HorrorPops, Casino Rumblers @Annandale Hotel, 30/07/05

Mon 1st Aug, 2005 in Gig Reviews

Entering the Annandale doors on Saturday night you might have been forgiven in thinking that you were entering through some kind of teleporting device to downtown Pennsylvania. The crowd was definitely not lacking in hair product, make-up and cleavage from both female and male patrons.

The night started with the rumbling drums of the Casino Rumblers who were so warmed up and loose that launching into their first song held none of the jitters that usually go with a support band for hugely anticipated overseas bands. The past six months has seen a dramatically improved stage presence and uniformity of fashion sense for these guys in whom the audience showed their approval forming a tiny little skank circle that was encouraged by the catchy tunes and stay-in-the-head lyrics of the new song and album title for the band, Smoke City.

Half an hour later arriving on stage were the Horrorpops. Front woman and upright bassist, Patricia, was in great form, starting a love affair with the crowd by downing multiple Jagermeister shots and smoking cigarettes as if she was a naughty school girl waiting to get caught by the headmaster. Her flirty eyes and obscene gesturing quickly awarded her ground shaking applause, screams and stampings of feet.

She started up the set with a chunky bass line and was quickly joined to her left by Kim Nekroman and co-founder of the band, on her right  ex-Tiger Army/AFI bassist Geoff Kresge and rear Niedermeierex (who apparently was there for the ladies, not to play drums). The introduction built up, and then, apparently out of nowhere, Naomi and Kamilla, the Horrorpops rotten Go-Go girls jumped on stage and gave punters another reason to roar by flashing, grabbing, bumping and grinding their way through the entire set with sexy little routines and improvised raunchiness.

The set was blasted off with Hell Yeah that punters chanted away to, to Patricia’s delight, but Kim was not happy when the whole venue did not erupt into one huge skank circle. And so Sydney, as eager to please as ever, did it’s best to satisfy one crowd-adulation hungry band by pulling their socks up and getting down to some good old fashioned skanking. Kim seemed satisfied after this, but was a bit disappointed when asking for a beer from the staff to be presented with a Heineken, not a Tooheys, as he professed a new-found love for Australian beer, as most international acts seem to do. Patricia was happy to take the ice-cold beer off his hands, and downed the entire beer accompanied by the fans chants of ‘Skull!, Skull!, Skull!’.

Seven songs, a mixture of rockabilly, ska, psychobilly and good old fashioned rock and roll, in total were played for an hour and a bit long set and only one new tune from their new album, Bring It On.

They finished with a splendid encore in tribute to Billy Idol – who also played on the Warped Tour which the band have just left – Rebel’s Yell in which Patricia, true to style, played on top of the bar riffs to the back half of the Annandale and gave photographers big and small fantastic photo opportunities, and topped it with a growled ’meet you at the bar’ demand.