Airbourne, Mammoth Mammoth @The Hi-Fi, Brisbane(23/10/2010)

Sun 24th Oct, 2010 in Gig Reviews

After a frankly ridiculous hour and a half after the doors open, Mammoth Mammoth take stage in front of an already packed Hi-Fi audience. Featuring a hugely wasted bass player who appears like he’ll keel over at any moment, the highlight of their set is a note perfect run-through of Kyuss’ Green Machine. Other than that it’s pretty slim pickings for the other forty minutes, as every song sounds like the last, and coupled with a rancid guitar tone the four-piece’s set drags on horribly. But it’s not all bad and they do a fine job of warming up the more inebriated patrons, but it’s the sober punters that can truly see the mediocrity of the band.

For a group who have built their career on endless touring and an awesome live show, it’s no surprise that Warrnambool’s favourite son’s Airbourne totally erase all of the bad memories of the act before them within the first millisecond into their rampaging performance. Opening with the raucous Raise The Flag at a ear-splitting decibel level, frontman Joel O’Keeffe and his lieutenants David Roads and Justin Street tear onto stage like a trio of bats out of hell, and with O’Keeffe’s younger brother Ryan beating the living shit out of his tiny drum kit, Airbourne solidify claims of being one of the most well oiled rock n’ roll machines in world today.

The boys are the epitome of the typical Aussie bogan, as cans of Carlton Draught are thrown into the crowd and the elder O’Keeffe brother, who is basically Angry Anderson and Angus Young in the same person, only talks to the crowd about essentially the same thing that his lyrics go on about – booze, dirty women and/or rock n’ roll. Diamond In The Rough, Blonde, Bad and Beautiful and No Way But The Hard Way aren’t hugely diverse, which for most bands that would be a cardinal sin but it works for Airbourne, and let’s face it – nobody in attendance tonight really wants to hear them play a ballad.

After taking off into the crowd, the wild eyed Joel O’Keeffe tips his hat again to AC/DC by furiously soloing on top the bar and even precariously balancing on the ledge of the upper mezzanine level, much to the utter delight of anybody with a pulse inside the venue. Closing with a monster version of Running Wild and possibly one of the longest Rock n’ Roll outro’s in the history of live music, O’Keeffe screams out for the umpteenth time his desire for Rock music to never die, which of course sends the crowd ballistic.

Despite the fact that the band can pull crowds at least five times the size of the one here tonight in the UK (they recently played a sold out gig at the legendary Hammersmith Apollo), you can see the gratitude and excitement on the faces of the band as they’re rapturously applauded by the sweat and beer drenched faithful here tonight. As their first show in Brisbane for some three years, the Airbourne lads prove that sometimes keeping your brain in neutral, exhaling copious amounts of liquor and screaming along to outdated music is far from a bad thing.