By Bruce Cowie
Something is not right here tonight. Crippled Black Phoenix – one of my favouritest bands in the whole wide world – are playing in Edinburgh for the first time in years, and there is nobody here.
Doors opened at 7:00. It is now 7:15 and the support band is just about to start playing, to maybe ten people. Yeah, I know it’s early, I know it’s a Sunday night – but c’mon. Ten people?
I knew about this gig months ago. But, for some reason, the promoters didn’t release tickets were for sale until just a few weeks ago. And then seemed to forget all about promoting it. I never saw a single poster anywhere, and there wasn’t an event page on Facebook. Nothing. Nowhere. And this, Dear Reader, is the result.
Anyway, let’s get on.
The poor guys on stage, A Liquid Landscape from the Netherlands, look at each other and shrug. ‘Shall we start?’ says singer/guitarist Fons Helder, who looks alarmingly like Chris Martin.
Credit to them, they play as if they are in front of a packed room. Their more than decent brand of post-prog (is that even a thing?) goes down well with the ‘crowd’, blessedly not sounding remotely like Coldplay. They make me think of Oceansize - which is odd, as I know very little about Oceansize. Their set is drawn largely – or entirely, perhaps? – from their forthcoming new album ‘The Largest Fire Known To Man’, and it’s darned fine stuff. The songs pretty much follow a quiet – loud – very loud plan, but there’s enough variation to keep it interesting. Sadly, they are not helped along by a murky sound and an echoey empty room. Despite this, they are well received, and there is some enthusiastic whoopin’ and hollerin’ going on by the end of their forty-five minutes.
By the time Crippled Black Phoenix come on, the crowd has swelled a bit. Still, though, it is a very long way from packed in the Liquid Room. I don’t know how many people there will be by the end of the night, but it won't top one hundred. And maybe that’s why they seem a little flat, at first.
I have seen CBP a few times before, and the experience has always been genuinely life-enhancing. But they seem a little off tonight. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s the two-thirds empty room.
Actually, I think it probably IS just me. Apart from a rousing opener of ‘Stand Up and Fight’, the first half of the show is almost entirely new material. Other than that one, ‘The Brain/Poznan’ and ‘Born in a Hurricane’, it was all from their new album ‘White Light Generator’. To my shame, I have not heard any of it before. Also, new singer Daniel Anghede’s vocals are a bit lost in the mix, which doesn’t help.
Now, don’t misunderstand. None of the above should be taken as meaning CBP were bad. Far from it. It’s just the unfamiliarity thing. There are songs which will be favourites – the pounding ‘Let’s Have An Apocalypse Now!’ and the epic ‘No!’, featuring guest vocalist Belinda Kordic harmonising exquisitely with pianist Daisy Chapman, for example.
The first half of the show ends with the lovely ‘We Remember You’, dedicated to the owner of the restaurant next door, with whom the band had had a, let’s say, falling out. It seems unlikely that he will feature on the CBP Christmas card list…
Earlier in the evening, Justin Greaves explained that it had been a long time since they had played Edinburgh, and that it had been a different time, a different band. But it is when they step back to that time and bust out the ‘greatest hits’ that they truly come to life. They give us ‘Song for the Loved’, ‘Fantastic Justice’ and ‘Troublemaker’. They give us the Journey Cover, ‘Of A Lifetime’, which they do better than Journey ever did. They are now unstoppable. And then they get better.
The closing trio of ‘444’, ‘We Forgotten Who We Are’ (the grammar nazi in me struggles hard to not correct that title) and ‘Burnt Reynolds’ are simply glorious. A religious experience, almost.
I’m not generally a fan of guitar soloing, seeing it as self-indulgent wankery in most cases. But Karl Demata’s playing tonight has been sublime, never getting in the way of the rest of the music. His bottleneck work during ‘We Forgotten…’ has me nearly in tears. I never want it to stop. But it has to, because they must, by law, finish with ‘Burnt Reynolds’ which, from its haunting keyboard intro to its audience singalong finish, is pure, unalloyed joy.
They leave the stage, as we know they must, for the 10:00pm curfew is looming. But we keep on singing. Yes, we know they will be back, it’s just part of the game – and here they come. We are still chanting and they pick up as if they have never been away, stirring ‘Burnt Reynolds’ back to life for a final perfect climax.
Oh, but it’s not over yet. The curfew is disregarded, and they rock and roll through a couple more – ‘Let The Day Begin’, a Samhain cover, and finally, ‘Bella Ciao’. It is a rattling good end to a damned fine show. And it is hard to tell who’s grinning wider, the band or the crowd. Let’s call it a draw.
Maybe they took a bit of time to get going tonight, but they did not disappoint in the end. Next time I see them, the new songs will have settled into my brain and I will accept them as old friends. And Crippled Black Phoenix will continue to be fucking awesome.
Their tour is over now, but they are playing ArcTanGent in a couple of months. Seriously, you should go. Really.
