Sonic Boom Six, Camden Underworld
It’s refreshing to hear young bands that aren’t that polished or plastic nowadays, and THE OUTER LIMITS are one of those bands that, given a year or so, could well have a sizeable and much-deserved buzz about them. Veering between skacore and flat-out punk rock, they brought a youthful exuberance that not only covers the cracks in their performance, but adds to it. It’s never going to be easy playing on a bill with t’Safe and t’Boom but they acquitted themselves well by throwing themselves into proceedings with admirable energy at the beginning but seemed to trail off towards the close of the set. One thing’s certain though – they displayed enough good tunes and solid musicianship to suggest that once they get a bit more gig-hardened and cohere their sound, they could just turn into a very fine young band.
I missed the next band, but you couldn’t have stopped me from seeing FAILSAFE if you’d taped a picture of Pete Wentz’s face to my head and flung a horde of eyeliner-drenched children at me. And what a performance the young Preston mob put in – full of energy and passion, along with the simply thrilling fact that their songs are more inspiring and exciting than, well, 99% of everything else in the world. Showing the admirable ability to appear both confident and humble at the same time, in Jim they have a frontman who can not only connect with the audience but sing bloody well at the same time, while behind him the band remain tight (and I mean scary tight) enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best the UK and the US have to offer at the moment. Failsafe are an astoundingly good live band, because they play like they know if you took their instruments away from them, they’d have nothing left in the world. And that’s the mark of true quality.
London Transport prevented me from seeing all of SONIC BOOM SIX’s set, but the eight or so songs that I was lucky enough to witness only confirmed their status as the most utterly exciting band around right now. What other punk band could lay down their guitars and bounce around like the Beastie Boys? What other hip-hop crew could drop in lyrics about “jogging on the spot” and have the credibility and honesty to back it up? SB6 are in a league of their own, and now they’ve finally come to terms with their status as a four-piece they can slap ‘Blood For Oil’ three songs in because they have newer anthems-in-waiting. The addition of a sax instead of a melodica on ‘Northern Skies’ is an inspired move, as t’Boom create swirls of purple noise that could easily match anything Sublime came up with while lurking under the surface is the urgent energy of ‘Rape of Punk To Come’ and the intelligent attack of “People Ack Like They Don’t Know.” Once they start ripping it up on the bigger stages they deserve and have earned, SB6 will go stratospheric.
Ben
I didn’t do ratings for the gig because summing up a band's live performance in a single number seems faintly ridiculous in this case. But that’s just me.
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