By Monk and The Dark Queen
The first thing to be noticed about tonight’s crowd as it files gradually yet inexorably into this historic venue and begins to fill every available millimetre of floor space is its eclectic nature. There are old school metallers (such as ourselves) who virtually lived within these hallowed walls back in the heady days of the Eighties rubbing shoulders with black leather clad new age goths and first (and now second) generation emo kids. Such is the power of good old-fashioned rock ‘n’f’n roll, to bring together people of all ages and backgrounds, even on a miserable Sunday evening in a fog-bound Belfast, for an evening of same…
It may be our headliners’ first ever visit to this particular corner of the Überverse, but at least half of openers The Cruel Knives are no strangers to the city, as guitarist Sid Glover and bassist Rob Ellershaw performed down the road at our favourite local venue, Voodoo, with their former band Heaven’s Basement, oh, more years ago than perhaps the four of us care to remember…
As the band slowly build their momentum, the first thing that is obvious, at least sonically, is the big, thick mix on the bass especially: however, while this serves to accentuate the band’s dense rhythmic grooves, it doesn’t deprecate from the rest of the sound balance, especially in terms of Glover’s guitar and Tom Harris’ vocal histrionics.
With Harris dancing energetically around the vast stage, his movement counterpointing the more relaxed demeanour of his stagefront compadres, it is not long before the quartet are truly into their stride and have the slowly growing audience eating out of their hands, as Harris coaxes and cajoles the crowd to give them more with every song, culminating in him managing to get hands clapping right to the back of the now rammed arena during riotous closer ‘Crawl’. The Knives’ classic alt-rock sound, with its big, crunching riffs, cleverly worked vocal harmonies and infectious choruses, coupled with Harris’ undoubted enthusiasm and excitement, serve as the perfect appetizer for the main course to come.
On the evidence of tonight, TCK won’t be crawling their way back to Belfast, but stomping their way down the main drag with their heads held high… and hopefully that will be sight we behold before too long…
- The Cruel Knives release their new single, ‘Overdose‘, on Friday (28 October).
During the elongated break, another quick look around the crowd clearly shows that a large percentage are young females, many of them in their early twenties, clearly demonstrating the demographic to which Taylor Momsen most obviously appeals, and the impact which her messages have on that section of society.
And right from the off, with the massive pop of ‘Death By Rock And Roll’, it is very obvious that this is “The Taylor Momsen Show”, as the rest of the band recognize their role in as the supporting cast to one of the most dynamic and evocative, as well as provocative, front women in modern rock ‘n’ roll. And Momsen proves to be just that: gyrating like a freefalling helicopter and bouncing on and off strategically-place monitor platforms like the Duracell bunny on speed, all the while whipping the crowd into a complete and total frenzy AND delivering some truly spine-tingling vocal gymnastics, she proves herself a more-than confident show woman and natural entertainer. Cindy Lou is all grown up now.
Talking of the “big pops”, which we sort of were a second ago, a perhaps surprising early one is ‘Make Me Wanna Die’, which equally unsurprisingly threatens to lift the roof of this venerable institution – a feat almost repeated slightly later with obvious crowd favourites ‘Zombie’ and ‘Going To Hell’: unfortunately, after this latter track, your ÜR crüe found ourselves ‘Going To Work’ and so we had to vacate the premises somewhat permaturely, with the strains of ‘Heaven Knows’ following us back out into the night air… I wish we could have stayed to the very end, but life sometimes gets in the way of more important things. Ah well.
But, judging on the fervid reaction of the devoted hundreds who gathered to hear the rock ‘n’ roll gospel according to Taylor Momsen, it won’t be too long before these pretty reckless ones are back this way and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to enjoy the complete package. Here’s hoping.
- The tour continues:
- The Pretty Reckless release their new album, ‘Other Worlds‘, a collection of acoustic tracks and cover versions, on 4 November.
- PHOTO CREDIT: All photos © The Dark Queen/Über Rock. You can view our full gallery of photographs HERE.
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