Live Review: Twelve Foot Ninja, Caligula’s Horse, I Built The Sky

The Aussie heavy, progressive and alternative rock scene has an uncanny knack for formulating line-ups and tour packages that look a little left of centre from the outset but wind up working an absolute treat in practice, and tonight is no exception. Plus, an all-Aussie heavy line-up selling out a 1000-odd capacity venue is cause for celebration.

Providing a very able-bodied opening is Melbourne instrumental prog-rock act I Built The Sky. One of the beauties of this band is that both its relatively simple rhythmic foundation (in comparison to other progressive instrumental acts anyway) and the fact that it is a stripped-down three-piece, allowing all instruments and the compositions themselves to breath. This, in turn, allows the band’s showpiece, the spectacular guitar histrionics of main man Rohan Stephenson to truly shine and soar over the top. Stephenson is not overly fussed about ultra-intricate technicalities, he just likes to get up and wail, and wail he does this night, although in a ridiculously skilful manner. And the twin-barrelled, turbo-charged rhythm section locks in like clenched fist. I Built The Sky’s 30-minute set whizzes by too quickly and receives a rousing reception.

Caligula’s Horse’s dynamic music very much belongs in the bigger room in front of the packed-out crowd. A 40-minute first support slot this night necessitates a more streamlined set, and they focus more closely on their latest two records, which means no Dark Hair Down or The City Has No Empathy. But that’s okay, when virtually every tune this band has done is an iconic slice of uber-melodic progressive rock heaven. We do get fabulous tracks like Dream The Dead, Rust and the fabulous Songs For No One. We also get wunderkind Sam Vallen’s blistering, scintillating lead guitar work.

Tonight, frontman Jim Grey is in fine fettle, vocally, the band is sharp as a brand new axe and the drums are enormous. Like the night’s opener, the C-Horse’s set left us wanting more.

The mighty Twelve Foot Ninja come on to a bizarre funked-up version of Metallica’s Master Of Puppets. No matter how many times this scribe listens to or sees this band live, the utterly seamless manner in which they switch up and down from pounding, groove-based rock and metal to funk, to ska, to pop and plenty in between never ceases to astound. Tonight they thunder through an epic set of Ninja favourites from their now-illustrious back-catalogue, including Mother Sky, Kingdom, Invincible, Sick and plenty more. They even pull out a very Ninja-fied 30-second version of Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know.

Highlight amongst highlights is Collateral from their last record, 2016’s Outlier, which rattles the very foundations of the earth itself. However, virtually every tune this bad plays is iconic, and their 90 minutes set this night is a deeply satisfying celebration of this band’s music and live show before they put the Monsoon tour to bed and bunker down to work on new material.

It isn’t the hottest night of the Melbourne summer so far, but all three bands steam the place up to sauna-like levels and the packed-out crowd is climbing the sweaty 170 walls. What a way to open the new calendar year of live music!