Music > Live Reviews
GRAPHIC NATURE, BIND. & VAST SLUG
The Adrian Flux Waterfront
16/07/24
An evening of extreme and belligerent music opens with Norwich’s own VAST SLUG. I really don’t know how to describe the racket this lot make. They call it “fast and aggressive grindcore”. That is a good starting point but there’s more to them than that suggests - how about goregrindindustrialgabbadeathcore? Whatever it is, it is a glorious noise and any band that is named after a quote from Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondon’s Bottom and starts their with a Vengaboys cover has gotta be ok, right? Right?
Musically, the four piece plus drum machine bring to mind the likes of Johnny Violent’s Ultraviolence, Godflesh and both early and later Napalm. Prompting possibly the most comedic circle pit I have ever seen, the band thrash through 27 songs - 28 if you include the closer which gets played twice - in 29 minutes. Vast Slug will never, ever trouble the mainstream - hell, underground success might be out of the question - but cripes-a-Lordy they are a lot of fun.
East Anglian metalcore four piece BIND. are almost certainly much better musicians than Vast Slug and have more songs in the traditional verse-chorus verse-chorus sense. With a sound that takes in 80s NYHC along with Bay Area thrash and youth crew, but also with shades of Terror, Cerebral Ballzy and even Japcore legends envy, Bind. are pretty damned good. There are classy lead breaks, precision riffing, pounding drums complete with occasional d-beats and blast beats, thunderous bass and, entirely unsurprisingly all things considered, throat-lacerating vocals. Bind. are a new one on me but certainly an act I’ll be looking out for in the future. I have gotta say that the full stop with which the name is stylised is a f’kin’ pain when writing up a review...
Kentish nu-metal revivalists (nu-nu-metal?) GRAPHIC NATURE take to the stage to The Prodigy’s Breathe, which is a bloody brave music because, let’s face it, it is an IMMENSE tune. And whilst nothing does touches the heights of that song, they pull it off. Image wise, the instrumentalists in the band are a cross between a grime crew and 80s scallies - all sports casual wear with the hoodies up and pristine trainers, looking almost like they’ve wandered into see DJ Shadow’s set downstairs snd have ended up on stage by mistake... it makes a change from the way most metal bands look these days but I am sure those hoods are a mistake given how hot it is in here! Singer Harvey Freeman fulfils the metal stereotype, head to toe in black and with flailing hair. He is an engaging frontman, however, and genuinely seems to be delighted with the audience response.
Sound-wise, as befits a band named after a Deftones song, it is nu-metal to the max. Pounding drums, downtuned riffage and squealing guitars, guttural bellowed vocals straying occasionally into rap territory, with occasional sampled scratching. There is an in expected deviation into electronic - almost Massive Attack-meets-Fuck Buttons - territory 20 or so minutes into the set that brings a nice touch of variety. Graphic Nature trigger possibly the biggest, most enthusiastic but good natured pit I’ve witnessed in the Studio for a while.
Aggressive and loud and cathartic as this all is, all three bands are also, in their own, very different ways, joyous. For an outsider, a pit may look like violent chaos. It isn’t. Bands like these three bring a sense of community. And that is a very good thing.
And I got through a nu-metal review without mentioning Slipknot once. Oh fu...