Re: Heavy Metal
haghaha. brilliant.
here James, I found some metal related business for our first band (RATM tribute band that turned into a metal band.) I was 14/15 HAHA!
we were called soul 9, for some reason.
lookin moody eh? haha
"INCREDIBLE MONKEY BUSINESS
Review - East Kilbride News
Is there really any point to a battle of the bands?
Last Wednesday the Key hosted seven young groups for a head-to head clash organised by a St. Brides High enterprise group, offering a muddle of punk, rock and nu-metal for the consistently crazy Key crowd to headbang to, although the Battle was won before the first blow was even struck.
The parade was kicked off by furious George, opening with the breezy and sophisticated Freefall.
While it was the best song anyone would hear the whole night, the majority of the crowd were unimpressed by the absence of profanities, blasphemy and screaming.
Playing mature songs (all self-written) supported by fantastic musicianship on their first gig as a band, Furious George seemed out of place - the music was brilliant but gave no one a good excuse to bang into their friend.
Carrying on with the 'We don't really belong here' theme, Glass Eye appeared on the little stage, all Mod targets and Gallagher hair, only this time the music was of far less quality.
Playing covers of Red Hot Chilli Pepper's Otherside and that annoying early 90s tune off Sky Sports, Glass Eye also failed to inspire any of the crowd to go mental, as well underwhelming any fans of Furious George's calmer approach.
It may have been wiser to avoid the uncoverable Otherside and the 90s cheese and stick to some Oasis, but their songs weren't the worst of the night and the occasional Noel-esque riff or solo spiced things up a bit.
The Key audience may have started to get a bit frustrated by this point - two bands and their thirst for punk-metal had not yet been quenched.
Luckily for them, Incredible Monkey Man were waiting to test the dance-floor's integrity. Starting off a slow chant of "monkey, monkey", they delighted their loyal fans and school friends with a mix of the puerile metal and punk they'd been baying for.
They also chose to satisfy the crowd's taste in music with covers of their favourite songs rather than daring to be creative, covering a shout Offspring song and readily hitching a ride on the succe ss of the new Green Day 'best of' compilation with a selection of their most well known hits.
This proved to be a massive success. In addition, Incredible Monkey Man could be the house band with the regularity of their crowd performances at the Key, so the crowd were never going to prefer anyone else.
With the 'monkey' chants still rattling around and the punters no longer interested in how good the rest of the bands were, Tailwind were (un)lucky enough to be next up.
The two guitarists resembled a young Proclaimers in denim, and they didn't even bother recruiting a bass player.
They started off with a cover of Roll With It and continued with similar indie covers, suffering the same problems as the first two in capturing the audience.
LCD took to the stage next and tried to recover the insane atmosphere that had accompanied the Incredible Monkey Man with yet more spurts of punk and nu-metal, although they were never going to replace them in the hearts of fans.
Despite playing superior music and featuring the most impressive vocal performance of the night, LCD were dogged by occasional risings of those 'monkey' chants and their attempt to create a singalong was dented by the lack of enthusiasm.
Next to try to revive the crowd were Sonic Rev (sadly nothing like Sonic Youth or Mercury Rev) with another stab at the nu-metal stunt.
While they also topped Incredible Monkey Man for performance, they suffered the same comparatively unexcited reception as LCD had before them.
A cover of Nirvana classic Territorial Pissings and playing the guitar behind the head on an all-out noise-athon of the quite fitting Last Resort impressed the crowd but again didnt spark the same wild response.
The last band of the night were Soul 9, also regular performers at the Key, vehemently promoted by the announcer, and better still their collection of metal songs seemed ideal for the Key audience.
Combining exciting and inventive guitars, full-on yet coherent drumming and some decent rap vocals every now and then to for m a kind of Rage Against The Machine tribute, Soul 9 - the only other band to play all their own songs - towered over the attempt at metal of every other band and brought the evening to an explosive end.
Being a Battle Of The Bands, there had to be a winner, with the criteria including the quality of music and, predominantly, crowd reaction.
With that in mind the judges had no choice but to award Incredible Monkey Man with the title, receiving rapturous applause and the crowd went crazy for the last time to a hasty cover of Basket Case.
As well as the disappointment of the rather contrived result, the other niggle of the Battle of the Bands was the lack of material.
Only Furious George and Soul 9 dared to play solely their own songs (by no coincidence the best two bands to play) and while it was intended to be a platform for fresh bands from around East Kilbride as well as a winner-takes-all skirmish, the display of musical talent was stifled by this saturation of covers."
those were the days..
