Rather less refined, though still entirely welcoming, was the Freebutt. It felt like this small venue was the centre point for the local scene, and it's a given that I've forgotten a bunch of gigs that happened in its tiny confines, particularly shows of the three-local-bands ilk which were less likely to be documented in any lasting way. Looking at my notes for this and the last chapter, there are certainly bands I saw at least semi-regularly who aren't mentioned, including the likes of scratchy trio Epideme (featuring amongst their number Barney, now to be found in the excellent Lower Slaughter) and skronk-rock japesters The Phil Collins Three (almost inevitably, there were in fact five of them, habitually in homemade fancy dress and later to play in a bewildering array of other bands).
https://thephilcollins3.bandcamp.com/
Honorary locals, Portsmouth psych rock unit You're Smiling Now But We'll All Turn Into Demons, played there a whole bunch; I'm pretty sure that they've ended up being the band I've seen the most over the years, given that they're still going and can generally be relied upon to pitch up in Brighton at least once a year. In the present day, I last saw them in Southampton just a few months back, and we reminisced about the band Becomes The Water Of Death, who, I have every reason to believe, played with them at the Freebutt in January 2004. Everyone should basically check out the ...Demons right now, but BTWOD don't seem to have left much of an online presence, unfortunately.
All sorts of folk passed through the venue. Along with the Hobgoblin and the then-new Cowley Club, the Freebutt was a hub for DIY punk, and sometime in early '04 I saw an excellent double header of noisy US post-hardcore in the shape of Transistor Transistor and Wolves, who released a split 12" on Level Plane around the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4wXUEYZF0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA-vypaMiQY
There's a tendency, I think, for people praising small venues to lean too heavily on the times when later-to-be-famous bands played there. Of course, it's great to be able to say that you saw such-and-such in a half-full pub five years before they headlined Glastonbury or whatever, and these examples of the nurturing of talent are an important argument for the support and funding of independent venues. But as far as I'm concerned, it's even more important that there are spaces for local bands whose greatness is never likely to lead to longevity or commercial success; for scenes and genres which, due to ideology, necessity or both, adopt a DIY mindset; for the freaks.
https://saveourvenues.co.uk/#/
So, anyway, I saw Explosions In The Sky at the Freebutt before they were famous.
OK, it's not exactly Oasis at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut or whatever, but it does feel like the Texans ended up being one of the few post-rock bands to find a niche in the mainstream, and it's unlikely you'll get to see them play a venue as small as the Freebutt again. Funny to think that their breakthrough album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place was only a couple of months old when Anna and I saw them at the beginning of February 2003; its eventual success was an old-fashioned word-of-mouth slowburn, so at this point they really were relatively unknown outside of alt-rock circles. I couldn't tell you when I last spent any time listening to them, but back then their instrumental post-rock was very much my jam.
The very next day, I was off on the always-longer-than you-think-it's gonna be walk to the Concorde 2 for a transatlantic noisecore shindig in the company of Norma Jean from the US and Beecher from Manchester. It appears that the latter headlined, though the former were surely the bigger deal. I guess Norma Jean's star rose sharply shortly after this tour, whereas Beecher never quite converted the respect they built up in the UK into the sort of profile enjoyed by contemporaries like Johnny Truant (more of whom next time).
The following week, the Freebutt hosted a two-night run co-headlined by Electrelane and Cat On Form. If I remember correctly, the two bands took it in turns to play last and choose the opening band. A bunch of us headed down on the night when COF were headlining and Charlottefield were first on. This was certainly more of an event than the three-local-bands type gig to which I alluded earlier, and there was quite a queue to get in; I managed to make it, along with Anna and one of our friends (exactly who I don't recall), but Adam, Ralf and Maya were behind us in the line and didn't make it. I've found an e-mail I sent to them (as we were trying to start a band at this point) where I said that "there were an incredible amount of dickheads" in the venue that night, and I guess Electrelane probably had a painfully hip following at this time. Anyway, Charlottefield were great; if this wasn't the first time I'd seen them, it feels like it was the first time I'd really paid attention to them. Electrelane were a wonderful band, as discussed in previous chapters, and this pair of gigs would have been timed to launch their second album (and debut for the excellent Too Pure label) The Power Out. In truth, they could have booked a much larger venue, and it was to their credit that they shared top billing with Cat On Form, purveyors of a less fashionable, heart-on-sleeve, politicised form of scrappy post-hardcore. My main memories of watching the latter band are of dual frontmen Dan and Steve, topless and skinny, writhing and emoting onstage like their lives depended on it. They'd play their last show in August of that year, so this might have been the last time I got to see them. We'll encounter both Dan and Steve in other bands before too long, though...
