Words by Jimmy Glinster
Pix by Kaotic Images
Editors note: The morning of The Other Festival the person assigned to review the show fell ill and as such had to regretfully sit the show out in favour of his bed. Luckily Jimmy Glinster was already going and agreed to throw some words together, but he too became unwell during the day and pulled stumps early which means we have only covered part of the day by way of review. But the good news is Tracy McLaughlin was there to immortalise the whole show by way of photographs, so things balance out a touch. Acts not reviewed: Prince Peace, Bare Bones, The Stranger, Hot Cobra, Osaka Punch, COG.
The day started with me feeling like absolute shit thanks to a bout of the common cold which apparently still exists after Covid. So, I took a swim in the pool to cool the fuck down in this filthy Qld humidity when the storm clouds come over, the sun disappeared, and the temperature dropped by about 7 degrees at which point I got cold and started coughing my fucking ring up. A hot shower quickly warmed me back up and all of a sudden, I was prepped and full of energy ready to make my way to The Fortitude Music Hall for The Other Festival.
As it turns out, The Other Festival was actually being held at The Tivoli, so I ended up having to a walk a kilometre, in my skinny black jeans, in the returned scorching heat and disgusting humidity to get to where the fuck I was meant to be in the first place. Anyway, on entering the venue I’m blessed with some alt-metal tunes being played by Beaver Fever who just happens to be one of the many guest DJ’s sharing the Heavy Stage throughout the day. More about that later!
Moments later, Mass Sky Raid open up the Roadsick stage. If you are familiar with MSR you’ll know just how tight and clean their performances are. As usual, frontman Adam‘s vocals are on point and the band does not miss a note or beat. Unfortunately, the guitars are initially a little low in the mix, but this eventually corrects itself to allow for Alex’s note-for-note precision to fill the mix. Being early in the day, there are only around 100 or so punters on the floor, but the band gains their attention nonetheless and are applauded accordingly for every track they ever so gracefully performed. Honestly, this band should
have been way further up the bill, but on such a stellar line-up, someone’s gotta open the show don’t they!
Next up on the Heavy stage is Chrispytown, which has fuck all to do with our Krispy, or his town. What we get here is a weird mix of shitty techno and shitty death metal. I’m still not sure which one I disliked most, but something was wrong with the PA and the highs were reverberating in the open ceilings and creating a fucked up TV static noise which made it really difficult to hear the conversation I was having with Simon from Minds?End, but we’ll get to that later.
Kodiak Empire take the main stage, and I’m very quickly confronted with some weird out of time arty shit. The drummer was crazy good, but fuck knows what the rest of the band was doing because it just seemed like a mess, an intentional one. It may have just been that the guitar was too loud, and he couldn’t hear what the rest of the band was doing, but it was very difficult to follow any kind of familiar rhythm or groove. Not to mention the guitar sounded like a 10watt bedroom amp with a blown speaker, which I also think was intentional. Random death metal lyrics from the drummer added an additional odd flavour to the mix, and their final track had some heavy screams from the lead vocalist which almost floated my boat, almost. I guess you’d call this interesting if it’s your kind of thing but it sure as hell wasn’t mine.
Chrispytown jumped back on the Heavy stage to fill another gap between main stage performances, and it was much of the same weird shit again.
Alright, back to the Roadsick stage and my ol’ buddies in Minds?End are about to take the stage. Now before I get into reviewing their show, let’s step back to that conversation with their drummer Simon during Chrispytowns first DJ set.
So, it went a little something like this:
Simon: Jimmy, how ya going man, you been well?
Jimmy: Yeah, I’m good mate, how about you?
Simon: Yeah, good man. Are you reviewing today?
Jimmy: Not today mate, I’m off the hook.
Simon: Great, because as you know, we have a new guitarist, we haven’t played for fucking ages, and you are way too fucking honest.
Jimmy: All good mate, you can just concentrate on playing and not have to worry about some bullshit I’m going to say.
Simon: Yeah mate, it’s a relief to be 100% honest. Oh, and thanks for repping the Minds?End shirt.
Jimmy: No worries, man, all fucking good!
So, in an unexpected twist of fate, and just to clarify that I’m not a straight-up liar, at that point I wasn’t actually reviewing this festival, I was actually just there to catch Mass Sky Raid and Minds?End. As it turns out though, the reviewer who’d been given this sweet ass festival was a no show, so I decided to grab hold of the heavy baton and commence this relay!
