Kvelertak Live In London: Owl Party

This man has an owl on his head. It’s clearly time to party.

Whores’ drawers, I fucking LOVE Kvelertak.

A little green of gill and somewhat gig-jaded, there was notable anti-anticipation around these parts as the clock ticked down towards time-to-get-off-my-arse o’clock.

You see the sour taste of The Sword remained and while High on Fire wobbled my jowls pleasingly with their vibrating air, the crowd carried the faintest whiff of dickhead.

Combine that with my suspicions around the unfamiliar venue – everything in Camden inherently veers towards shithole-status – and the stoke levels were minimal.

Earthburner – Stoned at Birth

I don’t think babies should be allowed to smoke marijuana. They can’t roll their own for a start…

NOT the Kyuss rip-off you might expect with a bandname and EP title like that.

Instead we get satisfyingly fearsome crusty, sludgy hardcore-inflected metal that draws from the same wellspring that nourishes great bands like Black Breath and Trap Them.

While these Ohioans (is that even a word? Google says yes, so that’s good enough for me) certainly share traits with some popular beat combos du jour, their take on this sound feels their own.

AXES – Self-titled EP

Some feathers with eyes and some hardcore German dudes, ya dig?

Are AXES the best hardcore-and-more band you’ve never heard of?

These three everyday dudes from Rosswein, Germany (a tiny town so mind-meltingly boring it merits no more than a single line in Wikipedia and an official website so bereft of content that an article about a senior citizens cafe is a highlight), have crafted a real delight with their debut self-titled EP.

Kvelertak and Baroness Live in London 2012

Will bits of me get caught in JBD’s beard? One hopes not…

Long time readers of Monkey Defies Gravity will know how much of a collective man-crush I have on Baroness. I have long thought that I might explode with excitement should I ever get to see them.

Well, I shall be able to test my hypothesis on July 12 at tiny London club, Barfly – that’s just five days before the UK release of Yellow & Green. Let’s hope the staff don’t have to scrape me off the walls and ceiling. It could be messy.

I can’t believe a band of this stature is playing a 200-capacity venue in the UK capital in 2012. I also can’t believe I managed to snag a ticket. Thank you Songkick.

You Need to Hear: Antigama

Awesome music, rubbish imagery. If you can’t have both, it’s best to have it that way round.

Lean and spry, wiry and angular as all fuck, Antigama surgically devastate your eardrums with hail upon hail of viciously precise blows.

I can’t quite believe I was oblivious to their idiosyncratic math-grind assault until last week. Now I can’t go a day without feasting on their really rather groovy lightspeed-tom-roll-drenched skronk.

This month these mentalist Poles released their first record for three years, Stop the Chaos.