80s Matchbox B-line Disaster – Live Lounge Durham, UK 23/10/2010
“One of the finest bands this country has ever produced. Fact.”
If Noel Fielding says it, believe.
Eighties Matchbox B-line Disaster fill you with both genuine delight and disgust, and the lack of sensationalization in the press preserves their dark, underground package, even with 11 years in the music business bag. Guy McKnight is everything missing from modern rock and roll – the sex, the danger, the insanity. I was fortunate to catch The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster playing in Durham this year and already had a few pre-acquired mind-sets of the band’s performances as of late: they’d gone off the boil a bit; they weren’t on form…bloody gossipers.
Eighties Matchbox burst onto stage with Morning Has Broken, and the bats in my stomach went insane. (Goths don’t get butterflies, y’see.) The grimey psychedelic riffs and Guy McKnight’s rampant crooning were infectious, spurring twisted swing dancing from couples in the audience; the old cinema venue’s walls hadn’t seen anything like it. Sporting a Victorian patterned shirt tucked into VERY tight dress trousers, McKnight spent a lot of the performance in the crowd or on the speakers. An intense performer demanding a lot of attention, he will not let you down.
Highlight of the set, without a doubt, was Celebrate Your Mother (but please don’t tell your father, cause I’ll fuck him as well), with both guitarists, Dominic and Tristan, mere blurs from rottenly fiendish axe-thrashing. They are a sound all to their own, but TEMBLD are definitely fertilised with the same musical sperm as primal rockabilly garage masters, the Cramps. I never did get to see the Cramps, but, I am going to make a rather impertinent comment all the same: I prefer McKnight to Lux Interior.
Did I just sin? Are the psycho-gods going to give me the Crusher? Are the almighty Lordabillies gunna throw me down the stairs, naked?
I can hardly stand it.
The Eighties boys newest album, ‘Blood and Fire’, was released in May this year, totally eclectic, and possibly even darker than their classic debut album from 2002, Horse Of The Dog. It follows the most recent single, Love Turns To Hate: a concoction of barbaric guitar licks, screeches of chaos, beats so heavy your heart gives them the job, and those vampish vocals, echoing gothic-harpers Nick Cave and Andrew Eldritch. You’re on the centre island of a Formula One race and it’s raining bombs, that kinda thing.
Don’t take my word for it, check out the latest track on the band’s myspace here.