Ouch My Face played a cracking spot between Mariachi El Bronx and The Bronx at Billboard on the Californian tourists' 2009 tour. During the local three-piece's set, Matt Caughthran and his Bronx buddies could be seen behind the glass upstairs, sinking a few beers and excitedly taking in the madness onstage. Four years on and Ouch My Face still sport what has to be one of the most precise rhythm sections around Melbourne. The feel of their music is the same – all start-stoppy guitars and yelly vocals, kind of somewhere between My Disco's beefy metronome and Useless Children's gruffness – but somehow on this occasion they lack spark. It's difficult to fault any of the constituent parts, especially the drumming of Ben Wundersitz, which is gargantuan. But razorblade vocals carving into walls of rhythmic noise has been their shtick for five years now, it'd be super to see them take it somewhere a little more experimental.
Looking forward from 2012, this year always felt like it'd been earmarked as the year of Batpiss, and so far it has been. The Tote's own seemingly permanent resident three-piece finally got their collective shit together and squeezed out an album Nuclear Winter, which was recorded at the Tote by Tom Lyngcoln and mastered by Mikey Young, which more than stacks up to their growing reputation as a live act. Triple R's Breakfasters team have been belting the band's tunes out every other day and they've been playing about 19 shows a week for months now – slowly spreading their glowering joylessness around town.
To see Batpiss outside of their Tote surrounds (they must've been living in the ceiling cavity for a while) is a bit weird, and the crowd has thinned significantly since the supports, but they own their headline spot. There's three songs without a breath before the band even say 'g'day', but from here the fast/slow dynamic is used to maximum effect – one minute they're all bogged down in morosity and the next they're up and slapping the cunt world in its ugly face. It's the songs during which bassist Thomy Sloane (listed as Thomy Cones on their Facebook page) chimes in to fill out Paul Pirie's ample growl that really blow up in the relatively tiny Gasometer bandroom. Burn Below fits this mould, enticing a few munters to shove each other about, and the extended wind-down fake-out makes the ballistic ending all the more sweet.
