01/10/98
Compost, Chin Chen, Alchemist, Pitchshifter
Cambridge Hotel Newcastle
In Your Face Magazine Issue #16 1998
Voodoo.

What the hell? Pitchshifter and Alchemist playing in Newcastle? Is this a joke? No, but the piss poor crowd that turned out to see these two great bands was. For a Thursday night with fuck all advertising except for a microscopic ad in a local gig guides and word of mouth, I might never have heard of this show at alla sentiment agreed with most of the other people I spoke to tonight. Compost came on first with a Sepultura / Bad Religion cross style of hard core, seeming a little less into the show than when I saw then at Dogbite earlier this year. But the lack of any real crowd response may have caused that. Chin Chen played an overlong set of melodic hardcore which didn’t do much for me at all. A more intense style was needed, and Alchemist delivered it in spades. Despite Gup’s best efforts, most of Alchemist’s intricate music was hidden under a muddy sound, with the might of ‘Yoni Kunda” being muffled by bass sludge earlier in the set. Bets to as which song Adam would take his shirt off were all lost when he stripped off before they even began! They played a couple of new songs tonight off the ‘Eve of the War’ EP that are easily on par with anything of Spiritech, and I can’t wait for them to get back here soon. But Pitchshifter are what the crowd came to see despite the abundance of Alchemist shirts, and Pitchshifter is what we got, bursting on stage and proceeding to work us over with their Techno Metal Anarchy for the next hour or so, plying mainly songs from www.pitchshifter.com with a few tracks from Desensitised and infotainment? Thrown in to keep the old guard happy (er). John Clayden played the crowd like a pro, happily pulling faces for photographers and giving the mike up to the fans at the front at sing along, even renaming “Triad” their anti-Pauline Hanson song. He even got one nutter from the pit up to give him a hug “ because he needed it” How these guys have escaped the fame and riches they are rightfully entitled to is beyond me, but if they wake up even a small group of people to their message, their job is done. So with ears ringing and heads full of bass, the small but content crowd dispersed into the night, waiting for the next time we are blessed with the manic might of Pitchshifter.
Voodoo.