Concert Review: Wax Chattels – Whammy Bar    July 24, 2020

The Art Terrorists Wax Chattels transform the Whammy Bar into the Large Hadron Collider for an hour and bombard the audience until we’ve all had our synapses rearranged and minds suitably blown. In a great way.

The Chattels are a relatively new band, but have been quick to garner critical attention and a fanbase. I assume they are Aucklanders; they are School of Jazz alumni.

The trio are; Amanda Cheng electric bass, Peter Ruddell keyboards and Tom Leggett assault and battery.

The Whammy tonight is packed tight as I squeeze in, the band having just started. Friday night fiascos have meant missing warm-up acts Na Noise and Memory Foam and I hope to catch them in the near future.

No Ties is Wax Chattels current single and comes at you in a full-frontal assault. Rapid-fire drums, repeated simple abrasive metallic keyboard lines. An intense manic vocal from Cheng.      No ties/ No home/ Just food/ Landmarks/ Just friends/ History.

The almost hour-long set is difficult to adequately describe in words, as it is as much a physical assault on the body as it is a consciousness raising experience.

The group have explained in the past, that they are looking at form and composition in their music, to advance novel ways of presenting a song from its traditional or recognisable structure. But it is certainly not chaotic discordant directionless thrashing by any stretch.

Rather, it is more deconstructionist and reassembled into mutant new forms like Picasso and the Cubists. Beautiful, disturbing and more than a little grisly. But your perception of form and time alters from an inner awakening.

Like the highest form, or let’s say the more extreme end of Art which changes the world before anyone has time to react to it. Coming in under the radar and faster than the speed of sound.

It is from the debut album. Gunshots, techno electronic keyboard riffs with electric screams. Banshee wailing from Cheng.

Shrinkage, also from debut, has a trance-like groove with waves of electronica washing across. The beat is maintained throughout. Industrial electric nerve music.

Glue is a new one and I assume on the up and coming album Clot. Bass and drums kick off at speed. Then keyboards enter with staccato bursts like the ancient Space Invaders gaming machines. Rhythm shots like automatic gunfire.

On Cede, a woman’s screams. The  keyboards attack with rhythm riffs and then lay down some funk beats. Drums firing off the heavy artillery.

Spanners sounds cinematic. As in here are the helicopters hovering over villages in the jungle of Vietnam. And then here comes the saturation bombing.

In My Mouth is the closing song tonight. More rhythm assaults with laser stabs of keyboard. An electronic war game with buildings being laid to waste.

This music is not without its predecessors and influences, like all Art.

The harsh, nervy, tense metronomic sounds of Alan Vega and Martin Rev of Suicide. And especially the nerve-shredding horror story that is Frankie Teardrop.

The Rock’n’Roll merged with Coltrane of MC5. Possibly even Eight Miles High. Early PiL. Ron Asheton’s and James Williamson’s guitar assaults on the classic Stooges albums. And of course, Sister Ray.

This band really has to be seen live to appreciate their full mind-altering impact, especially for afficiandos of Skronk like myself. And like the Sleaford Mods who played their debut gig in Auckland in February this year, a group to become obsessed about.

Rev Orange Peel

Wax Chattels Set List

1. You Were Right

2. No Ties

3. Stay

4. It

5. Shrinkage

6. Efficiency

7. Glue

8. Cede

9. NRG

10. Spanners

11. In My Mouth