The gig had been moved from Green Door Store and pretty quickly it was clear it would be close to a full house at Audio.
Support came from Brighton band The Wytches. They were an odd but enthralling mix of doomy surf music – almost as if Link Wray had overdosed on downers while biting a shotgun. At times it feels similar to Nine Black Alps and the powerful vibrato of the vocalist reminds us of Jason from The Von Bondies. Would definitely check them out again.
By the time Metz came on it was packed, with a decent mix of people in the crowd – from Mojo reading dads to little noise oiks. The band kicked off with a full-on intro which made us both excited and instantly regret having no earplugs.
The lighting was really different with minimal large lighting and just three movable uplights that the band adjusted. It was much more intimate and made me think of early 90s band videos – quite fitting. To describe how they sound is to namedrop some of the biggest noisy bands from those days – they are essentially a mix of Fugazi, Shellac, In Utero era Nirvana and a touch of the discordance of Cursive.
Metz haven’t been around for long but their debut has been lauded since release and for good reason. As the album is pretty short we got the whole thing. ‘Headache’ went down amazingly, forcing a bit of a crush against the barriers. ‘Sad Pricks’ shows exactly what they do best – discordant drone rock. Their live sound has its own charm that isn’t audible on the record.
They were clearly enjoying themselves – as were the crowd. They were taking slugs from a bottle of Jameson’s which did the rounds through the crowd a few times.
‘Wasted’ and other tracks remind me of Failure’s album ‘Comfort’. Every song is played with passion and one thing you can say is they are really really tight. Three piece bands have a bit of an advantage with this but these guys meld super precision with feeling. Not easy to do.
It was a fairly short set but just about perfect in terms of flow. Frontman Alex Edkins finished things off with a little crowd surf through the amped up audience. Worth noting that this gig had the best live sound we’ve experienced at Audio – hope this will be the same for future gigs.
This definitely goes down as one of the best gigs in a long while – really good fun rather than just a crowd of cool hunters as a lot of gigs seem to be at the moment. They say they are back in June and from the final applause it seems Brighton is looking forward to it.
Audio, Thursday 31st January 2013
Words and photos by Dan Griffiths