Stylistically and ideologically somewhere inbetween Electrelane and Cat On Form were another local-ish band who rapidly became one of my favourites. Help She Can't Swim were fronted by our old Southampton pals Leesey and Tom, so I was aware of them before actually getting to see them in early '04; I think Leesey may even have pressed a copy of their demo CD into my grubby paws sometime in the latter part of 2003. They were a clattering together of the primary interests of our two chums: riot grrrl, dayglo indiepop, the frenetic racket of The Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves, cutesy DIY artwork, Teen-C Power!. Obviously, being mates with them I was gonna take an interest, but I genuinely thought they were a great band, both in their live incarnation and on the records they made.
It was in a journalistic capacity that I found myself back at the Concorde 2 to review US post-hardcore types Thrice and Vaux. I was particularly taken by the comparatively rock'n'roll vibes of the latter, but did note that the headliners seemed ready to ascend to arena-level popularity. Really, though, the kind of hardcore I wanted to listen to at the time was to be found a couple of weeks later at the Freebutt, when excellent Pompey mob Jets Vs Sharks came to town. Funnily enough, I only found out about this gig because someone left a flyer in the metal section at my place of work. First on were Dead After School, who featured Daz, formerly of Overton band Stegel, and played excellent straight-up hardcore, while in the middle were Dead By Dawn, Newbury's answer to Avenged Sevenfold (or at least the, er, A7X of 2004 vintage). I remember remarking to Ad about both bands having slightly cheesy, zombie-type names about death, but apparently Daz had told him that Dead After School were named in tribute to the kind of threats bullies would throw at him back in the day, which was much cooler. Oh, and Jets were awesome that night, too!
A few days later, me and Anna went to enjoy the garage rock sound of The Soledad Brothers at The Concorde 2. In truth, though, they were pretty dull, but at least we got to see local rockers The Mutts, who were somewhat reminiscent of fellow Brightonians 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, albeit with perhaps more of a 70s rock feel. Arty in both music and typography, the pAper chAse played the Freebutt a couple days later. They were fronted by John Congleton, these days more renowned as an in-demand producer with a client list that looks like you're scrolling through some sort of Pitchfork-sponsored festival bill. I enjoyed this band's slightly avant-jazz take on alternative rock on record, but live there was something a tad off-putting about Congleton's overwrought vocalising. Still, at least I got to see my friends Jed and Maya support as Creeper & Fright, whose bass'n'drums'n'shouting malarkey landed somewhere in the vicinity of Lightning Bolt et al.
There were more leftfield sounds on offer a few days later when I went to see Kid 606 at the Ocean Rooms. This venue was a slightly grimey club, which later accrued a reputation for aggro that would culminate in its closure after a kid was killed there one new year. In the mid-'00s, however, it would host a decent range of club nights, and I was particularly chuffed to get a review of this cult breakcore prankster into a rock mag. To be fair, in the anything-goes spirit of the time, he'd recently released a record on Mike Patton's label Ipecac, and this Brighton show was a warm-up for that year's ATP (which I was sadly not attending). I was bang into his stuff, though the ragga-glitch-d'n'b-punk-noise-gabba-hop wasn't for everybody; I overheard a fellow attendee complaining afterwards about "the worst music I've ever heard."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_3gnO_ehow
In the interest of a decent segueway, we should now cover something approximating the worst music I'd ever heard, but we covered that Space gig some time ago. Instead, we'll have to settle for something of a mismatch: Wildhearts-ish rock'n'rollers Johnny Panic in support of the rather more cerebral Chicago post-prog band 90 Day Men, at the Monarch in the former's hometown of London.
I'm generally in favour of diverse bills, but sometimes it's apparent that the booking is more the result of cluelessness than design. Anyway, the headliners were great!
There was a little break in gig-going next, as my correspondence of the time reveals that I squeezed trips to Nice, Somerset and Prague into two weeks off work. During our stay in the last location, there was an extreme metal fest headlined by Cannibal Corpse and Carpathian Forest going on in the city, but I knew better than to try and convince Anna to attend.
