By Monk and The Dark Queen
By Ozzy and all the gods of metal, it’s good to be back. After yet another enforced hiatus, the Northern Irish music scene was finally up and running again, having come back with a massive bang the previous weekend with a sold out first heat of the now renascent Metal 2 The Masses competition. Now, just seven short days later, it was the turn of two of Belfast’s metal scene veterans to blow the remaining cobwebs off Voodoo’s rafters… And you couldn’t wipe the smile off DQ’s face as she salivated over the prospect of similarly dusting down her trusty Nikons for the first time in what seemed like forever…
This initially had been a three-band bill, but the inevitable Covidications are still omnipresent, and openers Divides/Unfold had to pull out at just two days’ notice after one of their members was diagnosed with the latest permutation of the dreaded beerbug. But, in the best tradition, it was on with the show, no matter what…
And it turned out to be a case of you can’t keep a good man down, as Baleful Creed frontman Fin was also battling against the odds, recovering as he was from a triple whammy of a broken finger, a bout of pneumonia AND the dread C-virus to boot! We had been warned that this might result in a foreshortened set, but as it turned out it was not so much a case of ‘Mr Grim’ as that of ‘The Phoenix’ rising from the ashes of the past 27 months of silence to deliver a set characterized by grit, determination, the steely-eyed stare of renewal and an enthusiasm to put the travails of the past two years behind everyone concerned.
Fuelled by big, bolshy bass-driven riffs that cascade from the speakers in tumultuous tsunamis of doom-laden slabs of aural concrete, this may not be a joyous-sounding set, but the joy of this band being back in action is as latent as it is palpable. Hell, Fin even drops the guitar to do a Steven Tyler-style mic-stand wielding frontman routine during the gloriously punky finale of the unexpected encore of ‘Riled Up’. As I said, you can’t keep a good man down, and it was great to have Fin, John, Dave and Davy back where they belong – on stage and laying down serious riffage on an otherwise dank and dreary Friday night.
It could be argued that nominal headliners NASA Assassin were a bit less ring rusty than the Creed lads, as they had managed to squeeze in a couple of shows in the brief few weeks at the end of 2021 when live gigs as we know them were actually allowed to go ahead before the NI Executive introduced yet another clampdown… Whatever the case, our favourite bunch of UFO abductees were again determined to make the nightmare of the last two years seem like a particularly surreal episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ as, following their trademark (and highly appropriate) intro of ‘Rocket Man’, they hit the stage – and the audience – hard and furious with their frenetic brand of pronk.
We’re definitely living life in the freefall as the guys speed their way through their set of back-to-back spaced-out rock anthems. The trademark tinfoil hats may have been (temporarily?) retired, but the quintet nevertheless conspire to deliver yet another punk-fuelled, dynamic and vibrant set filled with their equally trademark humour, with Jeff commanding both the stage and room like a starship commander and Aidy a typically whirling dervish of energy and passion.
Another stellar performance from Northern Ireland’s favourite rock ‘n’ roll astronauts.
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