Concert Review: Beastwars at The Powerstation, 8 May 2021

When Beastwars power up and launch it’s a force of nature, unrelenting like a hurricane or cyclone. Furious energy undiminished from start to finish.

Call to the Mountain and a monolithic sonic wave from which attack riffs surface and plunge back down into the sound ocean. Vocalist Matt Hyde who looks like a mad biker prophet with long beard and a one-keg paunch, bellows and shreds his larynx throughout.

Power grid guitar electricity from Clayton Anderson. James Woods bass and Nathan Hickey drums generate the thunder and artillery bursts.

The six-date tour celebrates a ten-year anniversary of their highly regarded debut album Beastwars. Nominated for Taite awards and a watershed for Heavy Rock and Metal music in New Zealand.

Two impressive acts play on the undercard tonight.

Demons of Noon

First are Demons of Noon. Auckland noise merchants whose founding members had some sort of epiphany in the heart of the Karangahake Gorge and ended up thrashing things out in underground Karangahape Road. Jonathan Burgess, Abraham Kunin, Scott Satherley and Joseph McElhinney.

A monolithic one-chord starts and a mammoth noise generator rumbles and powers up. Incantatory monk chants, slow and deliberate. The drums fire off attacks.

Doom Metal or Black Metal. Sounds Scandinavian, ice and cold. Endless days followed by endless nights.

Rooster calls signal the start of Mike. Then a frontal attack of a meshed guitar tsunami with drums adding crossfire. More chants and rolling thunder on Crushing Sun. There is some Monty Python and the Holy Grail humour lurking in there somewhere.

Two blonde Naiads appear on stage for the closing two songs. Young witch vocals can just be heard amongst the rumbling of the machine.

An impressive performance of disciplined battering heavy music and curiously uplifting.

Earth Tongue

Earth Tongue are Wellington duo Gussie Larkin guitar and Ezra Simons drums. Noise merchants of a different cloth who throw in bits of melody here and there. A massive sound comes out of just two people. Larkin is wearing a striking red Dolly Parton type outfit.

Microscopic God sounds like Sixties American Garage Rock with added Grunge. Then follow songs with low register fuzztone guitar riffs and drums providing some inventive propulsion along with occasional high-pitched scream singing.

There is certainly Prog in there but they have also been listening to Led Zeppelin and Physical Graffitti.

A slow Surf Guitar melody suddenly appears in Astonishing Comet halfway through and spins the song on its head, having started as a Sci-Fi drone chant. In a curious way it sounds a little like Metal Disco.

Portable Shrine reinforces this. Some heavy Jimmy Page riffs start and then they head off into some PiL-style slightly funky rhythms and vocals. Worked a bit differently to the album version.

They can do slow and monolithic. They finish the set with Pentagram on the Moon. Ringing guitars, chanted vocals with harmony screams from Simons.

An arresting duo and a sound packed with a lot of older musical ingredients and powered by some wild energy.

Beastwars

Once Beastwars take off they lay all to waste and without any concessions. What they conjure up is the block-buster apocalyptic movie. Terminator when the Machines are levelling everything. The music of Northern European mythology, all testosterone and foreboding.

Some slam dancing front of stage. As much fun as being caught in a ruck and of course only a hairs breadth away from a good brawl.                                   

A good half dozen songs before they get into their anniversary album. Raise the Sword and the echoing vocals of Hyde leads off before he just blasts away with an impressive and powerful declamatory bellow. Doesn’t need to move much, just raises his arms. May look like a prophet but you also wouldn’t touch his bike, which I envision as belching flames.

Just as impressive and unrelenting is the guitar which constantly fires off riffs and squalls. Whilst it sounds like a pressure wall of sound there is constant but subtle variations there to keep the hooks in. Did I just say subtle about a Metal band?

Damn the Sky and the Beastwars celebrated debut is allowed to smash out of its crate. Starts with a screech of feedback before settling into simple brutal riffs with work themselves up into a hurricane.

Lake of Fire. Huge bass. They extend this one out and the squalls and screams from the guitar echo the first MC5 album chaos at times. Also, think of the expansive sound of Husker Du turned up.

Meant to hit the body but it oddly appeals in a more cerebral fashion. It is more music for the head than the backbone or the hips. Headbanging is a more mental and spiritual pursuit.

This is a tribal gathering tonight. Balding Boomer males with more hirsute younger millennials. Predominantly white with a scattering of Asians. This is a different bag from Funk or R’n’B.

They slam through the album tracks. Cthulhu lets the heavy ponderous bass dictate with some grizzly vocals. Empire closes with a huge battering drone.

A massive and stunning set, start to finish, from New Zealand’s premier Metal band.

Rev Orange Peel.