Pix by Sarah Gilpin
A very industrial sounding intro kicks off the night, and Our Last Enemy spend no time kicking into their very own brand of industrial metal. This will be the theme of the night, with three quite different versions of the genre on display. OLE mix a blend of fast thrash riffs which sometime border on death with thumping drumbeats, solid bass grooves, and heavy dark vocals by frontman Oli Fogwell, all of which are accompanied by keys and electronic samples.
Their fourth track, Hex Design, adds another flavour to their already unique sound as it starts with some country-style slide guitar. Once it gets moving, the track grooves hard with chunky chugging riffs and bouncing drums. This is the Sydney band’s first trip up to Brisbane in quite some time, and the solid early crowd are incredibly happy to see them. Their next track Never Coming Back featured a solidly screamed chorus of “We’ve been dead for so long”!
OLE then offers up three brand new tracks for the crowd. The first of which is a cover of Amen’s Coma America, which receives a great response from the crowd. They finish the set with two others that again both receive a massive positive response!
Up next is Witchgrinder, and their intro is a little less industrial but a lot more eerie and creepy! This very quickly makes way for the very heavily thrash-influenced version of industrial metal that they do so well. The guitars are crushingly loud, especially frontman Trav Evertt’s, which unfortunately hides a ripping guitar solo from left of stage before the sound guy realises that he needs to turn the lead guitar up, and Trav’s down a touch.
Some technical difficulties follow and result in a quick switch out of a dodgy guitar lead that fixed what previously sounded like a blown front-of-house speaker. The riffs kept coming hard and fast once that issue was sorted, and the sound overall was solidly improved. Tight leather pants, big boots, and collars were the theme of the crowd, and the industrial goths wearing them were loving it.
A quick shout-out goes to Ozzy Osbourne, followed by some jamming on what may or may not have been a Black Sabbath riff. What follows is an absolute banger of a thrash track, which the crowd absolutely erupted to! After a smashing show at Necrosonic Festival just a few weeks ago, the Melbourne lads brought it just as hard again this time around.
Their second last track offered a twist with a riff so southern and groovy that it could have been mistaken for Pantera, but it was not, it was Witchgrinder! They finish with a track titled Dead by Dawn, which was another industrial thrash metal banger! They certainly set a hard act for the headliners to follow.
The sound of a spinning vinyl is backed by pulsating low notes and then smothered with the spoken word of an angry woman. Key samples begin playing and Combichrist enter the stage ready to thump the house down. These guys had a keyboard onstage, but the assigned player was set up on a second drum kit, thumping away tribal backing rhythms on the tom-only setup.
Their opening song is titled All Pain is Gone and features the standout lyric “The Day I Die.” These guys are a little more upbeat than their supports, but just as heavy. There is also a little bit more pop sensibility in the structure of the songs, and the vocals are not always heavy, well, not screaming anyway. It is quite catchy with thumping beats and programmed melodies taking the lead over the single guitarist.
And then the guitar takes over and subsonic bass samples fatten up the bottom end. There is no bass player in the band; there is just a drummer, guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist. And the samples, this band is all about the samples and the backing tracks. The added percussion that the keyboardist adds here and there also provides some extra flair.
The band have a dedicated following, with the whole crowd up close and energised. Cheers and applause ring out after every song, the heads bop along, and the crowd answers every time on cue when asked to jump in on the lyrics. The music is catchy, so you cannot blame the crowd for getting in on the action.
Children of Violence is a heavy song title and is the heaviest song so far. So heavy that it required a bass guitar that the keyboardist picked up for this special occasion. The set from this point seems to continue with the heavy, but the keyboardist does jump off the bass and back on the keys to deliver the techno elements of the track that start pushing through again.
Frontman Andy LaPlegu announces “Tonight, We Are All Electroheads” and the band kicked in with Electrohead, a heavily techno-influenced track with non-stop thumping kick drums just like the ones you hear in the clubs. The heavy guitars and screams save it, though, because it could have just been an unbearable Ministry of Sound effort without them.
The bass guitar joins in again for a more rocking, riff-driven track titled Sonic Witch. Andy incites the crowd to the Church of Combichrist for another heavy riff-driven track titled Modern Demon. It was a strange way to prove that point by launching into a 2-minute-long grindcore track titled Violence Solves Everything that ended up transferring into a song more suited to their unique industrial soundscape. The band then leaves the stage without saying a word and then returned for a three-song encore of Desolation, Denial and Never Surrender.
Industrial Metal was alive and well tonight!
