Winnebago Deal and Looking Glass played to a tiny audience at Greenroom on Thursday night. But that did not stop Winnebago Deal coming out swinging. After opening act Looking Glass blasted the venue with their heavy weight psychedelic metal drone the two-piece Winnebago Deal rocked the empty Greenroom.
Winnebago Deal is a United Kingdom two-piece, unfortunately only one member could play, drummer Ben Thomas having to return home for family reasons. This did not stop Vocalist and Guitarist Ben Perrier from having a confident opening to the night with song The Line Up – the opening track from album Dead Gone. With a stand-in drummer who smashed his way through supporting the guitar driven rock, Perrier powered through his set list. Appreciating playing, and not in the slightest perturbed by the poor showing Canberra made for this great act Perrier was happily engaging with those who did make up the audience. With the next song, With Friends Like These, Perrier gave us the opening track to album Flight of the Raven. Following with Reeper, the bands most recent single, the band gave us a heavy-duty and confident opening trio of songs that was definitely appreciated by the audience. As the set powered on the influence of grunge rock clearly came through, and it is understandable that Jack Endino, producer of the first Nirvana album Bleach, has played a role with this band.
The middle of Winnebago Deal’s set got in your face with the strong repetition of Whiskey Business from the bands debut Ep Plata O Plomo followed up with Did It, Done It, Doing It Again, which took us back to their first full length album, Dead Gone. While the Canberra crowds missed a great night Winnebago Deal indulged those who did make it with a strong set that would please fans as it traversed the history of their releases in a tight and driven set.
Canberra band Looking Glass opened the night’s proceedings with Marcus De Pasquale, Clinton Paine and Lachlan Paine taking us through their heavy and hypnotically droning set, fusing the strong influences of Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix into a practical and focused set, again appreciated by those who braved the Thursday night cold. They opened with Freya which set the tone with the powerful evidence of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man lying at the perfect level below the surface. Psychonaut in the middle of their set also won acclaim from the small crowd with its Hendrix and Led Zeppelin coming to the fore. Looking Glass ended their set strongly with Burmese Dragon, Acid Tongue and Holomovement; check this Canberra band out if you like your music to mix heavy metal with psychedelics.
