Easter Saturday at the Hyde Park Hotel turned out to be an extravaganza of awesome bands on three stages; not that it was arranged that way on purpose, but punters arriving to see the Albion bands in the lounge room noticed that the Chainsaw Horror II The Resurrection gig also had an unmissable line-up. Many ended up going drink for drink pub-crawl style between bars. This made for a festival-sized evening’s entertainment well worth the hangover.

In the affectionately named lounge room, (that’s the front bar where bands play on the carpet in the dark with the back drop of past gig posters and curtains and 1950s style light fittings on the walls.) Blac Blocs’ Allan Boyd the Anti-poet himself, was fronting the Anti-poet Band entertaining earlybirds with a beat version of the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen among other numbers.

A dash across the carpark to the back bar revealed Cat Black another of those whiskey-soul bluestresses Perth has seen emerge over the past couple of years. Ms Black fits somewhere between the angst of Hayley Beth, and the deep blues of Abbe May, and is worth watching out for.

The Bible Bashers were up next, and if there was any confusion about their religiosity on this Christian holiday weekend, these punkabillies were not bashing you with the bible, rather bashing the bible… Oh and a couple of the audience members received an ear bashing or a sweaty man hug from the frothing and furious lead man Laith Tyranny It was difficult to understand anything much of what was being bellowed into the mic, but whatever it was, it was entertaining, and passionately delivered.

Novelty MC Elron Hobo slurred obscenely unfunny drivel into the mic in between sets in the back bar, and was possibly the only unentertaining part of the evening. The bands looked faintly embarrassed, audience members mostly waited politely for him to finish and return to his seat, though some heckled him to “fuck off!” Someone was obviously telling him he was funny, because he returned unperturbed to the stage before each band, all the way to the end of the night.

Lately only ever appearing once in a blue moon, The Order of the Black Werewolf made a welcome return to the stage, enthralling the back room crowd which was by now big enough to be described as such. Despite being plagued with technical difficulties, they pulled off a hugely entertaining set. The new drummer and second guitarist fit perfectly into the band’s sound, and add a new richness to the mix. Hopefully we will see a lot more of this stronger-bigger-faster breed of werewolf around the traps, and maybe those rumours of a recording will soon be more than a myth.

Our favourite experimental dirty-punk noisemakers Injured Ninja were trashing the loungeroom, or at least speakers and eardrums, ruining any chance of conversation for the rest of the weekend, but oh, don’t we all love a thrashing? Since their return from Japan the boys have been damaging audiences on an almost weekly basis, and the experience is telling in their performance. Leaping into any available space on the – œstage’ Steve Hughes wrestled melodic shrieks from his guitar punctuated by electro noise from too many kinds of gadgets to catalogue thanks to Jake Steele. Between them Matt (boobs) Bairstowe and Dom Pearce kept the drum n bass flowing around lyrical growls that had the audience enthralled and even dancing. Quote-of-the-Evening Award goes to Pearce for this gem, directed at the crowd of people standing at the side of the not-stage, “I don’t care if you want to go back there to smoke crack, but if you trip over my lead I’ll fucking cut you. I mean it”

Chainsaw Hookers were up next on the back room floor spraying everyone with a dose of sex and violence followed by Genghis on the technical difficulties stage which seems to test the patience and stage cool of every band with more than one plug-in instrument. Not that we could really tell from the audience since our ear drums had been happily ruptured long before Greg Sanders’ guitar amp began to lose power. The band was clearly unimpressed by their performance, but they should take heart, we have heard them many times before, and know that when the electricity is available to them, they kick arse.

Garage2V state winners Shock Horror held court in the lounge room, followed by the heavy psych-noise of Cease, both of whom have been recently reviewed by Fasterlouder and therefore lost the ballot in favour of the final two bands in the back bar. Mile End seem to have added a bit of spice to their set since the last time we saw them, ramping up the energy and the anger a little. Musically they retain all of their old genius, but have perhaps shed a little of their melancholy in favour of a fight… Or perhaps they were smoking crack with the Ninja’s audience earlier in the night. Jokes aside, Cameron Hines absolutely shredded his bass, as well as wearing a circle in the carpet from his furious dancing, whilst Jerome Turle played such furiously fast and precise drums that there could easily have been two drummers for more than just the one song where Hines dropped his bass in favour of a bash on the floor tom. So phenomenal was Turle’s performance that one punter walked up close to watch him play and make sure it was all live, and seeing that it was, give him a congratulatory hug at the end of the song.

The final band on the Chainsaw II The Resurrection bill was The Kuillotines and truly they were the reason for the large number of quiffs and side burns in the audience. Rocka-psyco-emo-punka-billy, whatever the term for that deep walking bass sound coupled with any (and in this case, several) other musical styles, the Kuillotines dished it up, and the remaining members of the crowd took it to the floor to dance the last half hour of the night away. They are an acquired taste its true, but apart from the hair stereotype, acquiring a taste for this band would not be in the least bit painful.