SleepIf you ever find yourself driving through central Australia and getting bored of listening to Kyuss, The Devil Rides Out is just the ticket. The Perth natives leapt on stage and offered a performance that sounded like they were still infused with the dirt they picked up off the Sturt highway on their way to Sydney. Offering up a raw, high-octane blast of bluesy stoner rock, The Devil Rides Out proved the perfect entrée for this doom-laden sonic feast.
Summonus are always fun and this show was no exception. The riffs were big, the fuzz enveloped all and if you closed your eyes and listened carefully you could visualise Electric Wizard violating Celtic Frost while Black Sabbath looked on with wry amusement. It's not the most pleasant of thoughts but then again Summonus churn out ugly music for ugly people.
It was Sunday, overcast and cold and the headliners were a trio who had come out of retirement to churn out doom paeans that could last for up to an hour. I thought the crowd would be sparse – I couldn't have been more wrong. When Sleep strode onto stage and Matt Pike started ringing out the sledgehammer opening to the mammoth Dopesmoker, Manning Bar was bursting to the seams with excited punters. Sure, stoners can't be bothered getting out of bed in the morning to go to work – but give them the chance to hear the likes of Holy Mountain, Sonic Titan and From Beyond at ear-splitting levels and suddenly punctuality is a most sacred quality. Listening to this trio was like being crushed into the ground by a slow-moving concrete slab – unrelenting waves of riffage and half-paced groove just pummelled cranium after cranium into dust. Sleep doesn't play very often and for those in the audience who have been worshipping the pioneering trio since the early '90s this was clearly a religious experience. For the rest of us it was yet further proof that when you have the right riffs nothing else matters.