We were back in time for Easter, which found me up in the smoke to attend something called the Subverse Blasphemy Ball. The Subverse in question was an all-ages club, held on a Sunday afternoon and, if I'm not mistaken, something to do with my future pal James Sherry. It looks like I actually went to Southampton the night before for some sort of shindig with my old work buddies, so this was definitely a year when I made the most of the Easter weekend. Anyway, the bill for the, ahem, Blasphemy Ball was pretty solid. Opening were Jimmy's band, who'd traded in The Blood Group for the slightly altered handle Blood Valley. These bacchanalian gutter rockers were shortly to release their ace full-length The Beast Must Die on the Captains Of Industry label, which was at least something to do with Ben Myers, these days a deservedly acclaimed author and poet, and they'd celebrate its appearance by opening for The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mono and Burst on a UK tour in June. It was something of a drag, therefore, when they split later that summer, but Jimmy and bandmate Sam will be cropping up again in at least a couple of bands later on.
Anyway, back to Easter '04. November Coming Fire followed Blood Valley onstage and were probably the band on the bill most likely to please an all-ages bill at the time. They'd become more interesting within the year, but back then it was AFI/A7X-style goth-indebted hardcore all the way. Send More Paramedics were perversely suited to the job of Easter entertainment, as their zombiecore concept also celebrated a sort of resurrection. The cut'n'shut of thrash metal and hardcore wasn't exactly new - back in the '80s it had even had its own subgenre of sorts, crossover - but SMP were evidence of a growing appetite for frashcore thrills, with or without zombie get-up. And while, as noted earlier, zombies in hardcore were already a cliche by this point, SMP at least carried it all to its logical conclusion, with an attitude that wasn't so much tongue-in-cheek as tongue-flapping-out-of-rotted-cheek.
Headlining were Orange Goblin, a band who at the time of writing are celebrating their 25th anniversary. Mathematically-minded readers will have spotted that they weren't even a decade in on that day in 2004, and yet they already seemed veterans of the British metal scene, having just released their fifth album, Thieving From The House Of God. In those days before I owned an mp3 player, I'd travel with a Discman and just the one disc, so I'd been caning said opus all the way from Brighton to Southampton to London over the weekend. I guess at the time it would have been considered a return to form, or at least to business as usual, after 2002's more punk'n'roll flavoured Coup De Grace, and they played a decent chunk of it that Easter Sunday. It might not be the ultimate OG album - that would be 2000's The Big Black - but it's a personal favourite, and Some You Win, Some You Lose has become a mainstay of their live set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoJjH_Zmck
Nihilistic punk metallers Amen made a reappearance at the Concorde 2 ten days later, with Minus and Ikara Colt in tow. I've chatted about the first two before and will get on to the last-named shortly, but possibly worth mentioning that Amen were touring what remains their most recent album, Death Before Musick, and that this was around the time that Jimmy appeared doing a vox pop on a Channel 4 piece about the band.
Rather twinklier sounds were on offer a couple of days later when Icelandic band Múm played the Old Market. This lot were on Brighton label FatCat, and their music mixed the childhood nostalgia vibe of people like Pram or Piano Magic, the hauntological elements of Broadcast or Boards Of Canada and a hint of the folktronica of contemporary Four Tet. I dunno, maybe they were like a Warp records act for Belle & Sebastian fans? Something like that. Whatever, their music was pretty lovely, and while the apparently still active Múm have been quiet for some time, former cellist/vocalist Hildur Guðnadóttir now boasts a bunch of awards for her soundtracks for Joker and Chernobyl.
While I haven't checked, it seems fairly likely that no members of the bands Los Asesinos De La Superficialidad or Dandare have been similarly decorated in the sixteen years since the two Dutch bands played a couple of fiteen minute sets in a practice room on the campus of the University Of Sussex. As I recall, these guys had been doing a UK tour and arranged this low-key gig on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon before getting a ferry back to the mainland, and as they were Dutch I should imagine it was Ralf handling the on-the-ground organisation. Some Southampton types came across and drove myself and Adam to the uni, and we had a lovely afternoon.
https://graanrepubliekrecords.bandcamp.com/album/manifesto
Sticking with European types, Norwegian noise rockers Noxagt played an incredible show the same month, I think at The Hobgoblin and with I'm Being Good also on the bill. Less excitingly, around the same time, I was despatched to the Concorde 2 to review Coheed & Cambria, whose sci-fi concept prog emo was curiously popular at the time. A week later, more street-level thrills were to be had in the weird environs of Po Na Na, a club in The Lanes which was briefly used for indie gigs despite looking confusingly like an Indian restaurant inside. On this occasion, London art-pinks Ikara Colt were in town, with support from the previously-discussed Help She Can't Swim and Newcastle's yourcodenameis:milo, the latter a band who never quite gelled with me for some reason. Ikara Colt were great, however. This was the same month they released their second album, Modern Apprentice, and it seemed like they had a pretty decent head of steam behind them at the time, though they'd be done by the start of the next year. Bassist and onstage force of nature Tracy would go on to play with Mystery Meat (also featuring Blood Valley frontman Alex), Part Chimp and, at the time of writing, Luminous Bodies: an enviable CV and no mistake.
