Kerrang! invades Texas! (Part Four)

K! Editor Paul Brannigan savours the flavours of the South By South West music festival.

Following the excesses of Friday night/Saturday morning, it's early afternoon before we can drag our carcasses to see anyone. When we do, we opt to go to a BBQ at the Mean Eyed Cat - a fabulous little old style Texan bar/shack 10 minutes out of town - hosted by Kerrang! Editor-In-Chief/Mojo magazine 'Ead 'Itter Phil Alexander.

Here's a word to the wise: next time you're hungover there are more soothing bands to listen to than FUCK BUTTONS. Before they play, the Bristol duo set a baffling array of electronic gadgetry - keyboards, effects pedals, a kids Fisher Price tape recorder, a Game Boy - on a table on the stage. If that has the assembled industry folk scratching their heads then the 30 minutes that follows has most of them fleeing from the venue. Like an unholy amalgam of Suicide and Atari Teenage Riot, the Bristol duo layer pulsing electronic noise into painfully intense sheets of sound, squawking and shrieking over the top like Mike Patton in a dentist's chair. Long before the end of their set there's smoke pouring out of the PA speakers. Not metal, but fuck me, they're heavy.

Pausing for a half hour to sample the fabulous rock 'n' soul of Boston's Eli 'Paperboy' Reed - think Rocket From the Crypt with the distortion stripped away and the charm turned up to 10 - we head back into town for the hotly tipped DEAD CONFEDERATE. The band supported fellow Athens, Georgia band REM on Wednesday night, and by the end of SXSW they're one of the festival's buzz bands. It's easy to see the attraction: the quartet's sound combines elements of Smashing Pumpkins' dynamism and Neil Young's anthemic proto-grunge roar and even in the rather sedate confines of The Belmont's courtyard, their fuzzy din gets heads a-noddin' and fists a-raisin'.

Next up on the same stage are SLEEPERCAR, a rootsy, alt-country side-project for ex-At The Drive-In/current Sparta guitarist Jim Ward, similar in vein to Wilco. Ward seems to be having a good time, but post-hardcore fans should look elsewhere for thrills.

My Personal SXSW ends with A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS. The trio from Brooklyn, NYC look terrifying - that bassist is surely on Wanted posters in at least 30 States - and sound only marginally more approachable, coming across like Suicide fucking with Therapy?'s cover of Joy Division's Isolation. And they are quite brilliant. At the end of their 30 minute set, the frontman kicks the volume switch up to 666, white noise erupts from the speakers and every last person watching immediately plunges their fingers into their ears lest they start leaking brain matter. Only then does the guitar-wielding sadist, mute, moody and menacing throughout, allow himself the slightest hint of a grin. Watching another band after this is simply inconceivable.

Thank you Texas, and goodnight.

See y'all next year.