maidenly heaven that awaits at the finale. Such is the combat dynamic that pervades our narrative. Thankfully that apex moment arrived without too long a wait with Firewind striding punctually on stage and into view.
One positive aspect of the uneven distribution of quality amongst the bands is that, assuming the headline act is good, the latter will in effect overwrite the preceding acts, allowing us, even if only temporarily, to cleanse ourselves in a process of aural detoxification. And this is exactly what Firewind does. Their brand of heavy Power Metal emptied the Garage of the last whispers of Breed 77 and Primitai, replacing mediocrity with excellence. The opening track of Days of Defiance signified the beginning, “The Ark of Lies” igniting a performance drawing from a decade of work. Classics like “I am the Anger” and “Destination Forever” fitted comfortably beside more recent tracks like “Into the Fire” and “Chariot”. Every riff and solo was the product of care and precision. And even though many would have welcomed more songs off the first album, Between Heaven and Hell, particularly the title track, the lengthy set more than compensated for any perceived shortcomings. However, one thing prevented the Firewind live experience from being truly exquisite: those moments when the music ceased and the trite banter began.
In great science fiction there is a tendency to make concessions to genre conventions that are invariably tiresome and unnecessary. So in Arthur C Clarke, amidst incredibly sophisticated predictions of scientific and technological advance, one has to wade through bland devices like the race against time; in JG Ballard’s early work, amidst captivating ecological oddities and dystopian weirdness, one has to plough through endless scenes of banal swashbuckling. Likewise in Power Metal, amidst grandiose musical drama and sweeping movements that straddle the border separating beauty and brutality, one has to tolerate superfluous frontman chatter and demeaning rock star posing. These stupefying concessions to a false idea of what constitutes a good performance are completely needless, and only end up wasting time and irritating observers. Clarke and Ballard’s concessions are redundancies in excess of what their art demands. Similarly, Firewind’s concessions are the tedious intervals of which their art has no need.
But all in all, Firewind enthralled with their perfect musicianship and superlative material. Hopefully their next visit to London will be equally affecting and at a point in the future not far from the present.
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