Diet Pills, Smiler and Brandyman at Buffalo Bar Cardiff 19/01/10

Last night saw the first show put on by Lesson No.1 of the new decade and they set the benchmark pretty high.
Brandyman were first to play and anticipation for them was pretty high as the room had filled up early on in the evening. There aren't any recordings available for this band but I really wanted to see them because they are something of a Cardiff supergroup (I know, I hate using that term too). One of their guitarists has been involved with a few different bands over the years, most recently Truckers Of Husk and most notably, FTSE 100. Their other guitarist played for Joy Of Sex and their vocalist is none other than Cardiff publican, northern lunatic and Gindrinker vocalist, DC Gates.
With the calibre of musicians involved I was expecting good things but had no idea of what they would sound like. After seeing them play I'm still finding it hard to put my finger on how to describe their sound. The general consensus is that they rocked and there were lots of big riffs, some tricky time changes and some surprising vocals from DC. In Gindrinker, he talks in an angry northern drawl but with Brandyman he was closer to singing. It was definitely good to see him freed up from some of the restraints that come from being in a band with a minimal set up (Gindrinker) to try something quite different. There were some technical issues after the third song involving a destroyed guitar amp that stopped the pace of the show a bit so when the fourth and final song had started, some of their energy had been lost.
I still think that it was a really good set and some comments describing the band as being similar to ZZ Top made sense in the respect that they rocked hard. I thought they sounded kind of similar to Helmet in parts but I'm sure I'll be hearing a lot more from them over the next few months. Definitely ones to watch.
After a short break where we went out to the beer garden and discussed cheap ways to get drunk, (mainly involving sucking urinal cakes covered in drunk people's piss, which we decided to name 'Piss Jubblys') we headed back upstairs to watch Smiler. They are a band who have some members who have been involved in other bands such as George Annihilation And The Legion Of Hate and Makeshift Truth. After the relative complexity of Brandyman, Smiler were happy to just play as fast and hard as possible at high volume.
The band was pretty basic, flat out punk/powerviolence that didn't disappoint me. The songs mainly clocked in at a couple of minutes each and followed the same sort of formula: All play very fast, shout a lot and be angry about stuff in the world that is shit. One of the songs that stood out was about hating the BNP, which every self respecting human being should do and the lyrics were something about not being a 'racist cunt'. Haven't really got anything bad to say about the band, they sounded exactly as I would have expected them to and even threw in a cover of 'Rise Above' by Black Flag.
Last up were Diet Pills, who are a band who I didn't really know anything about apart from that they come from Leicester, which is probably one of my least favourite cities in the UK and that they had been compared to Neurosis and The Jesus Lizard.
From the minute they first started playing there was a menacing amount of volume and density and I knew I was going to like this band a lot. Their sound was really sludgy in parts and very bass heavy, which is never a bad thing. Their singer was a small guy who seemed pretty unhinged and threw himself around at the front of the stage keeping the first row of the audience at a distance with the threat of being smashed in the mouth by a swinging arm or head. Vocally, he reminded me of Mike from Racebannon or David Yow from the Jesus Lizard, with a high pitched screaming and tortured style.
The songs worked well from being a combination of slow, sludgy parts that felt like they were repeatedly hitting you with a hammer and other quiter and more eerie parts that actually reminded me of some parts of the first Khanate album. The set did seem to be over all too quickly but the band really blew me away by being a pretty unique prospect. I picked up their demo CD, a split CD they did with The Ergon Carousel and their 7" that was put out by Force Fed Records for less than a fiver. Unfortunately, I dropped the demo CD on the train home and somebody stole it rather than giving it back to me. At least I can take some comfort in knowing that some retard from the valleys may have gone home drunk, put the CD on and got his mind raped.
Here are some links to everyone involved with the show.
http://www.lessonnumberone.blogspot.com/ Who regularly put on most of the gigs worth going to in Cardiff and Newport.
http://uhoh-watson.blogspot.com/ Ian Watson, who made the awesome flyer for the show.
http://www.myspace.com/dietpillsband Listen to Diet Pills here and order stuff from them.
http://www.myspace.com/smileruk Listen to Smiler here.