(((O))) : Live Review: Årabrot, Casual Nun & Skeleton Gong – Nice n Sleazy, Glasgow

Photos: Jose Ramon Caamaño | 

Nice n Sleazy, Glasgow | March 19, 2016

The mighty Norwegian noise-rockers Årabrot returned to Glasgow again, this time to support their latest album The Gospel, and as usual with frontman Kjetil Nernes he had a completely different band in tow again. But more on that later, as local space doomsters Skeleton Gong had the honour to open up the proceeding’s at Nice n Sleazy.

Sadly there were only a handful of people there to witness the first half of their set, which came a bit as a surprise as they started just after 8pm, it was a Saturday night in Glasgow, and only a week before the place was absolutely packed for the Girl Sweat, The Cosmic Dead and White Hills show. Anyway, it didn’t matter much to Skeleton Gong as they went on to play a great set of instrumental doom with lots of added space effects courtesy of Old Man Gong, wearing his characteristic skeleton mask and Viking helmet. The rest of the Skeletons were on great form, also wearing the band’s characteristic sunglasses and cowboy hats. If you haven’t listened to their latest album For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky yet then I certainly recommend you to do so!

Old Man Gong & Skeleton Gong

Next up were London noise rockers Casual Nun, a band who I had never seen before, but heard plenty about from my London based gig goers. They describe themselves as ‘a multi-national collective drawn together from the ashes of the likes of Dethscalator and Throne’. Plus the fact they use a two-drummer set-up and one of those drummers wore a t-shirt saying ‘Listen to Volume 4’ (hopefully referring to Sabbath’s Vol 4 album?) could only mean this was going to be a good live set.

Casual Nun

And it certainly was. Perhaps they needed to build up a bit of steam, as things started a wee bit on the timid side, but soon enough we were treated to a fine set of good ol’ noise rock. I think their set contained mostly new material as well, though with new I mean ‘not released yet’, as I can only find their song ‘Green Tea’ back on their Bandcamp releases. Apparently they will release a cassette this year and later on a full-length release on Box Records. Based on their live set I’m looking forward picking those releases up for sure.

By the time it was Årabrot’s turn the number of people in the crowd had grown to a couple of dozen, which was more decent, but still surprisingly low for a band like Årabrot. It was making my walk from the front of the stage to the bar and back again an easy one though, so I wasn’t complaining. After a dramatic and theatrical start of the set, with lots of smoke, light effects, and gradual appearance of the band members over the course of 5 minutes or so, the band started playing. It was immediately clear that this show was going to be loud as fuck, with the drummer playing with the back ends of his drum sticks (and hitting everything really hard) and the volume of the instruments all turned up high. The mix was excellent though and everything was clear. Very loud, but very clear.

Årabrot

Their set unsurprisingly focused mainly on their new album The Gospel, with the title track, ‘I Run’, ‘Tall Man’, ‘Ah Feel’ and ‘I Am The Sun’ sounding brilliantly in the live setting. As mentioned earlier, Årabrot’s band is always different and on this tour Kjetil brought along Alex from Gnod on bass and his partner Karin Park on synths and electronics, besides a drummer and keyboard player who I couldn’t identify. When they played ‘Faustus’ it was great to see the whole band repeatedly singing the line “I Will Remember To Not Say A Word” during the second half of the song. Also in the set list were a couple of older songs, such as ‘Ha-Satan Deofol’, Throwing Rocks At The Devil, ‘Attabal’s Dream’, ‘Blood On The Poet’, and ‘The Horns Of The Devil Grow’ from their self-titled sixth album and ‘Fillip the Pudend, Tongue the Womb’ from the I Modi release.

Årabrot was very impressive and perhaps a lot heavier than what I was expecting from knowing their records quite well. The United States have produced the Melvins, Europe has Årabrot. And the lucky people going to Temples Fest this year will be able to see them both on the same bill. How exciting would that be!

Årabrot

Årabrot