Another band I caught relatively early in their rise to fame were Mastodon, who played the Concorde a week later. In my opinion, this was when they were at their peak; Remission had been out for a while and Leviathan was about to be released. Unusually, Anna came to this with me; she'd long since given up on coming to punk or metal shows after a few too many which she didn't enjoy. She did, however, dig this one, while showing a rebellious streak by wearing a Bellle & Sebastian shirt to a gig featuring a band on extreme metal label Relapse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uShqlufsq5w
After nearly a month gap in my records in which something must surely have happened, some more DIY punk rock action was evident at the Hobgoblin with another Ralf promotion, featuring America's The Pine, France's Belle Epoque and, having travelled a little less far, my chums Creeper & Fright. All these bands are worthy of your attention, though I've not checked to see whether C&F have left any sonic legacy on the internet.
Meanwhile, I'd had a shout from my old Southampton workmate Kev, himself now displaced to the wilderness of Guildford, asking if I wanted to take a ticket to see PJ Harvey at Somerset House off his hands. And so in mid-July, I was off to see my old chum Polly. Kev had brought his manager along, a fellow called Ryan who would end up my boss within a year or so, although we didn't chat much that day as he was more interested in the lady he'd brought along than making new acquaintances. This might not entirely surprise anyone who knows Ryan.
It was the first time I'd seen PJ Harvey in close to a decade, since the performance at Glastonbury '95 which I feel genuinely deserves to be described as iconic. As remained her wont for some time, each of the albums she'd released since then had seemed like a reinvention: the rural reveries of Is This Desire?, commercial (though still distinctively Polly) alternative rock on Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (its Mercury Prize claimed on the inauspicious day of September 11th, 2001, a grim irony for an album partially inspired by NYC) and now Uh Huh Her. Still my least favourite of her albums, this has always felt like a slightly unfinished piece of work to me, though it has to be said that even my least favourite PJ Harvey record remains superior to many artists' very best work.
Notwithstanding the strangeness of attending a gig in what was essentially a giant courtyard, or the absence of any songs from my personal pick, Rid Of Me, this was still a mighty show. Many of Uh Huh Her's songs came to life on the stage, not least a practically onomatopoeic Who The Fuck?, while songs from Stories From... sounded great on what felt like a festival stage. For some reason, Plants And Rags, played late in the set, also stands out in my memory, its eerie earthiness working wonders on a warm summer's night in the middle of the city.
If parts of Poll's set felt quite punk, well, they weren't as punk as Knifed, Boxed In and Butt Melt at the Freebutt later that month. It might not entirely surprise you to learn that the last named were comedy chancers with song titles like Queen Mum Up Yer Bum, who did things like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fl7LGHSN_o
Boxed In still featured my old mate Dingo from Southampton days, alongside a bunch of Northern punk rock lifers, and as I almost certainly said last time they popped up here, they were a country mile better than the indie types who'd later use the name.
Knifed we met last time, and I don't have too much to add to what I said then, so here's the flyer for the show instead...
August kicked off for me with a couple of shows upstairs at The Hobgoblin. Jimmy came down for Pride weekend, and the night before we went to see Todd and Trencher there. Both are bands who I have to be in the right mood for, and on this occasion I enjoyed Trencher's casiogrind a lot more than Todd's overloaded noise rock, despite one of the former's number deciding to disappear for a toilet break in the middle of their set. Much more solid behaviour went on a few days later with Wreck Of Old '98 taking to the same no-stage. I think Abandon Ship also played; I certainly saw these Brighton lads do their excellent hardcore thing plenty around this time.
