Live Review: Sleep, Mt Mountain, Puck

Spearheading a muscular support line-up, recent WAM Best Metal/Heavy Act, Puck surely won’t be playing this far down the bill too much in the future.

It’s been an inspiring rise, but not an entirely surprising one given how tight and finished their sound is. An excellent display of effective simplicity, the only disappointment was that the nihilistic rant of Tired ended their night at 8.40pm to accommodate a 90-minute Sleep set.

Another recent WAM award winner, Mt Mountain are a tricky mob to pin down.

A mysterious, dare it be said, aloof quintet who trade in brooding atmospherics,  they ransacked their recent Omed release as studious-looking lead man Stephen Bailey hunched and half-crooned, half-murmured over a vintage electronic organ. With a fine ear for anxious timbres, Mt Mountain have an edge that ought to earn them a call from David Lynch next time he needs to soundtrack another nervy scene.

Hey dance fans, I hear you say that dubstep is ‘heavy.’ How adorable. No disrespect ‘n’ all, but it would be a Herculean challenge for any beatsmith to emulate the sheer depth of sound that revered stoner-metal originators Sleep conjure.

Oozing impossibly low tones (no doubt the product of some radical alternate tuning) the bass of the impressively built Al Cisneros throbbed cavernously through the taut opening. With the doors closed, a packed Bakery was living up to its name as a dense, claustrophobic heat took hold with mind-bending effects. Under the canabbinoid green light and heady glasshouse conditions, the long, grizzly locks and wild facial hair of guitarist Matt Pike and Cisneros glowed like psychedelic vegetation as they strode with mammoth-like steps through a Holy Mountain heavy set.

As mighty as Sleep are, tonight’s performance was not entirely flawless. Pike struggled for timing and seemingly lost his way in the opening few numbers. Despite these slips, Sleep recovered their footing and with accumulating momentum built up an overbearing flood of reverb as Cisneros, despite having the physiognomy of a well-fed bear, chanted through Dragonaut like a parched vulture. Closing almost inevitably with an Interstellar-size tidal wall of drone and static – and having covered most of their catalogue as a three-piece – when Sleep finally released us from their crushing grasp, it felt like a giant THC cloud had been lifted.