By Georgia Smith
An eclectic dual-headline set in the Peer Hat basement on a night Monday saw solid opening sets from heavy-metal collective The Kingdom Below and prog-rock quartet Blood Of Achilles, followed by the energy and originality of Manchester-based rock group Ingénue and heavy psychedelia from Japanese two-piece Psydoll. A night of many directions, many musical influences, and myriad performances, the Peer Hat basement bounced accordingly along to these various powerful musical energies.
Openers The Kingdom Below thundered through the Peer Hat with a hard-rock, Avenged Sevenfold style metallic offering. Solid, dynamic stage presence and tight musical constructions elevated their performance beyond the technical issues that harangued the mid-part of their set, and allowed the band to dive straight back into the earlier heaviness and audience engagement prior to these difficulties.
Merseyside-based Blood Of Achilles followed suit with their dense prog-rock style; an engaging blend of soft and harsh vocals atop tight and bending guitars. Harmonious vocals and a very tight, clean musical dynamism elevated the performance to a full, powerful and energetic offering. Blood Of Achilles were clearly enjoying themselves as well- leaning into the crowd’s energy and playing off their performance against the atmosphere for what was overall a highly energised, clean offering of carefully sculpted prog-rock.
The first headliners Ingénue took to the stage with their archetypal blend of soft, dreamy vocals edged with a harder and more assured rock sound with ‘Forbidden Fruits’. Soaring vocals over thudding guitars and pulsing bass riffs immediately set the tone for this darkly powerful performance. Immediately following it was their fresh new track ‘Would You Kindly’- a solid rocky core and catchy bass hook winding around a funky repetitive guitar sequence.
Long instrumental sequences showcased the talents of the guitar and bass players before exploding back into upbeat funky sequences with powerful elevating vocals. Despite its newness, the track was well-received by the crowd and generated an energy in the space for Ingenue’s performance to build alongside. The performance was enjoyably playful, light and catchy, with a confident and assured thread of rockiness and edginess lending a sense of power and solidity to the sound and performance; a concoction that plays well in live performances- especially in such small venues as the Peer Hat basement where energy and engagement seem to multiply fast.
This confident, rocky core combined with the almost witchy feminine vocals is a successfully original sound – performances of ‘Forever Endeavor’ and ‘Moon Physics’ were similarly well-balanced between the two sounds and create a style that is only elevated through live performances of the tracks. Twisting guitar sequences, marriage of the hollow sound to the soaring of the vocal choruses and bubbling atmosphere mean the performance takes on a bright, fresh tone almost euphoric in places, and the entire basement is involved- swaying or headbanging depending on the direction. Ingenue’s performance creates a sense of constant movement, excitement, a culmination of different sounds to create a full and invigorating experience. Originality of guitar riffs and explosions from stunning instrumental sections and guitar solos into catchy, easygoing choruses keeps the crowd moving, keeps the energy high.
The high-energy of the set gave way to a Radiohead-esque guitar solo – tight and wrenching, performed with core dirtiness and notable skill. The thick explosion of sound lent a subtle promise of heaviness and grunginess to the sound before exploding back into the previous track’s chorus, and Ingénue carried this renewed sense of grittiness throughout the rest of their set. Following on with ‘Twisted Lime’ and ‘Aztec Boogie’, performing with a renewed sense of heaviness and the sound tilting to a denser style, Ingenue draped the intricacies of the song and playful interactions of guitars atop the ever-funky cores of their following songs.
The shift in attitude was subtle but noticeable, as the crowd began bouncing and headbanging to the newly harsh rocky sound. Impressive vocal performances punctuated heavy almost-breakdowns and highly articulated guitar sequences. An explosion of purely rock sound and attitude running wild, as the band goads the crowd into a mosh pit during the heavy breakdown sequence of ‘Tetris Cyclone’. It’s impossible to be still – solidly and unusually heavy vocals thunder against drums and dense bass as the basement throws itself into each other, powered by the energy of harsh-edge enjoyment. It seems an unusual direction considering the soft dreaminess of the set’s opening and yet it fits perfectly – a consistent subtle descent into the harder edges of Ingénue’s style, the masterful blending of style and a solidly triumphant, energetic end to their performance.
