Dopethrone – Underworld – 25-06-2014 | Live Review

Credit: Graham Berry

After we unfortunately missed out on most of The Day Of Locusts’s set, Oxford based sludge/doom quartet Undersmile are second to grace the stage. But don’t let the summer dresses donned by guitarists/vocalists Taz Corona-Brown and Hel Sterne fool you into expecting quaint ditties. What they throw out is a captivating yet abrasive mix of drone and sludge. Those who don’t immediately bolt for the bar (idiots, all of them) are left in a trance like state, while the thick, weighty chords, ritualistic drums and warm bass drag you into a mire of aching fuzz. Despite some minor technical difficulties, the band plow on, with their droning vocal harmonies and bleak tones reminiscent of a pagan ritual to a goddess of  drowning in tar.

Credit: Graham Berry

Next up are London’s own riffmongers GURT. Touring off the back of their latest release, debut album ‘Horrendosaurus’, they proceed to trample the audience with savage riff after savage riff. ‘Sludgepuppies’ smashes up the tempo and gets the typically stoic London crowd moving, the title track is filthy and groovy in equal measure. Vocalist Gareth Kelly is phenomenal, snarling, shrieking and rasping his way through the set effortlessly before quipping about stealing riffs from the theme tune to ‘This Is Your Life’. The jazzy, slightly dissonant start to ‘Eve’s Droppings’ is like a 70’s low-rent sitcom sound track played backwards on vinyl, and the set/album closing (and masterfully elongated) duo of the chugging ‘Exscriptus Spiritus’ and the gradual wind down of ‘Spiced Doom’ are just epic. Keep a close eye on these chaps, because they’re the next Iron Monkey.

Credit: Graham Berry

Canucks Dopethrone are exactly what you’d expect from a band named after Electric Wizard’s magnum opus. Frontman Vincent Houde jokes that ‘this song isn’t actually about drugs’ before admitting that ‘of course it’s about drugs’. Their sound isn’t quite the drawn out stoner/doom of their namesake, more the uptempo, savage sludge riffing of Weedeater, with Houde’s vocals bearing a distinct resemblance to the demonic heightened rasp of Dixie Collins. Riffs pile on top of riffs, and the trio are exceptionally tight and focused, hurtling through jam after jam with both breakneck pace and crushing lethargy in equal measure.

Credit: Graham Berry

Houde is wide-eyed and smiling furiously throughout, and GURT-merch wearing drummer (and appropriately named) Big Borman pulls the absolute best drum faces you will ever see as he smashes the daylights out of his kit. Despite the biting riffage there’s an air of good-times surrounding the band that is absolutely infectious. Sadly they don’t seem to be as warmly received as the preceding hometown heroes, with a few punters heading off to catch an early tube, doing the men from the Great White North a disservice. They execute their sludge-barrage with passion and conviction, and it’s a hell of a sight to behold.

After tonight, it’s official. The sludge revival is here and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.