Wreck Of Old '98 were always gonna be the main draw for me that night, though. The band was made up of my old Southampton punk rock mates Ross and Rob (along with drummer Dan, who I didn't know quite as well), but beyond their actual membership, the whole production of their sole 12" was very much a vision of local DIY co-operation: recorded by Mat (Rob's old bandmate in Minute Manifesto and Trophy Girls), with some of the lyrics written by Jamie Festo, artwork by Adam, a piece in the insert written by Rich (and a song called S.T.E. which used his words as lyrics)... and amongst the head honchos of the five labels that put it out were captains of industry like Ralf and Alex. The musical vibe was very much along the lines of The Minutemen, and it was brilliant to be able to catch this lot live before they pulled the plug (they were apparently always conceived as a short-term project). Have a listen here:
https://opiaterecords.bandcamp.com/album/wreck-of-old-98-12
The rest of August '04 was on something of a garage tip. Garage rock, that is, which at this point was arguably starting to fall out of favour with the fickle indie public. Not that this stopped The Datsuns from selling out the Concorde, in the company of local stalwarts The Mutts and the considerably less engaging Tokyo Dragons. A mere three days later, Detroit's The Dirtbombs played a rager at The Beach, legendary mainman Mick Collins exuding the sort of cool that separated the soul punk lifers from the skinny jeans wannabes. When the power failed during Underdog, the band's dual drummers simply carried on the beat and let the audience sing the hooks.
If ver kids were deserting garage rock, one of the directions in which they were heading was the sort of synthpunk that The Faint brought to the Concorde that September. I say punk; this was a show I attended with some of my buddies from work rather than the sort of folk who'd have gone to see, say, Knifed or Wreck Of Old '98. But while I was perhaps a little spectical of them in advance, The Faint were actually pretty cool, and that period of !!!/LCD Soundsystem/The Rapture etc had plenty to recommend it. Not least by my friend Hev, who at the time declared this show one of the best she'd ever been to.
There was another Help She Can't Swim show at the Freebutt a few days later, but it's hard for me to differentiate the many gigs I saw them play there. Was this the one where Tom finished the set by jumping off stage and hanging a guitar round my neck, only for me to totally freeze and not be able to think of anything to play? Maybe.
I'd been particularly chuffed that Help She Can't Swim had been played on John Peel's show a few times throughout 2004. On the 14th October, he played their tune My Own Private Disco. The show also featured a repeat of the Trencher session that had first been aired earlier in the year.
The following week, Peely and Pig went on holiday to Peru. In his absence, Underworld, Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith stood in for a show each.
Chances are you know where this is going. At the start of the second week of their holiday, John died of a heart attack. The same evening I was reviewing American ska types the Mad Caddies at the Concorde, which might not have been entirely pleasant but wasn't quite as terrible a turn of events (and, in fairness, washboard-toting support band Throw Rag were ace).
I was on a day off the next morning when the news broke. I was devastated; Peely had probably been the single biggest influence on my musical experiences, more than any individual band or musician. It was hard to believe that I wouldn't be able to put the radio on on a weekday night and hear his voice coming out, casually playing a record or two that introduced me to some absolutely crucial new sound. I blubbed twice during the day's media coverage: once, predictably, when hearing Teenage Kicks, and then again when hearing Million Dead's I Am The Party, and specifically the lines which I'd later use for the name of this very blog. I could go on about Peel for a long time, and indeed have in the past, but for now I'll just say that there have been many times over the years since where I've seen particularly great bands playing small venues with little chance of ever getting played on Radio 1 and thought to myself, "If Peel was still around, these would probably be doing their third session for him by now."
While I get something out of my eye, let's jump ahead to November and the appearance of Mark Lanegan at the Old Market. I'd been a fan of the big man since the Screaming Trees days, particularly their swan song Dust, and had seen him play with Queens Of The Stone Age, but this was the first time I'd had a chance to catch him play in his own right. He'd recently released Bubblegum (already his sixth solo album!), and at this point had Nick Oliveri playing in his band and providing support. Little did I know that fifteen years later I'd end up interviewing Mr Lanegan, who turned out to be far more charming than his somewhat glowering stage presence would suggest.
