Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Thursday 15th September 2022
Photos by: Tracy McLaughlin - Kaotic Images

SA Music’s Newest Hall of Famers Revisit Familiar Territory

There is a lot of music history on display in The Zoo tonight, and it’s not just onstage. Vintage tees abound. There’s a NINE INCH NAILS tour shirt from 1994, and an original HELMET shirt that’s so old it’s almost rotting off a guy’s shoulders – Page Hamilton’s signature just barely visible on the chunky letters. Having just been inducted into the SA Music Hall of Fame, THE MARK OF CAIN are finishing their tour under the ferny rafters of The Zoo tonight, and many of those in attendance have been following the band since the 80s. They share stories of seeing the band on the early Big Day Outs during Australia’s alternative music boom in the 90s, and a nice bloke is telling me about the Adelaide scene when the lights go down, and RnB music starts booming from the PA…

Aaron Streatfeild, Adam Myers and Dean Podmore take to the stage and get ready, before singer Drew Gardner emerges and unfurls an extra-long mic cord – a cord that SENSE is about to become very well acquainted with. The sonic enigma that is TOTALLY UNICORN is about to take flight. Aaron starts the head-nodding riffs of Yeah, Coach, and their frontman is unleashed upon The Zoo. Inside of a minute, he’s doing handstands off the drum riser, before he jumps into the crowd, trailing his cable behind him, and starts moving around the entire length of the venue. Opening with a salvo of tracks from new album High Spirits//Low Life, TOTALLY UNICORN combine off-kilter math-rock with boozy shouts and a biting sense of humour, and participation is mandatory. Hiding up the back to get some beers in before TMOC? Don’t worry, Drew will come to you! All we can do is hold his mic lead aloft for him as the pied piper of chaos does his rounds, collaring punters and bringing them in for a singalong or flinging his mic up into the rafters and catching it again. He pays the sound man a visit, moves behind the side bar and starts serving drinks (all while singing), climbs on tables and even mounts the large plastic elephant statue. Just when you think it couldn’t get more unhinged, he walks to the other side of the pit and starts using his cable as a skipping rope, as a laughing girl jumps in and gets a few good reps in. That’s got to be a first! “Who here is working tomorrow?” Drew asks the crowd. The response he gets doesn’t satisfy. “You’re at a MARK OF CAIN show. You’re probably all retired.” Ouch.

We might be getting older, but if nothing else, that’s just a testament to the enduring power of THE MARK OF CAIN. Devastatingly heavy rock that is minimalist but definitely not simplistic, they produce a groove that could leave a lot of metal bands smashed flat. They have never released a bad album, but if there was ever one that could be called “underappreciated”, it would be 1991’s The Unclaimed Prize. Fans of that record are spoilt right off the bat when the Scott brothers and drummer Eli Green emerge onstage and launch into UCD – John signature Rickenbacker jangling over Kim’s heavier-than-lead bassline and Eli’s pulverising drums. They open with an interesting selection of deep cuts, The Hammer and Separatist leading into This is This track Second Hander. SENSE is so close I can peer into the cutaway body of John’s battered Ricky, and feel every note rumble through the monitor under my elbows. This is the best seat in the house, and Interloper detonates in my face, launching the pit into a frenzy. Two more Unclaimed Prizes follow, as the off-kilter pummel of Fire in Your Heart leads into a caustic, high-velocity Cap on John. It’s brutal, searing alt-rock, played with such precision you’d think they were engineers or something. “That was a couple of fast ones,” John says with a laugh. “We’ll fix that.” He starts banging his finger on the strings of his guitar, and the mood pivots 180-degrees from furious headbanging to heartfelt emotion as they launch into L.M.A.. An epic about a friend of John nicknamed “Little Miss Australia” who lost her life to drug addiction in the 90s, it is a thing of sweeping power and beauty, and I am transfixed. The crowd cheers as the band kick off into The Contender – heads rocking up and down as they ride Kim’s bassline. “This next one’s a quiet one,” John says with a smile, before dropping the hammer on Familiar Territory. It sounds like it has been slowed down a notch, but all that has done is change a roaring locomotive into a lumbering bulldozer. God help you if you stand in its path. “Quiet”, it is not. The sonic violence continues with Ill at Ease classics First Time and the erratic, agitated Tell Me. TMOC are seamlessly tight tonight, and SENSE is close enough to see the almost supernatural level of focus between them; Kim watching John’s right hand out of the corner of his eye, making sure that every note in the stop-start rhythms are perfect down to the millisecond. Former drummer John Stanier once described drumming for TMOC as “calculus rock”, but Eli Green is making it look effortless tonight. The normally morose Battlesick is a louder, angrier affair tonight, before the band unsling their weapons and leave stage.

The Adelaide alt rock heroes re-emerge for an encore, and John straps on … what the hell is that? “This is called a Stratocaster,” he says with a wry smirk. The Ricky is such a part of his stage persona that this is like seeing Dimebag Darrell with a mandolin. They knock out This is This number Sleep before plunging into Battlesick classic You Are Alone – Kim’s bass tone so thick it threatens to distort time and space. John takes to the mic and tells us that they’re not known for their covers, but they’re going to have a crack at one. They kick off a lumbering rendition of BIG BLACK’s Kerosene – John channelling his best Steve Albini – and those who know the track happily roar “set me on fire” back to him. It’s a fitting tribute to a band that had a massive impact on TMOC in their early years, even leading Kim to adopt his waistband bass sling. John reassures us that they will be back next year for the 25th 26th 27th 28th anniversary of Ill at Ease, before they surge into the tour of duty that is Point Man, bringing the night to a stunning close. Another amazing set from this truly unique and vital Australian act.