Live Review: Twelve Foot Ninja, Ecca Vandal, Figures

It is still 30 degrees when Melbourne's Figures hit the stage at 9pm and, boy, do they fire up and increase the temperature in the room even more with their blistering brand of hot and heavy alternative rock. While their set obviously leans heavily on their recently released, eponymous EP (including the superb Emoticonic), the band does treat the crowd to a brand new tune to close their set and what a joy it is! This track opens with an attention-grabbing, fishtailing guitar effect that explodes into a titanic groove and throat-splitting scream from frontman Mark Tronson. There's also plenty of melody throughout, however, and this is fast becoming their acclaimed trademark: pounding heaviness with inspirational melody over the top. This scribe would love to hear them bring that melody out even more in a live setting with the addition of some soaring vocal harmonies. This band display incredible promise and are an ideal opener on this night.

Ecca Vandal brings her hyperactive electro punk-pop to the Corner and maintains the fire started and stoked by Figures. The crowd definitely warms to her as she does to the task across the course of the set (after a slightly unconvincing start). Think Paramore or No Doubt on steroids. A little more depth, variation and dynamics in the vocal department would definitely not go astray, although this is punk music where the attitude and swagger take precedence over technique. Overall, Vandal and her band provide a scorching support set on a steamy night.

The sheer exuberance in the anticipation from the crowd for Twelve Foot Ninja's set is truly something to behold. This band has lifted itself from being an excellent band on the local scene to a truly world class rock outfit over the last four to five years and they receive a godlike reception from the steaming, heaving capacity crowd tonight.

A Twelve Foot Ninja show has also almost become a sexual experience these days, a 'most fun you can have with your clothes on' type of occasion. For starters, their music is dead sexy and, on this evening, everyone is hot (although far from bothered), sweaty and wearing fewer clothes. The bouncers at the photography-pit barrier squirt copious amounts of very welcome ice-cold water from bottles of Mt Franklin over the crowd to keep us cool, so everyone is wet.

So, accordingly, the band deliver musical orgasm after musical orgasm from a setlist that is just about perfect. Opening with the pure intensity of Collateral, arguably the best cut from their latest Outlier album, we are treated to something from all four of their major releases, climaxing with blistering versions of Kingdom, Coming for You, One Hand Killing and new single Sick, and the release from the crowd is monumental. One of the reasons this band's music works so beautifully is that, no matter how funky, how jazzy or how, err, reggae-y they get, you know there is a tsunami of powerhouse rock coming somewhere around the corner for the adoring crowd to lose their shit to. Another reason is the almost-impossibly catastrophic bass sound they generate, which threatens to happily crush everything in its path.

We have not seen crowd reaction and participation for a band in the Aussie alt-rock scene like this since Mammal were at their peak in the late 2000s. A Twelve Foot Ninja show is one helluva way to start the gig-going year.