The Pinheads

Touring their new release “This is Real”, The Pinheads road trip it up to Sydney from Wollongong to unleash their usual brand of chaos and destruction. Tonight they attack the Marrickville Bowlo with Bitch Diesel, New Age Group, RMFC and 2 Stroke.

R.M.F.C.

Rock music fan club, or RMFC are a relatively new, young 4 piece originating from Ulladulla on the NSW south coast. Brainchild of Buz Clatworth, they have a live standard set up of drums, bass and guitar, with a tambourine twist out front on wiggy moves.

Planted firmly in the fuzzy, fast, loud camp; their set is a quirky collection of short songs that would make an early Devo fan go straight to goo. There was plenty of fuzz from both bass and guitar; nicely interrupted by machine gun bursts of staccato vocal lines.

Check out their cassette offerings here.

New Age Group

New Age Group is a bunch of 5 blokes that hail from Canberra. How do I know that? Cause they kept telling us through the whole set – good product placement!

They pushed out a straight up pop punk set with drums, bass and a couple of guitars; all rounded out by a screeching, twinkle-toed front man. Lots of bouncing across the stage from end to end.

There was lots more short, sharp, fast songs reeking with distortion and the strains of early 80’s punk.

Listen to a sample here.

Bitch Diesel

Visiting from Melbourne, Bitch Diesel are a 3 piece with drum, bass and guitar. Making a spooky entrance in long black sparkly capes, it looked as if there was a change of tone in the air; or, they had just stumbled off the set of True Blood.

Setting the scene with a bit of heavy, squealing effects and feedback trickery, they launched into a set of slow core, swampy sounds dominated by growly, growly bass lines and tribal drum beats. Vocal duties were shared amongst the three band members seamlessly – everyone got a go. There was lots of stage strutting too – no shoe-gaze here.

There was a bit of pace changing through the set, sometimes sneaking into sounds reminiscent of Babes in Toyland, sometimes almost moving into post punk doom, but always underpinned by those tribal floor toms and that growly, growly bass.

Let your ears be caressed by their spooky sounds here.

The Pinheads hit the stage and the punters hit the front of the stage. With a quick announcement that they were going to play their new release from end to end tonight, they launched into their semi-controlled chaos. A 6 piece tonight with drums, bass, guitars and theremin! From the first song, the stage was a frenzy of activity, with a whirling dervish of a front man and not to be outdone, plenty of action from guitarists.

Ceiling tiles rained down on the band; power and leads to guitars and amps were kicked out, but the show continued on with fumbled repairs – all taken in their stride – another day at the office. The set was full of the usual garage, punk surf sounds; but the new release that they were showcasing sounded a little more refined and restrained, while at the same time still pumping out the raw energy that makes up a signature Pinheads show. The fuzz and buzz was definitely still there dominating the sound, as well as a raw, spacey, reverb energy driving through all the tracks.

A little bit of climbing anything that could be climbed on or around the stage was had; and then there was a small foray into the crowd for a quick sit down session to round out the show and finish off the tracks from the new album and the set. But the crowd were not going to have any of that – even though the show had run overtime, the band were dragged back on stage and managed to crank out a quick trio of chaos ridden older tunes, resulting in a rejuvenated squash-mosh pit from the remaining crowd and more raining ceiling tiles.