Saturday 23rd October 2010.
The Relentless Energy Sessions Festival – Day 3.
The Relentless Garage in Highbury & Islington was hosting a 3 days festival covering a wide range of genres with headlines such as The Sounds, Does It Offend You Yeah, Band Of Skulls, The Boxer Rebellion, Viking Skull and The Damned Things.
The event was held on both the venue’s floors and was introducing some more upcoming and alternative bands in the upstairs room.
On Saturday, I just get to the venue as Feed The Rhino are hitting the stage. For those of you who are novice to the band, they have played a fair amount of gigs this year within the circuit and have escalated quite fast from small stages to bigger events such as Hevy Festival and the Hellfire Festival this weekend. This was kind of a warm up show for their Hellfire appearance at Milton Keynes the next day and the energy was here, Lee executing his front man role by spending most of his time in the crowd and the band joining in and spreading themselves off stage, giving the show an intimate feeling.
We then head downstairs to catch up Japanese Voyeurs. It’s not the first time that the band owns the stage here and we can see that they are at ease. The girl fronted band introduces the audience to their unique genre and welcomes them into their world. The band is about to head on tour with The Swellers in November in company of Young Guns and will also be supporting Melissa Auf Der Maur beforehand. Let’s just say things are going well for them!
Back upstairs and Spy Catcher are about to go on stage. Definitely one of my 2009′s favourite discoveries, the Watford band features members from Gallows, Haunts and Cry For Silence and already supported bands like The Get Up Kids and Kids in Glass Houses. After a short absence off the stage, here they are with their catchy melodies, energetic stage presence and the audience seems to enjoy it. They already have a self released Ep Rock is Cursed and should be back with their first full length album next time you see them around.
Now is the time for the second to last band of the evening downstairs and Viking Skull get on stage. The four piece heavy metal band is back after a few member changes. Originally formed by members from Raging Speedhorn, they managed to fill the venue with metallers tonight. You can catch them next at the fourth edition of the Hard Rock Hell on December 5th 2010.
Last band upstairs is Lower Than Atlantis, first time I am witnessing them live and the band is demonstrating their will to conquer everyone in the room. They are about to go support The Sleeping in December after being onto a European Tour with The Ghost Inside, For The Fallen Dreams and Suffokate. The crowds are getting involved.
Now is time for headline Power Band The Damned Things to hit the stage, a mix of members from Anthrax (Scott Ian & Rob Caggiano), Fall Out Boy (Joe Trohman, Andy Hurley) and Everytime I Die (Keith Buckley).
Performing tonight is what the band calls themselves a “natural progression” of their careers. Reversing the ratio of singing and screaming as he likes to think, Keith delivers some powerful melodies along the band’s riffs. The Damned Things present tonight their songs live, for one of the first times over here (after their Download Festival and Borderline performances earlier this year), and that over three years since the formation began to exist as such.
I reckon the result was somehow contrasted between the optimistic minds seeing nothing new there and the excited ones already remembering the lyrics and singing along, totally under the cast of the band’s spell. The stage presence is owned by frontman Keith and the performance is neat. A band to follow but that will conquer hearts without doubts.
Their Debut Album Ironiclast is released on December 14th 2010.
