Beastwars bring a mammoth elemental attack force of sound and celebrate the tenth anniversary of sophomore album Blood Becomes Fire.
They have also completed a passion project of covers from New Zealand artists. New album Tyranny of Distance was released two weeks ago, and we get to hear some choice cuts. Beastified as the band describe it, and unrecognisable from the originals.
The Wellington band were formed in 2006. Their musical roots go back to the mid-Eighties, when schoolboy Matt Hyde (extreme vocals) formed a band called Microwave Babies.
Back then there was a run of bad taste Baby Jokes which appealed to rowdy and cocky male youths.
Nathan Nato Hickey (bass guitar) was looking for a musical project a little later, and along came James Woods (drums) and Clayton Anderson (guitar). Anderson has left and current guitarist is Christian Pearce.
The are described as Sludge Metal. A mix of Doom Metal and hardcore Punk. It starts to make sense when you trace the evolution from Black Sabbath, through Black Flag and Flipper, and on the Melvins.
Entering the stage and its two beards and a moustache. The drummers’ head is hairless. They could a Kiwi ZZ Top.
Start with Damn the Sky from the debut album. The slow tempo makes for a heavy sound. The singer looks equal parts biker and prophet and unleashes a powerful voice that does not need the lyrics to be decipherable. The band display a rapport to mesh in immediately and maintain the hard-on for the whole show.
There are whiffs of the graveyard. In this land, this land of the dead. Metal may well be music of the Bardo.
Then it’s Dune and they dive into the opening track to Blood Becomes Fire. The opening salvo sounds like Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. Then it’s a relentlessly repeated descending riff, progressively sped up.
A good part of their sound has its’ origins in heavy Rock.
When you hear Imperium, sludge is a good description, but it also reminds me of tone of Led Zepps’ Kashmir.
Rivermen I first heard played by a virtuoso finger-pick acoustic guitarist, done as a folk song. On stage tonight it has the most melodic guitar opening. Lots of drama from the singer as it progresses.
Caul of Time typifies their trademark guitar and bass crunch. Singer is mostly declamatory and can rise above the bands meshed sound. It is also a maximalisation of minimalism and has the qualities of drone music.
As the set rolls on, it does remind me of Eastern drones like Sufi and Qawwali music. Perpetual music of the God realm. Of course, church and hellfire imagery are the magic ingredient which created Rock’n’roll.
Ruins has the motorcycle drag guitar drones of the edgier Sixties instrumental bands, from Link Wray to Davie Allen. Guitar and voice through an effects box. The drummer sustains bursts of relentless automatic gunfire.
Blood Becomes Fire is honed to a laser light, and you experience rapid fire drum assaults, laying the terrain open for the squalling tempest of the guitar.
The Sleeper sounds like the Ramones in its stripped back essence.
There are some choice cuts from Tyranny of Distance.
Waves, first performed by Julia Deans, stands out with a reductive Bo Diddley riff at the core.
Nadia Reid’s High and Lonely sounds like the singer is possessed whilst the guitar screeches, invoking psychic pain.
Ripship
Ripship are Wellington duo Callum Lincoln guitar and gadgets, and Eva-Rae McLean drums. To be accurate, they were Aucklanders until recently. Maybe the gulag lockdown in 2021 had something to do with that. I last saw them then at the Whammy Bar.
They have a big sound. The White Stripes come to mind. It approaches Metal, as that description now encompasses diversity. Heavily into sci-fi, dystopia and general off-kilter Psychedelia.
Hearing them tonight and there are definite elements of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band and Frank Zappa. Serious sense of humour and more than a little Art terrorism.
Lincoln resembles Zappa, with his moustache. More accurately, Ned Flanders crossed with Zappa.
Debugger contains all of this. Compare it to Debra Kadabra which feature both avant-garde artists.
UFO approaches the hard and nasty early Sixties motorcycle music in a different way to the Beasts. Relentless and metronomic, you can smell exhaust fumes, visualise flashing lights and sirens on the Desert Road.
Set to Stun is their robot cowboy song with good ominous Rock atmospherics. Sounds like the Doors and Jim Morrison’s trance recitals.
George Clinton sci-fi music style with the Funkentelechy bass is heard on Moore’s Law. The bass riffs must be from the gadgets.
They close with Insufficient Data, an epic sung by McLean. The story of MultiVac and a drama about laying waste throughout the universe. The music reminds me of the old and best Doctor Who, from the Sixties and Seventies. Drama and theatre and the spectre of AI.
Beastwars close their show with Emmanuelle and their singular interpretation of the song written by Peter Gutteridge. Massive sound barrage and the fastest tempo of the night.
The band receives the adulation of the large crowd to the strains of Screaming Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You.
Rev Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Beastwars
Ripship
