By Jase Walker
It’s a bit of a relief to not have a midweek show in the arse end of the country for once and I’ve got myself up the road to a venue that probably should be charging me rent by this point. Anyway, I’m back in Amsterdam’s Melkweg venue in the OZ stage to catch a Belgian power trio who I’ve seen doing the rounds a lot over the past couple of years and popped up at ArcTanGent festival a while back too, Ramkot. They’re wrapping up the year with one last jaunt around Benelux with Heisa supporting on the Dutch dates including tonight.
I’ve always been keen on bands that have somewhat leftfield approaches to music and if they’re good enough to end up on a festival like ArcTanGent then I’d be mad to miss them when they’re literally five minutes away from me!
The music suddenly hushes and it’s time for Heisa to take the stage, a Palestine flag draped across their drum kit. Feedback and fuzzy guitar rings across the room, vocals distorted through layers of reverb and delay bounce around as the rest of the band slowly come in with added noise.
This is the sort of weird post-punk racket that I’m expecting and it’s just the sort of thing I need to finish off a tired Wednesday evening. Their singer’s voice reminds me a lot of Kurt Cobain, with that sort of raspy high register that wavers a lot with some strain. There feels like some sort of influences from the likes of Leprous and Agent Fresco here as well coming from the use of synths that buzz and match the drummers grooving at odd rhythms, who also reminds me a lot of Leprous’s drummer, Baard. Although I mentioned Kurt Cobain earlier for the vocals, he switches it up constantly switching to weird monotone moments that remind me of Alabama 3 doing the Sopranos intro before changing again to high falsetto: what a range.
I mean I came here for some weird stuff of course but this has taken me by surprise and I’m really enjoying it. There’s a real pervasive fuzzy sound throughout their set, both guitars and bass seem to have this mid frequency gain that helps flesh the sound out a lot. These wouldn’t be out of place on a lineup with the likes of Psychonaut or The Ocean and all that post-metal goodness. A slight hiccup at the end of the set where the bass player forgot to put the right bass on but ends a set that has had me fully engrossed from the first song with their interesting style and will be getting added to my ever growing list of “the good shit”. Great stuff.
As the room goes dark before Ramkot takes the stage, the.. emoji (?) to the side of the stage stands bright as the crowd clamours for the start of the set. Sombre piano keys start the set off and the crowd noise suddenly dies off in respect of the band’s beginning. After the somewhat chilled introduction, the next song hits hard with a bouncy guitar riff to whet people’s appetite for more noise and that is exactly what we get when the heaviness properly kicks in! Ramkot overall has a much stronger hard rock flavour to their music but with some proggy elements that remind me a lot of the likes of Nothing More or Port Noir.
As you’d want from a power trio type band setup, there’s a lot of dynamics from every member of the band so ensure a meaty and interesting sound and “dead air” is generally kept to a minimum. There’s a lot of Queens Of The Stone Age in their sound as well, that little bit of riffy flair with fuzzy mids mixed with semi distorted vocals. There also seems to be elements of The Hives in their sound too, some songs veering more towards that punky rock and roll style with shouty vocals.
It’s not hard to see why Ramkot got picked up by ArcTanGent though, they’ve got that leftfield approach and unusual style that’s still pretty accessible while being that bit insane. Real high energy performance that still sees a lot of movement despite all three members of the band essentially being chained to the spot as both guitarist and bass player share equal vocal duties.
Each song they play has got a really infectious hook to it either on the vocals or a catchy lick on the guitars. Ramkot are clearly a band that don’t feel restricted on what they want to do with their music but never stray too far from knowing what a rock band lives and dies on. They’re a young band that must have grown up on the rock and roll giants of yesteryear and yet have formed and gone “Thanks for giving us the spark, but we’ve got our own shit to do now.”.
Ramkot put on a seriously entertaining show tonight at Melkweg, properly high energy from the start (maybe barring the piano intro I suppose). I don’t think I’ve seen a Theremin used much in live music either but Ramkot gave it a bit of a shake and used it to good effect.
I tried to keep myself fairly ignorant of Ramkot prior to this show so I could experience it first hand in a live setting which honestly at the end of the set seems like a great call. A great slew of songs throughout the set jumping between many facets of their sound and demonstrated a band that doesn’t feel tied down to any specific approach and goes for what feels and sounds good more than anything.
Pretty fucking good way of spending a Wednesday evening if you ask me.