W/ APATE + BLIND GIRLS + DIESECT

Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Tuesday 18th October 2022
Photos by: Charlyn Cameron + Rashid AlKamraikhi

Music Writer Mounted by Hairy Scotsman

Metal is like magic. It can be exhilarating, scary, cathartic, and, most of all, it can be the perfect antidote to a shit day. Having just worked a twelve-hour shift and found out that my first day off in two weeks has disappeared into a puff of smoke, a shit day is exactly what SENSE is having when I rock up to The Zoo in Brisbane. Hopefully some crushingly loud music is the solution.

At the doors I run into Greg, the man responsible for bringing Scottish extreme metal crew FRONTIERER to Australia, and find out that they’re having a rough go of it as well. 90% of their merch has been mislaid at Brisbane airport, so their tour is off to a frustrating start. You’d never know it from speaking to the band, however, who are floating around the venue all night with pleasant vibes and no egos, watching their support bands from front of house and selling some lovely Oxidized vinyl. First onstage tonight are DIESECT from the Gold Coast, who plunge into devastating riffs, their frontman beckoning the crowd forward. Using two seven-string guitars with a bassline courtesy of a nearby laptop, DIESECT’s sound borrows from deathcore and hardcore, and they thank each band on the line-up tonight between crushing breakdowns, spurring on pit karate as their fans scream every lyric back to them.

BLIND GIRLS come out looking like a shoegaze band, with a flower taped to one of their guitars. That impression lasts about half-a-second into their set. Sounding like all the heavy parts of American noise-rockers THE ARMED, BLIND GIRLS go off like a hand grenade of pure creativity. A sonic point of difference in tonight’s line-up of downtuned riffage, BLIND GIRLS are a whirling, crashing force of nature – guitar headstocks whizzing mere millimetres from foreheads as singer Sharni Brouwer strips the lining from her throat with every harrowing scream. Not even their instruments can withstand their intensity, and things come to a stop as their bassist asks over the PA, “Does any other band have a snare that we can borrow?” A replacement is quickly fitted, and they plunge back into their special brand of discordant chaos. An exhilarating set.

Following that would be a challenge, but APATE are up for it. If you’ve ever wondered what a metal band fronted by Chris Hemsworth would be like, the answer has just walked onstage at The Zoo tonight. The crowd starts to thicken and swirl, and Thor-lookalike Zakk Ludwig is more than happy to orchestrate the mayhem, handing the mic to loyal fans. Their laptop starts slipping off its mounting from the vibrations, and fortunately Zakk notices me pointing it out, and swoops in, rescuing it. Those things aren’t cheap, after all. There is a lot of love for APATE in the room tonight, and from a performance like this, it’s safe to say that it’s warranted.

Finally, it’s time. The lights go down, and the FRONTIERER banner starts to flicker in an epileptic nightmare of strobe, as a teeth-rattling, pulsing dirge starts throbbing through the P.A.. It’s like the soundtrack to an alien invasion – malevolent, threatening, overwhelming. FRONTIERIER emerge and take up their positions, and the band detonates Corrosive Wash right in our faces. It’s bewildering, disorienting and utterly ferocious. Barely forty seconds into the first song, and guitarist Dan has started climbing the stage structure, reappearing amongst the rafters in The Zoo’s roof, hammering out discordant riffage. The notoriously pleasant Pedram Valiani has transformed into a whirling, hyperactive animal, poking his tongue out as he punctuates chugging stop-start riffs with shrieking divebombs. In our recent interview with Dan, he told SENSE that forty-five minutes is about as long as they like to perform, because the audience can only withstand so much. I now know exactly what he was talking about.

FRONTIERER is an absolute assault on the senses tonight – the sonic maelstrom of CAR BOMB filtered through the freewheeling insanity of THE DILLINGER  ESCAPE PLAN. Playing each song like he’s doing a HIIT workout, Dan dives into the crowd, and Pedram is inspired to do the same. He turns around and sits down on one of my shoulders, and I grab his feet and lift him up, turning around and facing the whirling pit. SENSE, at 6’7”, has just given Pedram a very unique vantage point. His guitar is resting across my face, and I can see only black, and it takes me a second to realise that the rattling sound I can hear is actually his guitar strings being played inches from my ear. I deposit him back onstage, and the madness continues – vocalist Chad Kapper leaping into the fray, bellowing his lungs out while a punter has him in a headlock. Returning to the stage, they give thanks to Greg for bringing them to Australia, and invite everyone to come say hi after the show, as if any more proof was needed that FRONTIERER is not a band who keep their fans at arm’s length. Closing with Orange Mathematics finale Lightshow Paralysis, they leave stage, only to emerge mere minutes later at their merch table, wrangling their uncooperative EFTPOS machine while still dripping with sweat. There’s no rest for a touring band these days.

More from FRONTIERER…

Watch

FRONTIERER - Glacial Plasma (Official Music Video)

FRONTIERER - Opaque Horizon (Official Music Video)

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Listen to FRONTIERER on Spotify