DZ, Velociraptor, Sleepwalks @The Zoo (27/08/2010)

Mon 30th Aug, 2010 in Gig Reviews

Check out the action here

Three-piece Sleepwalks are tonight’s entre performance. There are few bands that can pull off an old-school punk sound in the style of The Ramones and even more noticeably The Saints, like this trio. David Hansford’s mullet is the epitome of rock and roll in all its sleazy glory. The lads mash out concise packages of fuzz to the few punters who are dotted around The Zoo. Although their set, on this occasion, lacks vigour there is certainly the foundation for bigger things.

Velociraptor bears more resemblance to an orchestra, than a band with a total of twelve musicians on stage. The group is a collaboration of musicians comprising members of Sulfur Lights, Running Guns, Tiger Beams, Strange Attractors and DZ themselves. With the band sporting seven guitarists, it’s clear that the lead guitar parts and the synthesizer don’t have any chance of being heard in the mix. Only two guitars are actually going through the in house mix. Yet at the same time, even with so many guitars, this suit-wearing mop-haired group still manage to deliver a tight set of 60s style pop rock. The harmonies merge into screams as members of the band dance around joyously. Amazingly, they actually manage to move around without impaling each others on their instruments.

Clouds of smoke billow upwards on the darkened Zoo stage. The two members of DZ creep on and launch head first into a new song entitled Deathray. It takes a while for the audience to warm to the set’s newer material but when the audience is fully engaged they mosh furiously and a few punters scramble onto the stage leap out into the chaos.

Arguably DZ’s biggest selling point is that they are the perfect encapsulation of a hectic house party. Think beer sculling, living room trashing and other debauchery. The trashy sounds the amps produce would sound abhorrent in other acts, but in DZ’s case it complements their vivacious take on dance-punk brilliantly. Shane Parsons lurches around as if intoxicated, his jagged movements only exacerbated by the strobe lights, which illuminate the stage like flashes of lightening. He leaps out onto the hands of punters at the front. At times his guitar is used more like a synthesizer producing a whole array of static noises and loops as he howls over the top of Teeth. Simon Ridley puts on a primal display behind his drum kit, flailing his arms between drums and cymbals, stomping out a solid driving beat for The Mess Up

DZ has actually acted upon their promise to provide the audience with 3D glasses, the gratuitous use of Strobes and LED lights is impressive enough on its own but when audience members put on their glasses it amplifies their intensity creating dazzling kaleidoscopic shards of colour. The crowd isn’t even fazed by wearing them deep in the mosh where the flashing colours would obscure vision.

The only drawback from tonight’s performance is that it feels like the material is exhausted way ahead of schedule. Crowd favourites Blue Blood and the new single Gebbie Street zoom past so quickly that the set is over almost as quickly as it began. Audience members hunger for more so the duo come out to deliver their unique take on Justice’s Phantom p II. With the sets end imminent Ridley leaps out and is held aloft by the crowd as Parsons warps his fuzz into a fluctuating loop of white noise.

Most people in the audience, would agree after tonight’s performance that, DZ will ruin your life, but you’ll thank them for it.