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The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster look and sound like the sort of creatures that live under Tim Burton’s bed and eat children for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lead singer Guy McKnight lurches about the stage scowling like some banshee mutation of Jim Morrison and Peter Steele. Their bassist is a zombie with hair that makes Robert Smith look thoroughly sensible, and they have a daft song about "puppy dogs’ tails." But despite all this; previous performances have left me a little cold, and so I wasn’t holding out much hope for tonight’s set. However their graveyard rumble makes far more sense through speaker stacks that rise all the way to the ceiling. When they get it right, it feels like the end of the world; with death-rattle Sabbath riffs twisted over more bottom end than Ben Dovers’ last porn flick. Dark and brooding; they sometimes meander into little more than swathes of tuneless noise, but who else is conducting successful experiments in cacophony?
It‘s been over an hour since The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster left the stage, System Of A Down are late, and the crowd is getting edgy. But when the curtain finally falls the Armenian-Americans get the kind of devoted response that suggests the crowd would have waited well into the end of next week for just a glimpse of them. Ripping immediately into a career-spanning set with new single ‘B.Y.O.B.’, Serj Tankian gives only a brief “Hello London” before SOAD get straight to the business of “Rocking your Motherfucking arses”. The next two hours is filled with robot alien vocals, precious harmonies juxtaposed with demonic screaming, and most importantly those riffs that can turn a theatre full of people into nodding dogs.
Tracks from the new album highlight a move toward more varied arrangements, with acoustic guitars out for ‘Revenga’, and Daron Malakian’s melancholic solo run through ’Old School Hollywood’. Material from ‘Hypnotize’ (the sister record to the recently released ‘Mesmerize') is met with an underwhelming response, but promises some interesting experimentation with odd harmonies, keyboards, and more of those alien robot vocals. Any brief lulls are quickly forgotten though since headlong runs into politically-charged favourites ‘Chop Suey‘, ‘Prison Song‘ and ‘Toxicity‘, are all no less than bone crushing. Fortunately for all their political lyricism, SOAD are also a refreshingly silly band. ‘Pogo Stick’ (“Jump! pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo, pogo…!“) and the ridiculous machismo of ‘Cigaro’ (“My dick is much bigger than yours”) offering welcome comic respites. Crazy, wild-eyed, and with the balls to stand up and ask questions, SOAD are the loudest, maddest and most dangerous four horsemen heavy metal has seen for some time.
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