Deaf Wish launches their new album “Lithium Zion” at the Marrickville Bowlo tonight with the help of feedtime, Tissue and Shovels.

Tissue

This two piece guitar and drums from Seattle are as raw as raw can be. With a laconic and definitely Seattle branded sound, songs are low-fi and have a sparseness that are dominated by vocals telling stories of some of the most banal daily rituals. Songs are littered with lots of quirky riffs and timing changes, but still manage to maintain an underlying, almost menacing off time groove. If they were looking for that authentic bedroom jam sound, they have nailed it.

feedtime

From the moment they stepped on stage, it was down to business for feedtime. The metal slides were out and again they showed they knew how to use them like a heavy bluesy rock weapon.

There seemed to be a little more menace and anger in the delivery tonight; volume was  L O U D, lots of pedal to the metal frenzy of thrashing drums and pounding bass; and instruments being pounded with a vengeance just daring strings to snap and drums to crack.

The set tonight covered both older and newer (well relatively) releases; but there were also a couple of covers – a very thrashy version of X’s I don’t wanna go out and a version of Paint it Black with a pounding and snapping bassline that could only have been be done by feedtime.

Another stellar performance from these seasoned rock legends.

Deaf Wish

This Melbourne four piece cracked open their set with hail of discordant guitar and flailing bodies bouncing around the stage like a pin ball machine on multi-ball.

The drummer laid down a cornerstone beat that was frenzied, chaotic, but at the same time as tight as a pin. A staccato bass and droning guitar built the sonic layer cake on top. More wandering guitar and growly and shouty vocals tops it all off with icing that tried to blow our ears off.

There is an obvious sound connection with New York bands like Sonic Youth, but there is also a little more experimentation here to give them their own Australian grown noisy journeys into that just out of clean tune sound.

The band thundered through the set, even though there were a few technical difficulties early on and an almost meltdown towards the end; but in the spirit of determined rock they finished of with a powerhouse that had punters slapping the stage with delight.

Tonight the Brown Note was definitely burbling, with volume set to louder than possible and twisted notes bouncing all over the register. All we could do was hope to escape unscathed.