Anvil, Living Dead Stars & Electus, Sin City, Swansea 15.10.2022.
Swansea’s Sin City is a venue that I have seen cropping up in gig listings a lot recently since we emerged from our shelters and having not been there before, I was curious to know what the place was doing right to manage to pull in some more sizeable names on the touring circuit that I would normally expect to show up in the much larger pool of nearby Cardiff (which is a little more conveniently on my doorstep). Plus, I am inherently lazy and a trip to Swansea means getting in the car, rather than using public transport.
The venue is a medium size club with a small intimate stage, that you can park right by at no cost, which goes a long way to explain the attraction for the punter, despite the fact that it has one of the worst load-in’s that I have ever seen, necessitating everything piece of equipment to be hand-humped up three flights of metal staircases at the back of the venue, which is no fun for the crew and band when it’s pissing it down with rain (which to be fair is a fairly common occurrence down here in South Wales). Either way, despite this, and the travel, it’s a venue with a lot going for it, as despite its small size, you don’t need too many people in there to get the atmosphere going.
That said, openers Electus (5) have their work cut out for them with the graveyard slot of this three-act line-up, which sadly for them remains very thin throughout their set. This grizzled three-piece hail from Wolverhampton play straight up classic pub style hard rock, albeit with a slightly grungier tinge to their guitar sound. Stylistically they felt quite loose, lacking that distinctive edge or sound to differentiate themselves from what is a crowded field. They were not helped by the very empty room that wasn’t giving them very much back, and an insipid sound mix that sounded like it was coming from somewhere under Swansea Bay. The audience were polite enough, but they slightly outstayed their welcome with a set that was a good fifteen minutes longer than it needed to.
They clearly overran because mid-slotters Living Dead Stars (9) were waiting impatiently side-stage to help them get their gear off and provided the fastest changeover I think I have ever seen at a gig. The contrast in atmosphere when this Huntingdon Beach’s (and a few other continent’s besides) five piece opened up was palpable, oozing as they do that element badly lacking from earlier, that being some confidence, real stage presence, a nice fat and clear sound and no small amount of talent.
In terms of set duration, Living Dead Stars kept it to a sharp, punch and focused thirty-minute set and had the crowd turned around after the first three of those. Musically you can hear Avenged Sevenfold and Five Finger Death Punch, but with a clean and sharp vocal style that comes from having a singer who spends the rest of his time fronting a power metal outfit. Frontman Manuel Nox kicks in like he owns the place, and shortly after this he absolutely does (despite confessing after the first song that he is in extreme pain with what sounds like it might be the onset of appendicitis and having to slow down his stage moves somewhat to avoid passing out). Despite this, he absolutely ripped Sin City a new one, with his shredding, charismatic vocal delivery, supported by what must be in all my years of reviewing one of the most dynamically entertaining performances from a bass player I have ever seen.
Despite the tiny stage, relative newcomer to the band Edwin Sealey reminds me of Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls goofily powering across the stage, phallic bass aloft and gurning his way into everyone’s hearts in complete contrast to the more reserved stage moves of the other instrumentalists. To be fair they can and do play very well by the way, but four of them cavorting like that on the postage stamp stage would have been a recipe for disaster. The net effect is that despite this tiny stage, you have two dynamic performers to take the energy of this really rather technically proficient hard rock / melodic metal act well and truly up to 11, when you weren’t expecting such an honest and energetic performance. At the end of the day, when you’re walking into a room full of people who don’t know you, and are here to see the headliner, that’s absolutely bang on the money for me. One to watch…
On the subject of headliners, time for Anvil (10).
I will be honest, Anvil dropped off my radar completely in about 1988 and I had no idea until I saw “The Story of Anvil” on a streaming platform just before lockdown that they were even still going. Like many, I was completely won over by the heart-warming nature of that film, despite the ‘reality TV meets Spinal Tap’ it was pitched at. If you haven’t seen it, it saw the band showing us an insight into their off road blue collar lives, scraping together enough money to record yet another album that no-one buys and finally struggling round a joke of a European tour in the early part of the century with no proper support to the point of combustion. It’s funny, but it’s heart breaking too, because their plight was the plight of all but a handful of acts still struggling to actually make a real living in the music business today. For many the absence of any real revenue means eventually you run out of road, but somehow after forty odd years they are still going, because as Lips himself says tonight, “What else are we gonna do?”
That movie is probably the reason they are now finally getting the recognition they deserve, and despite the no doubt enormous financial outlay that a sixty date over three months European tour (of which seventeen are here in the UK) of all the toilet venues across the continent is hard, bloody grueling work for people not int their 60’s. If the reaction of tonight was anything to go by, I think it might be worth it, as alongside a quick scan of their Facebook page shows they have been consistently pulling in 3-500 punters to all of those dates.
That said, I’m not sure who was happiest – the crowd to see Lips down here in little old Swansea, South Wales or Lips to see the crowd. His look of delighted astonishment at their welcome was so endearing, and the fact that he did it each and every time he got a cheer throughout the night won everyone over in a heartbeat. Their fifteen-song set surprised me by only having a couple of tracks from this year’s frankly spot on Impact Is Imminent, but that really didn’t matter as the crowd loved everything they were given.
Add to this the antics of dildo guitar playing, Lips’ frankly hilarious anecdotes and impression of touring with Lemmy and by sheer full on honest delivery, Anvil absolutely hammered this into the back of the net. Let’s be honest, the good ship Anvil is old school 80’s Heavy Fucking Metal / proto-Thrash and may (insert deity of choice) bless all who sail in her. If you want poetic lyrics, complex chord structures, mellifluous harmonic melodies and technical subtlety, then may I suggest something in the Symphonic or Progressive aisles. If you want straight ahead, honest to god street metal, then really Anvil deliver the goods.
Closing with their anthemic Metal On Metal, and in Lips case delivered from the middle of the audience, Anvil could do no wrong. Well, not to the punters least ways as Lips then spent fifteen minutes shaking the hands, gurning for selfies and taking the time to give back to everyone down there who wanted to, whilst a slight miffed looking Robb Reiner packed his drum kit away alone behind him, subtly evoking the dynamic of the movie.
That, was a night to remember…