Ok, back to the show. Minds?End take the stage with their very loud, very heavy and very aggressive broken grooves. Unlike that earlier band, this is how you do unusual time signatures, and this is how you make it groove. Having Jens the German Jesus upfront also helps to draw the crowd in and makes them pay attention, as does the epic mullet on the new guitarist Shannon. If only Mado on bass still had his mullet we’d have matching mullets each side of stage. What a force to be reckoned with that would be.
Now, keeping all honest like and shit, their old guitarist is an old mate of mine, and the new guitarist is not, yet, although we have shared the stage previously when his band Emotion Killer supported Veal a couple of years ago at Vinnies Dive. But anyway, he goes alright although probably not as tight just yet, but he moves around a hell of a lot which probably doesn’t help, and this is his first show playing some riffs which don’t always sit where they feel they should. More importantly though, many punters were up front getting their slice of Minds?End’s broken heavy grooves which they brought hard!
Fuck, here we go, there is an actual band on the Heavy stage now, and they have fucking keyboards … ewww. It’s not my thing, but it is kind of cool and the band pulls themselves a solid little crowd on the side stage. I’ve seen their name around many times but have never taken much notice probably because it’s not really my thing and I probably couldn’t give an honest insightful review of it, so I didn’t take much notice again. Everyone seemed to be having a good time though, so that’s always a good thing.
Back to the Roadsick stage and Rhino waste no time belting into some rocking good times. They are super energetic, and the dual guitar attack with shared lead duties has the now half full room paying attention and rocking the fuck out. Frontman Simon stopped for some random comedy after a couple of songs and noted how tough the crowd was. Simon, I think they just wanted you to shut up and rock out mate, but I was with you, laughing inside. And I must note, this was the first time in 20 years that I’d seen a rollerball shirt thanks to the bass player. If any of you know who Rollerball is you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
And if not, how’s the last 5 years been since you left high school? Anyway, there’s my attempt at comedy and unlike my lack of a crowd, the crowd was standing and taking notice, and you know a band’s doing well when everyone starts sticking their phones in front of your face, cunts. The second last track which I think was called Rolling was a fucking banger and received a massive response from the crowd before a phased-out guitar riff followed by a 1,2 fuck you dragged us into the final song of their set. Fuck knows what it was called, but it was a fucking banger too. Fucking great band and a fucking killer show.
Back over to the Heavy Stage we go for World We Know. These guys are heavy until they aren’t, and the guitar cleans are lowder than the distortion, which is a very rookie error, not to mention a pet peeve of mine and every other sound guy on the planet. The vocals are super clean and way too loud over the rest of the mix, but that’s the sound guys’ fault and not the bands, and there appears to be two guitars, although I can only hear one, again, the sound guy. The clean choruses are shared between the frontman and guitarist, and I’m going to say that this is Melodic post hardcore or something like that, but luckily the second song is a bit of a bouncer, and almost Nu-Metal sounding. They seem to have a nice little interested crowd, but it’s not my thing, so I’m off to get some brisket-loaded fries.
I make it back to the main Roadsick stage just in time for The Wrath who take the stage and instantly grab everyone’s attention with their very own brand of horror punk rock. The dual guitars and double bass rock out the punk rock riffs hard and the drums maintain a solid beat to pull it all together.
Frontman Tommy owns the stage travelling from side to side and front to back and Deano gives me a quick wink as I head to the front of the stage to get a little more involved. That wasn’t creepy at all. I’m trying to figure what he is going to climb this time around as he usually finds somewhere dubious to position himself, and let’s be honest, he needs to do something to draw every male in the room’s eyes from Carina on guitar at the other side of stage. This band is always one hell of a good time, and they try a new track out on the crowd which is an absolute banger to which the crowd respond with a massive cheer as the track closes out. A slower track follows and shifts the mood back a little, but as the next song rocks off Deano leaves the stage and runs amok in the crowd riffing like a madman before making his way back for some “woah woah woahs”. The last couple of tracks rock out like a mother fucker and Tommy invites the crowd to come get drunk with them after the set, but not before Deano positions himself precariously on top of the side-fill speaker stack. It’s always carnage, but one day one of those speaker stacks is gonna fall and’s it’s gonna be absolute carnage. We can only hope though, can’t we!
Unfortunately, due to this fuck of cough, which is allegedly not Covid, I’m going to pike the fuck out and head home to the comforts of my bed. Luckily though, the main man himself Krispy is here to take over and give you all a run-down of the rest of the night. Have a great night kids, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Oh, and apologies if you have a new-found cough today! It’s not the Rona, I promise!
