I boycott the Venn Festival to go to this gig. My reasons for this are wide and varied, but generally come down to the fact that paying a fiver to see 6 bands who will probably be great is better than wandering around missing most of what you want to see and accidentally bumping into crap while only seeing 5 minutes of anything that's any good because you've arrived just at the end but it doesn't really seem worth staying because you haven't paid 15 quid to sit in the Croft all day.
We had a big argument about this last year, when it was a slightly more acceptable 10 Earth Pounds but I still only wanted to go to one venue. Apparently this is how you are supposed to 'enjoy' their festival. So be it. Suffice to say, it is still a very lovely sunny day and the Junction is extremely sticky.
Welsh band The Death of Her Money launch proceedings and test the levels with a mid-paced metal scream and the occasional burst of speed. Their set remains very similar throughout and leaves me uninspired by the overall package. Too ponderous to stay interesting, yet this brand of grungey slow 'post NWOBHM' metal seems to be coming to the fore these days, killing off the riff and the spandex. Farewell to Arms pick up the pace a bit with heavier metal but again I don't think there's enough variety in their tunes.
Now Flatlands have some enormous metal masterworks made up of slow, doom moments with quieter melodic breaks to furious riffing and glorious screams. This is good stuff, although they do occasionally give in to the urge to do songs where they just play the same big powerchord over and over again. Not that I really blame them they are good powerchords. Unlike the other bands where I get the feeling the music has overstayed it's welcome, Flatlands have some huge theatrics that get me smiling and nodding. Although I can't hear what the lyrics are, I imagine they are glorious tales of adventures in hell, fighting demons and such.
But the band I'm really excited about seeing - the last time was over a year ago, Art of Burning Water launch the night into overdrive. The music is fast, furiously complicated and brutal metal. Veering wildly between math-heavy time signatures and hard thrashing riffs they tear your brain apart and put it back together again in new, endorphin-fueled ways. With the singer's growling voice and the switching between doom-laden powerchords versus fast thrash it's mostly angry music but the refusal to stay still, to allow each idea to play out before the next insinuates itself into the mix forces you into a disjointed, open state of mind. You have to stay receptive because you don't know what's coming even though you have a feeling they want to climb inside your head with a monkey wrench and go mental. This is the Golden Section of the night, anything after this is just dressing.
They are followed by Thread, who are more straightforward but still play pretty varied and extremely heavy music that flirts occasionally with ideas above its station. Taint complete the evening's assault in fine fashion, another three-piece with a huge sound but by this time my brain has been beaten into submission after 4 hours of noise.
AoBW are clearly the band of the night by a country mile and I don't regret missing the exciting Venn festival one bit, although I'm sure that many strange and interesting things happened. The stickyness of the evening wears off eventually and a few days later my hearing returns so I can listen to all the new music I've rushed out and downloaded.
