May 11, 2023| Dan Hillier |LIVE REVIEW
Seemingly casting the primary rains in days on their very own accord, Dead Bird and Sugar Horse deal with Dareshack to a high-quality night of bleak post-screamo and even bleaker doomgaze.
Dead Bird
As the skies cloud over and first drizzle in days begin to fall over a now dismal Bristol, it appears this night is the right setting for Dead Bird. After all, inviting spring skies will not be a setting one would related to this band, one thing anybody who heard their debut In The Absence Of would attest to. But nonetheless, even after outpouring a lifetime’s quantity of emotion with their sensible mentioned debut, it’s clear Dead Bird have extra to expunge, a indisputable fact that they current viscerally and painstakingly with a set composed purely of latest materials.
In a way that actually portrays the fixed and fluid flux of 1’s fractured and warped headspace, such new materials is introduced in a vogue that’s mentally flaying and completely plain. Whilst a post-screamo basis serves as the muse of their sound, Dead Bird’s set skirts boundlessly from intervals of stillness – the place essentially the most outstanding sounds are the bodily clicking of pedals – to titanous submit steel riffs and even blackgaze passages totally absent from their earlier work. Yet while their sound harkens ideas of a large berth of artists together with the likes of Envy, Yearning, Suffocate For Fucks Sake, Russian Circles and even Glassjaw at occasions, their sound remains to be firmly embedded in a state of grief and anguish. Much like these feelings, ones that Dead Bird exist to animate and expunge from their collective psychological state, their craft is inconceivable to pin down however but totally cathartic in the way in which it channels genuine ache. It’s a thunderous set, one the band fairly actually being to the ground, and while their aforementioned debut might have been launched considerably with out fanfare and unceremoniously final yr, it’s rattling nicely clear that Dead Bird can be swarming all with the thunderous new content material they’ve premiered right here tonight later within the hopefully close to future.
Score: 8/10
Sugar Horse
Opening with the viola led instrumental that has turn into identified to herald their reside reveals – one thing that sounds not totally not like a soundtrack for a proper suicide pact aboard the Titanic previous to it hitting an iceberg – Sugar Horse gently ease Dareshack into their set in the identical means a sadist would ease somebody into tinnitus with 200db of sudden white noise as they lurch into the blissful fatalism of ‘Phil Spector In Hell’. However, while the sheer quantity of their glacial doom-laden shoegaze would usually ship punters both reaching for ear safety or out the door utterly, tonight not a single individual is bowled over. Such an absence of response or shock is to be anticipated given the circumstances although. Even amidst a musical neighborhood nationally identified for it’s ingenuity and originality, Sugar Horse occupy a particular place inside the native scene right here, and from rapidly scanning the faces of these in attendance, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of these gathered have seen the band in some capability in our across the South West beforehand. But even with the populace gathered nicely versed within the band’s bleak and depressing methods, that’s to not say that this hometown present isn’t with out it’s surprises.
Gliding via their extra mollifying tracks similar to ‘Super Army Soldiers’ and ‘Pictures Of Dogs Having Sex’ – a track that’s way more ethereal and exquisite than it’s namesake suggests, actually – previous to dropping into the hulking ‘Thrash Music’, Sugar Horse as soon as once more provide a beautiful if not uncooked masterclass in style dynamism. As weighted textures of dense nihilism intertwine with serene shoegaze and barbed riffs, tonight as soon as once more is a agency reminder that Sugar Horse forgo the dated and contrived notion of style in a matter brilliantly cohesive, a reality they set up with full conviction with choose cuts from their LP debut within the type of ‘Fat Dracula’ and ‘The Live Long After’. These tracks should still ship the complete impression of their mercurial contents as a lot as they did once they the place first launched again in 2021 – and nonetheless sound colossal reside – however honestly, one of the best and most shocking arc of this sensible set is what follows.
As the band tear into their cowl of the 1985 New Wave defining traditional ‘Head Over Heels’, Sugar Horse lastly reply the timeless query that’s what would Tears For Fears sound like in the event that they the place recorded Songs From The Big Chair within the bowels of Hell. Fleshing out each the perversion of the evocation of the observe in a means towering but removed from overt and obnoxious, the quilt permits Sugar Horse to flex their inventive muscle groups in a contortion the band haven’t displayed beforehand. Still, it’s the nearer that’s the true shock of the night. Ending on an untitled 15 minute opus of a brand new track, it’s right here the place one get’s a glimmer of the band’s forthcoming new act. Sounding biblical by way of scope and touching upon each ends of Sugar Horse’s musical spectrum – from crushing, all-consuming submit steel to splendidly ominous spaciousness – the brand new observe is a track that simply resonates a way of potent apocalypticism with it’s sense of destruction and marvel. It’s a startling alternative for a better, and as attendees filter out the venue following it, it’s clear we haven’t seen the complete extent of Sugar Horse’s musical dynamism as of but.
Score: 9/10
