Soundwave @ Bassendean Oval,Perth (1/03/10)

Thu 4th Mar, 2010 in Gig Reviews

If you were there, you’re probably here

Soundwave was just plain old scungy this year. Scungy line 11am, scungy, sweaty body crevices, scungy substance abuse, scungy drunk minors.

When the sun is slowly but surely shrivelling your skin like a chip packet in an oven, all you really expect from a $160 festival is some free sunscreen. “Hey there’s some on that table”. A couple of squirts later and some carnie looking dude has snatched it away and put it in the ‘staff only’ zone. What a joke.

Maybe the First Aid area has some. Nope they’ve tucked the ambos away in a no-go zone as well. Midway through the festival, they’ve made the half-arsed effort of hanging a couple of sunscreen tubs on what is literally the First Aid ‘post’ but they’re empty already. Anyone around to help you find some more? You can bet your arse there isn’t.

It was hard slog all day. The new arrangement of stages seemed like the worst idea in the world at first, until it came time to watch a band in the shade of the tent stage. This provided the only pre-sunset relief and the drinking area was elevated and placed within convenient viewing range.

RX Bandits were much better viewed at the foot of the stage. It was essential to be able to see Steve Choi’s fingers move so effortlessly around his fretboard. What a most technically brilliant and unappreciated Cali quartet these guys were. They have been around for years, which made one wonder how the majority of the modest crowd were high-schoolers. The groms obviously had a good taste in music.

The Banditos opened with Decrescendo. Shirtless vocalist Matt Embree looked as though he’d stepped straight off the set of one of those trendy-to-be-hippy CK commercials. He casually swayed and plucked complicated fills and thrashed his bearded mug sometimes before returning to his drifty demeanour. It’s Only Another Parasec was like listening to digital Armageddon and Choi revealed himself to be as handy with the keys as he is with the guitar.

Embree mumbled stuff between tracks which no one really listened to; this was a band that could definitely let their arrangements do the talking. They closed their set with an intense wall of sound which built layer upon layer of labyrinthine riffs and rolls before the heart monitor flatlined under the duress they had created. No other band would end a set better.

The Weakerthans were good but slightly underwhelming and there was an annoying little twerp getting on everyone’s nerves by two-stepping through the relaxed crowd. Something like this would normally be met with patience but fuses were short in 40 degree heat. Once The Weakerthans got the trumpet involved in their set though, it was enough of a distraction from irritations.

Not watching the whole Sunny Day Real Estate set might have been a better idea, had the UV factor not been at its peak. The end of their set showed glimpses of the influence they have had over countless bands the kids now idolise. They closed with Number Nine and J’nuh and showed the pubescents waiting to hear Taking Back Sunday how deranged emo music used to sound before fringes and girl’s jeans for boys.

Guess this revelation was too overwhelming for one kid who got heckled by the crowd as security led him away with his pants half down, spew all over himself and no one home in his head. More examples of this scunginess were happening over at the 18+ tent area where a guy was slumped against the fence and rolling his head to the side every now and then to allow some bile to dribble from his mouth.

While all this was going on, Set Your Goals had managed to draw a massive crowd of grommets and whipped them into a frenzy. It was nothing more than high school music, but it provided a wicked scene of enthusiasm from the youngsters who obeyed every whim of front men Matt Wilson and Jordan Brown. It was totally believable when Wilson heralded them as the best crowd they had played to.

Clutch played the most ballsy countrified set of the day at stage four and were full of sweaty contempt for the “merciless lighting director”. Anvil followed them up in the most novel way possible but took home the most-stoked-to-be-there award. It was hard not to enjoy a song named after their favourite marijuana, White Rhino which then led into Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow saying, with a bong signal, he was going back stage to recharge.

Any mutual fans of Placebo and Meshuggah, of which there are probably none, could have seen more than just Every Me, Every You after Meshuggah arrived 20 minutes late. They looked like they had been downing frothies all day and each had beer in hand as they strolled out. No one had enough balls to jeer at them though. They were a juicy, vicious assault.

It was liquid metal at its most brutal. If mercury had a theme song it would be one of Meshuggah’s. Jens Kidman was like a white pointer in a feeding frenzy, baring his teeth and the whites of his eyes at the crowd. He stood at the front of the stage with one leg on the foldback peering over the punters like he was hunting for his next victim. His band mates carried on their brand of experimental insanity behind him and belted out perplexing stuff like Bleed and Future Breed Machine. It might have only been a short set but a massive crowd of prey with sore spines will tell you it was no disappointment.

It’s time for another good emo, bad emo. Good Emo set: Sunny Day Real Estate. Bad Emo set: AFI. Fantasies of them stepping on stage to Sing The Sorrow’s riotous opener Miseria Cantare were crushed when they tore straight into some new shit. Such a good band gone bad. Anthrax were a million times better viewing choice.

THE original thrash band rollicked through their seminal sound and left all the imitators in their wake. Then in a tribute of the highest honour they covered Refused’s New Noise. It’s not often the influencer covers the influenced. Bassendean Oval was then delivered Bring the Noise for the second time in 18 months (Public Enemy did it first on New Years Eve 2008) and all was set at stage four for Trivium.

The Jane’s Addiction set, which dragged on into an encore after Jane Says, couldn’t have been over quick enough for Jimmy Eat World fans. They were the ultimate replacement act for My Chemical Bromance. People had been waiting for their return to Perth for seven years and the crowd did not stop singing as the band relentlessly piled on the favourites.

The performance was not particularly dynamic- there were no surprises besides songs you had forgotten were theirs, but with such an infectious back catalogue they didn’t need to do much. It helped that their setlist was amazingly ordered and Jim Adkins voice was brilliant. The seat peaked with the intense gradual build up of 23 and of course Bleed American.

Soundwave has revealed some of the best mainstage closing sets of recent memory. Faith No More can now be added to that list and at the top of it depending on if you’re talking to a Nine Inch Nails fan. Rave reviews before this show were irrelevant, Mike Patton is an erratic frontman; he can be entertaining and engaging or just be a right tosser. Thankfully his Perth persona was the former and Faith No More presented an incredible feat of entertainment. It didn’t have masturbating streamed live on a super screen, hell Perth didn’t even get a superscreen, but it was Perth’s show and everyone was holding it very dear.

From the back of the crowd Patton’s open collar red business suit either looked like the robes of the Dalai Llama or an in-mate’s get up depending on what you were on. Both similes would be accurate in his case. When he talked he sounded like a cartoon villain and people lapped it up like he was the holy Tibetan one. When he sang though, people needed to take a step back. It was startling vocal gymnastics and his embellished screams were scintillating. One dude was loving it so much he thought it necessary to light up a rock pipe by himself at the back. He may as well have pulled his pants down and done a shit in front of everyone. What was that about scungy?

The band didn’t skimp on songs for the majority either, Epic, Easy and surprisingly 1997’s Ashes To Ashes all got a berth. There would have been dedicated followers left wishing for ‘their’ obscure song, but basically it was a perfectly weighted set. This was ultimately the Mike Patton show but it will be Faith No More- the band that people will remember putting on one of the best sets in Soundwave history.

Soundwave was scungy, but we love that right?

If you were there, you’re probably here