The second headline and final performance came from Japanese duo Psydoll, immediately creating a darkly techno style vibe with eerie masks and theatrical stage presences, fitting against their backdrop of intense and heavy sound. Psydoll’s creation of tone and style, taken as their vocalist explained, from the dark futuristic expressions of video games and television elevated their opening wall of densely heavy guitars with lighter, almost spoken vocals over the top.
Despite quite a heavy use of backing tracks, the duo’s energy and passion was evident; the vocal performances sounding empowered and eerily rhythmic, and the guitar tightly structured, running free and untethered later on in their opening track with such success and response from the crowd that it seemed as though the heavy backing tracks may have been potentially distracting from the skill and creativity of Psydoll’s purely live and present performance. The idea that these tracks are inspired by films and games is evident and fits well- intentionally disjointed vocals and guitars thundering together during the choruses and apart again gives it an almost grinding not-quite-metal style; something original and genreless, taking its inspiration not from existing sounds, but concepts.
This dense sound gave way to a more synthy, dream-wave style of sound, suggesting that Psydoll’s music is indeed the journey through a strange and new landscape that their opening track promised. Highly creative and innovative; a deeply rocky core with light feminine vocals meant the overall sound was enjoyably conflicting, a powerful and striking combination elevated by the speed and complexity of the guitar performance and deepened by the careful creation of Psydoll’s lore and style. Despite some similarities vocally and thematically to their earlier song, the performance retained a sense of freshness and originality, enjoyably eerie and strikingly creative.
Edging out this dreamier, synthy sound, Psydoll’s performance took on a deep, dark, techno club kind of tone- pulsing backing bass and drums over the semi-spoken vocals. The balance of the guitar with the vocalist’s keytar (despite some initial technical difficulties) set off some striking melodic elements and complementary harmonies within the denseness of their pulsing techno sound.
Punctuating these track changes, Psydoll’s vocalist explained the lore of the songs; from lost video games to crazy robots, and ensured that their performance matched up to their core inspirations with striking accuracy. The dark basement became whichever tech-inspired landscape that the tracks demanded, and the crowd was receptive to each change in tone and shift in direction. Despite some technical difficulties towards the mid-point of the set, Psydoll’s performance remained tight and technical, overcoming these issues quickly and retaining cohesiveness.
Towards the end of the set, the tracks became notably more vocal-fronted which elevated the overall sound, in tandem with a notable decrease in the use of backing track meant that Psydoll’s performance was able to stand more centre-stage and operate beneath its own power- allowing for a better and more tangible experience with the live elements of their set, rather than the denseness of its backing tracks. Twisty, technical sounds from the keytar swirled around dense guitar so technical that its performance was visually impressive to witness.
The later tracks were subtly more successful, self-assured and thematically cohesive, dense and almost metallic with bassy undertones so heavy that drinks at one point were launched from the edges of tables and speakers. The steady move to the more forefronted vocals pierced the at-times impenetrable layers of tech-metal and allowed also for a more impassioned, electric presence of the duo on stage. Psydoll set out to construct an eerily technological vibe- dense and at times menacing- and managed to retain a sense of originality and freshness that prevented it from becoming overly heavy or dense, elevated by the myriad vocal directions of different tracks and the vibrancy of their on-stage presence and evident musical partnership.
Such a subtly eclectic mix of bands and sounds meant that the evening in the Peer Hat basement was a striking meandering through various inspirations, energies, outcomes and experiences. The heaviness of The Kingdom Below and technical prog-rock twists of Blood Of Achilles lent edge to the softer, dreamer beginning of Ingenue’s set, whilst their later descent into heaviness set the stage for the dense conceptual offerings of Psydoll. Despite the obvious and initial differences of the band, their myriad styles and performances not only allowed them each their own moment in the spotlight, but highlighted elements of those who would follow them later.
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