Live Review: Belgrado, Nerve Quakes, Territory, Cold Meat, Roundup Weedkiller

Saturday night saw Barcelona-based post-punk act Belgrado touch down for their first Australian tour. It has been a whirlwind run for the band on the back of their highly-regarded third album Obraz, with stops in North and South America, Europe and Japan as well as South East Asia. No Patience Records assembled an interesting selection of local bands, with a bill that heavily favoured acts with frontwomen and complementing the dark four-piece.

Up first was Roundup Weedkiller; incredibly, this support slot was only their second show. Fronted by Claire Hodgson of The Shakeys/RTRFM's Burn The Airwaves and backed by some well-known local musicians, this is a band whose name gives the middle finger to Monsanto while claiming, "Fuck copyright and intellectual property, and fuck giving gardeners kidney cancer". The four-piece played an interesting set, albeit one that zig-zagged from punk to crust to doom. It definitely felt like a jam session, just with a hundred-or-so people watching.

Cold Meat were up next in the last show before their 7" launch next week at 208 Maylands. These guys do three-chord punk and they do it well. Fast songs, aggressive delivery and heaps of energy. Unfortunately, the crowd was still warming up for the evening and really didn't start to get amped-up until the next act took to the stage.

Territory felt like an odd choice, with a sound that seemed a little out of place for the evening. However, this didn't matter to the crowd who slammed along, amped by their D-beat sound. A few guys even tried, unsuccessfully, to get a circle-pit started.

The final support for the evening was one of Perth's best current acts. Nerve Quakes play dark, '80s-inspired synth-pop with basslines that Peter Hook would be proud off. These guys were definitely the right choice to lead into the headliner, with a sound that complemented the main act.

Belgrado are fronted by Patrycja Proniewska who delivered vocals sung in a mixture of English and her native Polish. It was 40 minutes of uninterrupted dub-inspired punk. It would be easy to make comparisons to Savages, another act that are bringing a post-punk revival to the masses, but Belgrado are more aggressive, less catchy. Theirs is a classic-'80s, post-punk sound; guitars, bass and drums. No synth, no samples, just the four members delivering haunting songs one after the other. You could definitely see their influences, with flashes of Siouxsie & The Banshees, early Killing Joke and deathrock acts like Christian Death.

Proniewska cut a striking figure; she had the permanent look of a woman possessed, staring wide-eyed, unblinking into the crowd. One could almost believe she was Ian Curtis reincarnated (although the razor cut, bleached blonde bob is a look he probably couldn't have pulled off). It was a set that passed all too quickly, with a brief encore, where the crowd went from shouting "one more song" to "three more songs", which Belgrado happily delivered.