The Fortitude Valley Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD - Saturday 12 Feb. 2021

Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media

The Fortitude Valley Music Hall is a stunning venue. It’s the kind of place that could just as easily host a wedding as a half-day rock festival. Capped at 1000 attendees, the pit area of the Roadsick Stage has been boxed off, with 150 people allowed in at once. The smaller Faction Stage roars away upstairs. It creates an interesting atmosphere, where the gig feels well-attended, but you’ve still got personal space. I managed to stake out a spot front and centre on the barricade multiple times during the day. Security weren’t overzealous. The barrier was a metre from the stage, without an army of bouncers in the way, and mercifully, the whole place is air conditioned.

The atmosphere is intimate, relaxed, and most of all, grateful. Everyone here tonight knows that we are lucky to be here. Less than twenty-four hours after Melbourne was plunged into a lockdown, THE ATOMIC BEAU PROJECT take to the main stage, playing their second ever gig. Replete with eye-catching costume and a bright red Little Red Riding Hood cape, Emma Beau has a natural presence, and musically the band have some serious chops, even busting out a cover of DEFTONES My Own Summer (sans screaming, which was interesting). They have a debut EP in the works, and I am looking forward to seeing more of them.

Up next are a band with a very appropriate name. TOTAL PACE immediately come out swinging. If the bassist windmills any harder he would’ve become airborne. The high-velocity rock proves too much for even their instruments to withstand, and they blow out a guitar string after the very first song. Ace.

Singer-songwriter JAY BROWN strikes me as a quiet guy. Playing today with a three-piece band, he barely says a word throughout his set. Fortunately, the former SUNK LOTO frontman can let his music do the talking, and it talks loudly set against the backdrop of Cate Pepper’s gorgeous landscape artwork. Performing tracks from his recent EP Disappearing Act, and debuting some new songs yet to be released, Brown looks over the crowd with the confidence of a man who was commanding mosh pits before he could legally drink.

Regrettably, I had to leave the venue for a short time, so I am unable to tell you about FREE THE GENIE, as I returned at the end of their set. Once the changeover is complete, the HAMMERS logo glows on the screen, as the house speakers throb with … R&B? Then, HAMMERS emerge and erupt into the swaggering, cocksure rock ‘n’ roll of Suze – a gloriously potty-mouthed showcase of outrage-baiting lyrics and utterly enormous riffs. HAMMERS aren’t a metal band, but they’re as hard as hard rock gets. Singer Fish prowls the stage, perching himself on the monitors at the kind of angle to make you grateful he’s not wearing a kilt. Between songs, the banter is thick between Fish and guitarist Stoney, with one-liners punctuated by some choice ba-dum-tss stings from drummer Ruckus. It might be that it’s been a while between gigs for a lot of us, but Stoney’s guitar sounds big enough to knock the planet off its orbit. They direct the crowd to supply the Queen We Will Rock You stomp-clap as they lead us in a singalong, and announce that they’ve been asked to play a little longer. A few songs later, a roadie comes out and places a piece of paper in front of the singer, which only SENSE is tall enough to read. It reads “NO MORE SONGS – FINISH PLEASE”. Ladies and gentlemen, HAMMERS – the band who love rock so much you’ve (almost) got to kick them off the stage.

For a bit of a change of pace, the girls from ROCK & ROLL YOGA took to the stage during changeover, and led the crowd in a yoga routine set to RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE’s Killing in the Name. I’ll cross that off my “sentences I never thought I’d write” list. It’s not every day you see the audience at a rock show doing the Warrior Pose. To quote the girls themselves, “Namaste, motherfuckers!”

Remember when I said that this would be an amazing venue for a wedding? For a reception no one will ever forget, book OSAKA PUNCH. If that sounds like an insult, trust me, it’s not. Clad in a sequined jacket as sparkly as his personality, vocalist Jack Venables is beaming as he talks between songs, by turns charming and unhinged – thanking us for making the effort to support live music, and announcing that he has become a dad during the pandemic. An almost telepathically tight musical unit, boasting a brand new drummer playing his first ever show with them, OSAKA PUNCH are a musical enigma that is hard to describe. Imagine if the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS recruited Mike Patton as a vocalist and started collaborating with MESHUGGAH. The result might sound a little bit like these guys. Their groove is heavy enough to bend gravity, and a sea of heads ride the noise as the band show off How We Operate.

Event organiser Matthew “Yogi” Donnan appears at the microphone with the unenviable task of bearing bad news. Due to a COVID close contact, REDHOOK have been confined to their hotel room, and won’t be able to play their set tonight. In their place are PATIENT LOUNGE, a Brisbane rock four-piece playing high-octane, angular rock. There really is no substitute for a good attitude in life, and watching these boys beaming at each other while playing, you get the sense that there is nowhere they’d rather be, and they’re grateful they get the opportunity to do it.

WOLF & CUB are a shuddering psychedelic rock behemoth, powered by what feels like the loudest bass guitar in the history of recorded music. Backed by hypnotic projections of shapes and patterns, they make music the size of weather formations – old-school stoner-friendly rock that moves like the fluid in a lava lamp. They shift back and forth from fuzzy, propulsive grooves to screeching guitar freak-outs – at one point even resting a guitar on an amp to let it squeal with feedback, and giving it a kick for good measure. If Jimi Hendrix had a fever dream, it might sound like WOLF & CUB. It’s an almost spiritual experience.

It blows me away that the first time I saw COG was at the 2003 Falls Festival in Marion Bay with about twenty other people. Now, two albums and a hiatus later, they’re headlining this festival. The Aboriginal flag is projected behind the kit, as Brian May’s theme from Gallipoli – originally by Jean-Michel Jarre – beeps and pulses through the darkness. Flynn, Lucius and Luke take the stage, and the crowd lifts. “Welcome back,” Flynn says, and kicks off No Other Way.

I have a theory that COG’s drummer was killed, hollowed-out and inhabited by some species of polyrhythmic octopus several years ago. Far-fetched? Next time you see COG live, watch him closely. Watch how he seamlessly goes from drumming to programming samples to swinging a microphone above his head for backup vocals. Does a guy get that good from being talented and practicing a lot? Of course not. Octopus Man is clearly the only logical conclusion. Flynn, Luke, and the octopus formerly known as Lucius Borich play a hypnotic set, leaning heavily on 2008’s Sharing Space. COG’s music has always felt strongly connected to this great southern land. Their soundscapes evoke visuals of distant storms flashing on horizons, or red dirt baking under the hot sun. What If? is mesmerising, and the climax of Swamp is at once heartbreakingly emotive and devastatingly heavy. My Enemy is a track that has taken on new meaning after 2020 – “Stuck in a loop, feeling so ordinary /
Every day I get out of it” sounds like an apt description of life for many of us during the pandemic. Resonate and Are You Interested give the crowd a neck workout, while recent single The Middle is a sprawling epic. The music is jolting through bassist Luke Gower, whose enormous wizard beard is now so long it actually headbangs on its own.

Flynn takes a moment to thank Yogi and everyone else involved in putting the night on, and after the events of the last year, it’s enough to bring a tear to your eye. After all this time away, it’s nice to feel normal again. They close with Bird of Feather, and the festival is left to filter out into the bustling nightclub crowds outside. We might be living in the New Normal, but tonight, that’s good enough.

[Apologies to FREE THE GENIE and those who played the Faction Stage. I’m a big guy, but I can’t be everywhere at once! I’ll catch you next time.]

Photos by:
CeeJay Johnson - Zest Photography & Design @zest.au.official
Trace McLean - Trace McLean Photography @tracemclean
Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media @thetomwilsonexperiment

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