The Bronx, The Mint Chicks, Regular John
Fowler's Live
Thurs 1 March


After a solid, if somewhat underpopulated, set from Regular John and an entirely dangerous sounding set from The Mint Chicks, it felt like a long time before The Bronx finally took the stage. While Thursday evening was hardly the hottest of the week, the band room still sweltered with a suffocating heat, unaffected by the two floor fans that stood along the walls. Once the lights dimmed and the band began to move on to the stage - including injured and inexplicably shrouded guitarist Joby J. Ford, pushed on in a wheelchair - and launched into a blistering Small Stone, it was assumed that concerns about the heat would quickly dissipate when faced with the sheer volume and fury of the group.

Except that they didn't, really. Seconds into the song, it became obvious that there was a worse problem with the venue than its lack of ventilation: the sound system simply wasn't up to the task. The Bronx certainly aren't a quiet band, on record or live, and the Fowler's Live PA has a tendency to be unforgiving to bands who play too loudly. For a moment, there was some hope that the reason Matt Caughthran's vocals were indecipherable over the drums might have just been that it was a bad mix and that it would soon be fixed, but by the time the band had thundered through Shitty Future and Heart Attack American, it was clear where the blame really lay.

As such, for anyone not already familiar with the songs, it must have been a terribly uninteresting show. It sounded a lot like the show was being filtered through the earphones of someone listening to their iPod loudly on the bus in front of you - there was some hint of vocals and the drums could easily be heard, but the two guitars and bass were barely distinguishable from each other. The band were in fine form, no doubt, and Caughthran especially seemed to be having a blast, launching himself into the crowd, then calling for them to come past the barrier to be closer to the stage, but the muddy sound gave the room a claustrophobic humidity that was hard to ignore.

There were definitely highlights: the band's extended jam on Around The Horn was preceded by a marriage proposal, of all things, and History's Stranglers was still impressive in its intensity.

Alistair Wallis