Live Review: Toxicon, Nucleust, Beyond Contempt, Primitive, The Orphan

Melbourne band The Orphan open this night at Evelyn Hotel with their gnarly, nasty punk and hardcore sound and posturing.

Their songs are short and savage, and their live show veritably drips with sweat, spit and grit. What The Orphan lack in finesse they more than make up for with authentic angst and their discordant, frenetic 30-minute opening set is an angry fist to the face with their frontman genuinely surprised that people applaud their exertion.

Primitive are pretty well-named. Their sound harks back strongly to old-school hard rock and metal, but just with more harsh, guttural and raspy vocals over the top. Their set is replete with several big, over-the-top, stadium-rock moments that the steadily growing crowd eat up. Primitive love their Status Quo-style shuffles, too. The night is in full swing now.

But Beyond Contempt kill the vibe a little. Their brand of punky, thrashy hard rock is a little lacking in development and the crowd thins noticeably. They try very hard and one cannot fault their commitment to the cause of violent, raucous rock'n'roll, but more time spent in the rehearsal room and a bit of a rethink on their direction may be appropriate for this band.

Perth's Nucleust should be playing to a packed-out room; they are a burgeoning progressive-metal act with thrash influences and a strong need to experiment with different styles, instrumentation and textures. Their use of samples is far from overdone, but adds real interest to the overall mix. Nucleust's set this night is razor-sharp, complex and brutally in your face with Shannon Marston's throat-splitting vocals at once incredibly harsh and extremely enjoyable. While on the singing side of things, the vocal interplay between Marston and guitarist/backing singer Max Palizban is a real highlight, as they trade off cleans and uncleans with aplomb.

Viewed as a whole, the Nucleust live experience is both intense and interesting.

Toxicon are a strange concoction. You can see traces of quite disparate elements in their sound: a touch of thrash, a smidgeon of old-school hard rock and metal, a little prog and even a pinch of Slipknot here and there. As a cold, black-and-white description on the page/screen, all that possibly shouldn't work. But it does and their fans appreciate it no end.

Throw in very extroverted live performances, especially from frontman Wayne Clarris, and you have yourself a heady mix. Toxicon's set this night is compelling and fun.