I was disappointed that I missed Häxan at this gig, but I’m sure I’ll see them again soon. However, the venue was rammed at this gig for the “Merthyr Three” and the Trondheim trio Bokassa, who supported Metallica all over Europe in 2019.
I managed to get to the front for Florence Black, but it was very tightly packed; it’s a good job the majority of Merthyr girls are small, so I could see over the tops of their heads to get some photos. My only complaint is why do venues use mainly red lighting? As a photographer it makes it difficult to get half decent shots unless they are converted to black and white. Anyhow, opening to the VERY partisan crowd, the trio kicked off with a long-time crowd favourite ‘Ghost’ and rattled through the 30-minute set which included ‘Smoke’, ‘Sun and Moon’ and ‘Zulu’ from the album as well as ‘Breadfan’ to finish it off. The announcement about a big shout on social media was pushed by Padge from ‘BFMV’ who is pushing the boys hard to where they deserve to be. The announcement turned out to be that they are headlining the third Steelhouse Away Day in the Tramsheds in April.
Never having heard of Bokassa until this week, I was very surprised by their music on Spotify and rapidly grew to like it, albeit a bit late to get to know it well enough in time for the gig. Self-described as the “Kings of Stonerpunk”, the things I listened to reminded me a bit of a cross between the punky Green Day stuff, the grungy Nirvana stuff and a bit of Foo Fighters. However, the live stuff and the stage banter was also very entertaining. References included things about British TV watching ‘Challenge’ quizzes, the things you shouldn’t say to an English crowd if you talk about the Welsh (apparently the drummer, Olav Dowkes is ‘half Welsh’). However, he made me chuckle when he said he had relatives living in “Ribena” (Rhiwbina – pronounced Roobyna). Jorn Kaarstad was very entertaining in between songs, which was useful really as it wasn’t until the last half a dozen songs that the sound engineer actually got the vocal level right so he could be heard in the room, which was a shame.
There were obviously people in the front who really didn’t care about the vocal sound because they knew all the lyrics anyway. However, the set list included ‘Freelude’, ‘Hereticules’ ‘Godless’, ‘Low (And Behold)’, ‘Burn it all’ and ‘So long idiots’ from the latest album ‘Molotov Rocktail’ & ‘Last night’ as well as ‘Mouthbreathers Inc’, ‘Charmed and extremely reckless’, ‘Captain Cold one’, ‘Vultures’ from Crimson Riders. They also included ‘Walker Texas Danger’, ‘Last Night (Was A Real Massacre)’, ‘Genocidal Tendencies’, ‘Here Goes Nothing’ and ‘Immortal Space Pirate 1’ from ‘Divide and Conquer’ and ‘No Control’ from their EP ‘War on Everything’, as well as ‘Five Finger F*&%£head’ as an encore.
I really enjoyed this and would definitely go to see them again. I also feel they would go down an absolute storm at the Steelhouse festival. Unexpectedly, a potential good night turned into a very good night.
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