With both my mum's and my birthday falling in November, we'd generally try and get together one Sunday that month somewhere inbetween Somerset and Brighton. In 2004, Salisbury was our chosen location, and my eagle eye for gig listings picked out that 5ive and Ramesses were playing the Joiners in Southampton, effectively on my way home, that night. Yeah, that's right: 5ive. Or, as I think they were technically billing themselves at the time, 5ive's Continuum Research Project. As you may have surmised, we're not talking about the Slam Dunk (Da Funk) hitmakers, who as far as I'm aware have never graced the Joiners stage, but the marginally less well-known American experimental sludge rock duo. Similarly, Ramesses weren't an Egyptian pharoah, none of whom, as far as I'm aware, have ever graced the Joiners stage, but the band formed by former Electric Wizard men Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening, alongside Adam Richardson, also on the Wizard family tree thanks to his turn-of-the-'90s stint in Dorset doom titans Lord Of Putrefaction, who as previously noted were making a hellish racket in Wimborne while I was being obliviously schooled a stone(r)'s throw away at Canford. Ramesses were often rather overlooked in favour of the resurgent Wizard through the '00s and '10s, but I always dug 'em. Opening up that evening were Gonga, an amiable if unchallenging stoner rock outfit from Bristol, who at this point were fronted by Joe Volk, who I'd later see fronting Crippled Black Phoenix, the band formed by Justin Greaves, who at the time of this gig had replaced Mark Greening in Electric Wizard. Just imagine what I could have made of myself if my brain wasn't full of all this, right?
I'd arranged to stay over in Soton with my old mate from work, James, and so we started the evening with a few jars in Goblets for old time's sake. Chris from the Gilamonsters also came down, the old rascal. A long night caught up with me on the 6am train back to Brighton when, finding the toilet door locked, I had to lean out of the push-down window at some station along the way - I dunno where, maybe Emsworth or Angmering or something - and hurling onto the platform. And then, because I was hardier back then than I would be today, I went out after work to go and see Q And Not U.
There's probably an argument that this excellent Washington DC outfit were the last truly great Dischord band, and while I suspect that their sound by 2004 had strayed too far into punk-funk territory for the purists, they were well worth dragging my hungover body out for. I think Epideme opened up (negating my earlier assertion that they weren't gonna get a mention here), and also on the bill were Blood Red Shoes, the duo featuring Steven out of Cat On Form. At this point, they were playing the sort of insistent, angular art-rock that was perfect for a Q And Not U support slot, but they've persevered through the years to end up a rather slicker proposition.
An e-mail I've discovered from December '04 suggests that in the following four days I saw Cove, Help She Can't Swim and Wreck Of Old '98 play three separate gigs, which seems plausible (although I don't remember seeing Wreck twice, so maybe that gig I attributed to August was actually in December?). What is less in doubt is that I went to see The Futureheads play the Concorde with at least some of my workmates, including Taps. The Geordie quartet were very much part of the era's wave of indie bands alongside Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party et al, though their brevity and spark nudged them somewhere closer to the likes of Wire, The Minutemen and, well, Q And Not U.
It was back to the Concorde for my last gig of 2004. I'd missed The Dillinger Escape Plan there the year before because they'd clashed with the Belle & Sebastian show I'd gone to with Anna, but shouldn't have worried - unlike Mastodon, who outgrew the place and, I think, have yet to return to Brighton at all, Dillinger would end up playing the Concorde pretty much once per album, and though I'm not going to check right now, it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that I might have seen them there on five or so occasions.
In support this time were Italian oddballs Ephel Duath, who I'll cover in their own right sometime later on, and Poison The Well, who were one of those early '00s post-hardcore/metalcore bands that never made much of an impression on me. Funny to think now that Greg Puciato was still sort of the new kid in Dillinger, with his full-length debut Miss Machine only a few months old, although in fairness he'd been touring with them for three years by this point, including the notorious shit-slinging Reading performance. It's also funny to think how aghast certain sections of the fanbase had been at Miss Machine, with the near-inpenetrable tech metal of their much-admired debut Calculated Infinity now infected with electronics, slow songs and bits you could actually sing along to (though you'd never match Greg's croon, unless you were Mike Patton). Personally, I loved Miss Machine, and I still reckon it gave the world five or so of the band's best songs. For me, they'd nailed the ability to make caustic, heavy, techy music that still overflowed with memorable bits - not just vocal hooks but riffs, flurries of notes and gear shifts that made their stuff fiendishly addictive. And Dillinger were one of the most genuinely off-the-hook live experiences on the planet throughout their existence, making this personal induction into their fire pit a brilliant pre-Christmas gift for yours truly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dQ2-t_v25g
And that's it for 2004. I've had a brief look at what 2005 had in store, and next time will almost certainly include new friends (The Plague Sermon, Johnny Truant, Architects), new bands featuring old friends, an exciting new venue, a belated return to a once-loved festival, and two contenders for the worst bands I've ever seen. What fun!
