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Review: Skindred, Bristol Sounds – ‘Ten hours of rock and metal’
Traditionally, Bristol Sounds has had little to offer those of us who prefer our music loud and heavy.
But it’s all change on the opening day of this year’s event: ten hours of rock and metal. Even the elusive Great British Summer has put in an appearance to celebrate.
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We arrive on site just as Tova are starting their set on the bijou second stage, tucked away in the food court. “Let’s fucking go, Bristol!” bellows their frontman.
Unfortunately, Bristol is more inclined to jig about with mild enthusiasm than to fucking go as that rarely spotted orb in the sky beats down.
They bring a grab-bag of outside influences to the alternative rock thing, with plenty of rapping and shouting, and even manage to work up a modest circle pit. It’s not clear what their singer is on about much of the time, though a reference to “fucking Tory c*nts” may provide a clue.
Over on the main stage, Brighton alt-metallers Lake Malice are just getting started. Essentially a duo, with a live drummer recruited for the occasion, these Kerrang! favourites work hard to get the lethargic crowd going, with livewire Alice Guala working the A-Z of crowd participation gambits.
They’re enjoyable enough, if a little samey in places, but the main problem with music that relies so heavily on triggered sounds and pre-recorded backing vocals is that you’re never quite sure how much of it is being performed live.
Back on the second stage, it’s time for the first of two Bristol bands. Clear winners of the audience t-shirt popularity contest, Mother Vulture have a lot of metal press hype to live up to.
This they achieve by simply going for it. There’s not a single wasted minute in their allotted 30 minute slot of vigorous classic rock-infused punk-blues and they swiftly succeed in whipping up a bigger mosh pit than Lake Malice achieved on the main stage.
Their singer’s distinctive high-pitched vocals are oddly reminiscent of Epic-era Mike Patton in places. A new song entitled Slow Down is unveiled, but this turns out to be only marginally less furiously paced than the band’s other material.
They finish up with Mother Vulture anthem Go Big Or Go Home. Hugely impressive stuff. They’re back at the Exchange in October and are well worth checking out.
Mother Vulture performing at Bristol Sounds – photo: Mother Vulture
The crowd has filled out at the main stage for Torquay’s Kris Barras Band, who are clearly the first appointment act of the day for many.
Heavily tattooed former cage fighter Mr. Barras successfully forged a second career as a blues-rocker. But that’s a genre in which big commercial breakthroughs are difficult to achieve. Barras is obviously not lacking in ambition and has played on a lot of metal bills over the years, so it was no real surprise when the vocalist/guitarist chose to pivot into metal, signing to the Earache label and scoring a top five chart hit with his Halo Effect album earlier this year.
But his chosen brand of big chorus singalong heavy rock is a crowded field dominated by such reliable arena fillers as Nickelback, Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm, which means he’s now up against some stiff competition.
Naturally, his band’s set is dominated by songs from Halo Effect, with Savages being a particular highlight. Guitarist Josiah J. Manning and bassist Frazer Kerslake are also strong singers and the band are at their best when they deploy these talents in such crowd favourites as Hail Mary and rousing set closer My Parade, which gets everyone chanting along “This is my parade/I don’t give a fuck what people say” – proving once again that you can never go wrong with a sweary singalong lyric.
Second stage headliners RXPTRS (it’s pronounced ‘Raptors’) take their cue from the Mother Vulture playbook and grab Bristol Sounds by the scruff of the neck to give it a damn good shaking.
Signed to legendary US metal indie label Metal Blade, who gave us everything from Manowar to Cannibal Corpse, the Bristol quintet rock some serious beardage and defy easy categorisation as they veer from hardcore to melodic rock.
Frontman Simon Roach reveals that the band’s ode to Bristol, Dead Awake (Pretty as the Drugs We Take), was written on the day that Mr. Colston tumbled into the drink not far from where they’re playing today.
A handful of crowd-surfers are incited to take flight including, on two occasions, Roach himself (revealing an impressive pair of Austin Powers ankle boots). You, Me and the Devil Makes Three concludes a stirring set.
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Its been 22 years since this reviewer last saw A (Anson Rooms, 2002), and it came as some surprise to find that they’re not only still going but are finally recording their first album in nearly two decades.
Back at the turn of the millennium, their young audience seemed to be about 12 years old and A felt very much like the Wildhearts’ pop-metal little brothers. That audience is now somewhat older, and ever-jovial frontman Jason Perry (now a renowned record producer) is eager to make concessions to their advancing years with the world’s slowest moving circle pit, which proceeds at walking pace.
The old ‘get down and jump up’ gambit is also repurposed with the command to sit down quietly and get up slowly and carefully at the end of the song.
It gets a bit ramshackle on occasion and a brief equipment malfunction gives Perry the opportunity to launch into some ill-advised football-related banter. Wrong crowd, pal.
Still it’s great to hear such favourites as Old Folks (“Old folks are losers/They can’t work computers”) and Nothing again after all this time. Alas, it turns out that Bristol Sounds will be A’s one and only gig of the year.
The Van Halen classic Running with the Devil heralds the arrival of Glastonbury’s Reef. It’s been a long time since The Hits, but these guys are masters of soulful, funky hard rock and get a heroes’ welcome from the Bristol Sounds crowd.
Inevitably, the hour-long set takes flight with Place Your Hands, but Reef also play a great cover of Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain which has everyone from old rockers to teenage metalheads singing along.
They conclude by returning to 1997’s Glow for a rapturously received Yer Old. Above us, a pair of Thatchers cider balloons float serenely into view and it feels like a perfect summer’s day.
“Show me your horns, members of the metal family!”
For those of us who’ve been following Skindred’s career (and indeed that of Benji Webbe’s previous band, Dub War) for more than two decades, the surprise is that it’s taken this long for the Newport quartet’s unique brand of tribe-uniting, unwaveringly positive ragga-metal to become this popular.
Following the chart success of the excellent Smile album, they can now play at just about any festival – except the really snooty ones that you wouldn’t want to go to anyway – and seem determined to do just that, with Glastonbury, Steelhouse and multiple Euro metalfests still on their dance card this year.
In many ways, it feels as though Skindred’s entire career has been building towards headlining big shows like this.
And they’re certainly ready for it. Charismatic ringmaster Benji is a skilled crowd manipulator, alternately taking the mick and driving audience participation (including, of course, the fabled ‘Newport Helicopter’), while Mikey Demus delivers the irresistible riffage underpinned by the pounding rhythm section of Bristolian bassist Daniel Pugsley and hard-hitting drummer Arya Goggin.
The show itself is a slightly tweaked version of the one they’ve been playing since last October. But who cares when it’s this good? That familiar intro of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck followed by the Star Wars Imperial March gives way to Set Fazers from Smile and a return to 2002’s Babylon for Pressure.
There’s plenty of audience-delighting fun along the way, as they chuck in snippets from AC/DC’s Back in Black and Van Halen’s Jump.
L.O.V.E. (Smile Please) sees Skindred go full dancehall and it’s always amusing to see a metal audience trying to dance; while the splendid If I Could has really taken on a life of its own outside the new album.
The TikTok craze-boosted Nobody is paired as a dynamic double-whammy with Gimme That Boom at the end of the set. With 15 minutes to go, they return for an encore of Our Religion and old favourite Warning, on which Benji is joined by Kris Barras and Gary Stringer from Reef.
It’s a magnificent climax to a great show and, indeed, a hugely enjoyable day. Can we have another metal day next year please, Bristol Sounds folks?
All photos (except where stated): @darrencphotography
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