The Peep TempelIt’s not often that you get your socks blown off by the opening band, but tonight local duo Walken tear early-comers a new one with their massive, brash version of firebrand rock’n’roll. Frontman Matt Jamez punishes his pedals as he concocts a noise to equal his massive stature while Joe Daley positively demolishes his kit, the pair reminiscent of US two-piece Local H in their ‘90s heyday (although that pair used a bassist playing live) filtered though a local lens of bands such as DZ and Soho. Tunes like My Friends Are Machines and Float are huge and tuneful with hooks to burn – unconventional, but one to keep an eye on.
Fellow Brisbanites Tape/Off have undertaken a gradual sonic transformation in recent times and the evolution has paid handsome dividends, their slacker indie of yore having mutated into rich cinematic soundscapes that sound absolutely fantastic in the live realm. Frontman Nathan Pickels has ratcheted up the intensity but everything seems uncontrived and completely apposite, the dense diatribes and fraught wig-outs augmenting their latent melody and frantic chops. Numbers like Different Order seem immense and powerful, and it’s a blast watching a band have fun themselves as they take things to the next level.
Finally it’s Melbourne trio The Peep Tempel’s turn to step up to the plate and they take no prisoners from the get-go, their primal music energetic and scabrous in equal doses. The floor before them turns into a heaving mass of dancing, grinning flesh as they start punishing the room with their thick as thieves gang mentality and rabblerousing rock. Frontman Blake Scott dominates the vista with his caustic worldview and scathing lyrics, but he’s backed superbly by his rhythm section of Steven Carter (drums) and Stewart Rayner (bass) who lay down the solid base from which he launches his vicious excursions. Scott spits the lyrics to songs like Dark Beach like a man possessed, the air filled with a sinister foreboding as the gnarled narratives of lives gone off-track bounce around the dark corners of the venue. Getting’ On By is the signal for the throng up front to ratchet things up another level and the band seems to feed further off the furore, so by the time they work though Vicki The Butcher and Big Fish and onto bona fide banger Carol the entire place loses their collective shit in an ecstatic celebration of rock’s power. The energy that has snowballed remains for the duration, to the point that when Scott hurls himself into the crowd to surf around the room it seems perfectly natural because the division between crowd and band was eroded long ago. Ferocious and fun, a winning combination.
