K! Editor Paul Brannigan savours the flavours of the South By South West music festival.
FRIDAY, MARCH 15
Today Kerrang! is hosting our first ever showcase event at SXSW. On the bill we've got FURTHEST DRIVE HOME, PEOPLE IN PLANES, IN CASE OF FIRE and THE ANSWER. Until yesterday we thought we had THE BLACKOUT too, but sadly they couldn't be with us. So today is spent making some frantic phone calls to see what we can do about that missing fifth band. By noon we've struck gold. ENTER SHIKARI, who have their own gig at 3pm today, have very kindly agreed to play our show too. Result!
Buoyed by this news, we head off to see SLAVES TO GRAVITY at the Blender Bar rooftop. The London quartet's debut album Scatter The Crows brilliantly channels the down-tuned, melodic grunge stylings of Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden and they're a band you could easily imagine cleaning up Stateside if radio embraces their songs. With a noon start, there's a sparse crowd checking out the band's second US show, but the band strut and swagger like they're headlining a stadium, with frontman Tommy Gleeson already looking and sounding every inch the rock god. Having secured a deal with the same management team that handle Aiden and Madina Lake in the US, this band will fly in 2008.
Over to Latitude 30 next to check out my fellow countrymen IN CASE OF FIRE and THE ANSWER at the Northern Ireland Music showcase. Back in December I singled out ICOF as the best unsigned band in Britain: they still are...though they'll be putting their signatures to a major label deal before the month is out. This afternoon they're in er, incendiary form, blasting through a short set which evokes comparisons to Muse at their heaviest. Brothers Steven and Colin Robinson - on guitar/vocals and drums respectively - have been playing together in bands for years and the rhythmic interplay between the two and bassist Mark Williamson is staggering to behold.
Next up are THE ANSWER. Vocalist Cormac Neeson hails from my hometown (Newcastle, Co. Down) and so before their set he tells me he was talking to my mum and dad at a wedding last week. Small world, etc,. Anyways, the Downpatrick quartet are currently unsigned in the US, but that situation looks set to change very soon as their newest set of demos have all the big US labels drooling. Today they exhibit the cocksure confidence of a band who know their time is coming. Soon. Songs like Preachin' and Under The Sky are terrific slabs of fat assed boogie and in new songs Revolutions and Comfort Zone (working titles, at present) the boys have anthems-in-waiting which would be out of place on Led Zeppelin II.
Both The Answer and In Case Of Fire will return to this same venue in the early evening for the Kerrang! showcase. For a review of that, check out Kerrang! magazine, on sale from March 26. But trust me, it was a riot.
Read Part Four.
