Bands: Heights, Polar
Venue: The Peel, Kingston
Date: 22nd March 2012
There is something of a fashion for bands to playback albums in their entirety at the moment, Slayer, Mastodon, Glassjaw and even Metallica are playing discs from their back catalogue wholesale this summer and to that prestigious list you can add… err, Heights. It would be wrong to say that it is arrogant to tout playing your debut record in a format usually reserved for bona fide classics but one wonders how much interest there is in seeing Dead Ends, an album which is barely 9 months old, being performed front to back.
Before that question can be answered though we are treated to a lithe and punishing performance from Guildford quintet Polar. The nice girl I meet on the way to the Peel tells me that ‘Polar hate being called a hardcore band’ – which if true seems odd, especially when you consider that they clearly are a hardcore band. A very good hardcore band. They play hard and fast like good bands of this ilk should and coax an initially reticent crowd into some solid mosh action as their set wears on. There are moments of American Nightmare-ish melody to them but more crucially a palpable sense of honesty and meaning tonight as they smash through tracks from their forthcoming first album. Their set also serves as a reminder of just how far music of this sort has come as they announce that their new single (hardcore bands release singles now?!) will receive its début on Radio 1 shortly. It wasn’t so long ago that bands that sounded not very dissimilar to this were limited to the underground – the UK hardcore scene continues to amaze with its capacity for gaining increasingly mainstream popularity.
It is then Heights turn to take the stage in front of a noticeably more packed dance floor than their supports enjoyed. Evidently people DO want to hear this album, a point proven in spades when the first notes of ‘We Live Alone’ ring out and the place goes what is known in the trade as ‘batshit mental’. There is little doubt that Dead Ends is an album possessed of some powerful moments but it is also guilty of being a little formulaic in its execution and this is magnified when the record is relayed verbatim in a live environment. On stage they lack the slickness of Polar something that is no doubt in part due to playing a setlist which is decidedly out of the ordinary. Nevertheless when they hit their stride as they do with Dead Ends’ title track there is an abrasive desperation to them which is quite something to behold. Ironically they almost feel more hampered by the rigidity of having to play the album in its tracklist order tonight but give a solid if relatively unspectacular showing of what they are about and the head of steam they have built up since it was released. What this show certainly does cement is that at their best Heights are capable of real brilliance and if they keep working and distilling their sound they could be on to something very special indeed – we look forward to the playback of album two.
