Live Review: Wednesday 13, Witchgrinder

It took no less than their first utterance to establish that Witchgrinder's performance was rooted more in bravado than in musicianship (that's not to say the latter was lacking, mind you). Prior to a haphazardly integrated soundclip, they opened their set with a declaration of, “Happy fucking Halloween”. By the end of it all, it became pretty clear that this was their banter of choice – the phrase, among other profanities, was repeated between each and every song. While all this sounds quite crass, their literal devil-may-care attitude they'd been playing up for the audience was entirely justified by their power-driven tunes (let down only by a slight sense of repetition from song to song).

Just in case anyone forgot what day of the year it was, despite Witchgrinder's constant reminders, and of course the sea of costume-clad people in the audience, Wednesday 13 – an already theatrical outfit – used the fact it happened to be Halloween much to their advantage. No one in the audience could say there was a better way to spend Halloween than witnessing Wednesday dance with a plastic machine gun during a performance of Rambo, introduced by slightly nonsensical but highly endearing (and equally engaging) banter. With showmanship that was constantly balancing on a thin line between entertaining and slightly too cheesy, they were able to keep it under the 'camp' threshold and put on what was simply an amazing show.

Regardless of whether or not Halloween is your jam, the atmosphere (and abundance of fake blood) at the Metro on the evening was far too fun not to warm to – so much so that even the most buttoned-down fuddy duddy would happily join in on the frivolous antics.