Usually, The Sugarmill in Stoke is full of life on a Saturday night, with music fans flocking to see local bands doing what they do best to celebrate the weekend. However, due to a combination of the gig’s clash with Stoke 2012 Live, which saw a host of chart-topping megastars perform live in the city, and the failure of some of the Sugarmill concert’s performers in captivating the crowd, the gig was sadly disappointing overall.
To begin, Sugarmill first-timers Hex provided a fantastic start to the show, and the evening looked optimistic despite a sparse audience. Their note-perfect covers of well-known hits like Jet’s ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ and Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ went down a storm, and the enthusiastic audience gradually increased in number and in energy throughout their set. The band had a strong stage presence, casually interacting with the crowd throughout, and their confidence and energy shone through. Their ‘70s/’80s metal-inspired sound and sense of fun meant that the audience clapped and sang along with gusto and Hex left the stage to rapturous applause.
However, the show went downhill from here, sadly, with Last Man Standing (see left). Musically, they couldn’t be faulted, with soaring vocals, extremely technical guitar work and a classic NWOBHM*-esque sound. The issue came with their stage presence. Where Hex appeared to be having a whale of a time onstage, Last Man Standing looked lethargic and shy throughout, as if playing in a room on their own. Indeed, they nearly ended up achieving this result – as their set went on, the crowd dispersed more and more. The band only seemed to truly let go and become comfortable onstage with the last song of their set, where we finally saw movement and enjoyment on the faces of the 5-piece, but it was too little too late – by that point, they’d already lost most of the audience drawn by Hex, and failed to warm the crowd up for Nameless.
On the other hand, Nameless (see right) performed a great set, both musically and regarding crowd interaction. However, because of the destruction of momentum caused by Last Man Standing, they played to around 40 people in a venue with a capacity of 400, and these few people most definitely weren’t ready to rock. In terms of music, the band displayed Metallica-style vocals, and more NWOBHM and Thrash Metal influenced distorted guitars, basslines and drum beats. The hyper-active frontman seemed the embodiment of the ‘rock n’ roll attitude’ that Hex utilised and that Last Man Standing failed to express, with one-liners like “We’re Nameless and we’ve already broke the mic. Let’s see you clapping, you’ve all got hands!” entertaining the audience throughout. The lead guitarist even ran into the audience and performed a solo with his guitar around someone’s neck, in an attempt to turn the show around and win back the crowd! If I were to review Nameless’ set in terms of their performance only therefore, and filtered out the lack of atmosphere brought about by the lack of an enthusiastic audience, it’d be safe to say that Nameless gave it their all, and on any other night the gig would’ve been an immense success.
Overall, Hex and Nameless performed outstanding sets, marred only by the lack of audience and apathetic atmosphere in the venue on that particular night. I definitely recommend seeing the two acts live again, as they deserved a much better reception than they were given at this gig. Last Man Standing had a lot of room for improvement in terms of the entertainment quality of their live concerts, but if it’s just good, honest rock music that you’re looking for, then they might be worth a watch too.
PsyD
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Check out Nameless at:
Hex at:
And I couldn’t find a website for Last Man Standing (leave a comment if you know the address of their official website and I’ll happily add it to here), but check them out anyway if you see them around in any of your local music venues!
Coming up on Superunknown:
- This weekend I’ll post the first entry in a new feature ‘Alive in the Superunknown’ where I review a new jam or classic hit weekly. This week: Prowler by Iron Maiden
- After writing the below footnote, I’ve also decided to produce a blog post on the NWOBHM* movement (as a lifelong Iron Maiden fan, it’s something which has always interested me), so you can expect that sometime in June or early July!
*NWOBHM stands for New Wave of British Heavy Metal – a rock music sensation in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, before the advent of glam rock and nu-metal.
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