Live Review: Pop Will Eat Itself, Dogmachine, MZO!

The last time UK noise merchants Pop Will Eat Itself played a club show in Brisbane it was 1992 at long-defunct city venue Transformers and they were sandwiched between legendary outfit Hoodoo Gurus and a young, unknown trio called You Am I on one of the great rock bills in recent memory.

This time they’re headlining and surrounding themselves with bands cut from their more industrial-tinged cloth, in the shape of veteran locals MZO! (nee Monster Zoku Onsomb) and Dogmachine. The former are a visual extravaganza with weird costumes, flashy lights and glitchy sounds over big industrial bursts – the fun, dancy end of tonight’s spectrum – while the latter are more somber and goth-inspired, swathing the room in darkness and foreboding intensity for the duration. Combined they set the tone perfectly and their presence reminds that the depth and diversity of our local scene is no new phenomenon.

Sartorially the packed crowd are clad like the last twenty-odd years never happened, and a roar erupts as Pop Will Eat Itself burst into welcome ditty Back 2 Business before playing an ace early with the irrepressible Wise Up! Sucker, which sends the throng into a frenzy of delight. Visually the absence of taller co-frontman Clint Mansell makes things slightly incongruous at first, but replacement Mary Byker does a reverential job trading jibes and lines with sole-remaining member Graham Crabb, and bassist Davey Bennett sports Mansell’s grebo look almost like a tip of the dreads.

The driving Chaos & Mayhem spears into the dance-heavy Everything’s Cool, before Byker affably offers, “We are PWEI and we’ve come to fuck shit up” and the place erupts again as they bash into Dance Of The Mad. Their sound was never beholden to any time so hasn’t dated badly, indeed their mix of live instrumentation with pre-recorded beats and triggered samples seems totally current, nonetheless it’s the nostalgia factor of tunes such as the acerbic R.S.V.P. and the still-vital Can You Dig It? with its stream of pop culture shout-outs which really hits home hard. Anti-racist ode Ich Bin Ein Auslander segues into the fun and affirming Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies! – in the process showing the divergent moods of PWEI – and the set finishes with the self-referencing Radio PWEI and powerful recent track Oldskool Cool. There’s still petrol in that tank, however, and after a hit-laden encore of Preaching To The Perverted and catchy-as-fuck Def Con One the five-piece don Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks and return to lay waste to the place with the rampaging Their Law. Tonight PWEI remind that they’re far more than a stream of inspiring slogans – there’s substance to this pioneering outfit, even decades after the fact.